Amazing, Spectacular Arizona Trail Thruhiking: Red Hills Ridge-The Park

Welcome back to Aspen’s Tracks, thruhiking the Arizona Trail southbound from Utah to Mexico. Today’s entry covers backpacking the southern stretch of Passage 24, the Red Hills, between the Red Hills ridgeline and The Park, the junction with the Red Hills Trail and start of the Mazatzal Divide passage. You can find today’s hiking logistics below the photo documentation and trail journal of the route.

In the land of Arizona
Through desert heat or snow
Winds a trail for folks to follow
From Utah to Old Mexico

It’s the Arizona Trail
A pathway through the great Southwest
A diverse track through wood and stone
Your spirit it will test

Oh, sure you’ll sweat and blister
You’ll feel the miles every day
You’ll shiver at the loneliness
Your feet and seat will pay

But you’ll see moonlight on the borderlands
You’ll see stars on the Mogollon
You’ll feel the warmth of winter sun
And be thrilled straight through to bone

The aches and pains will fade away
You’ll feel renewed and whole
You’ll never be the same again
With Arizona in your soul

Along the Arizona Trail
A reverence and peace you’ll know
Through deserts, canyons, and mountains
From Utah to Old Mexico
-“The Arizona Trail,” Dale R. Shewalter

Red Hills Ridge

Job application day starts. I hike further along the Arizona Trail to get service and encounter Jake (trail name, Don’t Panic). We talk for a while, and then I get the applications in that I can over lunch. The second third of the climb commences, but I seem to have gotten my mountain legs under me somewhat. Combined with a lesser grade, the climbing portion of today’s hike takes a matter of hours rather than the better part of a day that yesterday’s hike took. The trail rolls through the Hills, which aren’t exactly shy about the reason for their name.

Arizona Trail: Red Hills Ridge-Red Hills Trail Junction (The Park)

Most of the trail passes through scrubland but there are remnants of the ponderosa forest that existed in the vicinity before the Willow Fire (2004) and Sunflower Fire (2012) burned through the area. The Willow Fire burned 119,500 acres; the Sunflower burned 17,618. Dominant vegetation in parts of the area impacted by the fires has been transformed from ponderosa pines to primarily desert scrubland and pinyon juniper forest due in part to disturbance and increased solar exposure, changing the hiking experience through it, though some parts, particularly on the south end of the passage, were not impacted and retain legacy pines. Some more northerly plants like blue spruce can be found in shadier drainages.

Views are extensive of both the Hills themselves and of the mesas and Mogollon Rim to the north, where another fire appears to be burning. The Red Hills passage ultimately concludes at the Red Hills Trail junction, where the Arizona Trail hiker (or backpacker) imperceptibly enters Passage 23, the Mazatzal Divide – the heart of the Mazatzal Wilderness, one of the most incredible passages on the trail, and the topic for the next entry.