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The ARIZONA TRAIL
Chris Townsend's 1000 mile solo walk

The Arizona Trail (AZT) runs south to north for 780 miles from the Arizona/Mexico border to the Arizona/Utah border. Or at least it will when finished. At present only about 60 per cent is complete so any through-walk will involve some cross-country walking and linking together of already existing trails and dirt roads. I'm planning on making a number of diversions anyway to see interesting places so my route will be more like 1000 miles long. The mountain ranges in Arizona, which rise to over 12,000 feet, run east to west so the Arizona Trail involves a great deal of ascent and descent as it climbs over each range. The mountains are known as "Sky Islands" as they project abruptly from the hot desert.

The low point of the trail is 2,000 feet, the high point 9,000, though I plan on climbing some 11,000-12,000 foot summits including 12,633-foot high Mount Humphreys in the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountain in Arizona. The terrain along the trail is incredibly varied, taking the walker through every ecosystem found on a journey from Mexico to Canada, including hot subtropical desert, grasslands, lush riparian habitats, chaparral, subalpine forests and alpine tundra. The desert dominates though, making the main concerns heat and water. In the summer the lower desert areas are extremely hot, which is why I'm hiking in the spring. Water sources are widely spaced and not always reliable so I'll often have to carry up to 2 gallons of water (perhaps 3 in places). There aren't many places to resupply either though I hope not to have carry more than weeks food at a time.

Although the heat is the biggest concern there may still be snow lying on the mountaintops and snowstorms are possible in March.