A teacher and climber who goes by trail accounts of her days on the Arizona Trail (AZT) has shared an honest look at solo desert hiking in Saguaro National Park, Arizona — and it's a useful reality check for anyone dreaming of a long-distance section hike in the Sonoran Desert.
Her route covered the stretch toward Saguaro National Park and beyond, with big-mile days that peaked at a 22.7-mile day followed by an attempted marathon (26.2 miles) that she eventually completed on day 13, hiking from 5:45 a.m. to 8:40 p.m. The trail itself delivers plenty of highlights: towering saguaros to stare at over a breakfast burrito, the climb to Manning Camp, the side trail to Spud Point (which she skipped, wary of getting lost with a dying phone battery), and the looming challenge of Mount Lemmon, famous among AZT hikers for the cookie stop at the Cookie Cabin near the summit.
But the real story is the logistics of solitude. The AZT is nothing like the Appalachian Trail, she writes — it's quiet, with few hikers passing by, and cell signal is patchy at best. Texting her husband in the Blue Ridge Mountains drained her battery fast, leaving her at 30% with a half-charged power bank and a panic attack about headlamps and darkness. She skipped her planned extra miles rather than risk a night out with no backup power. Loneliness, not the terrain, ended the trip: she quit 26 miles early near Kearny on April 12, out of snacks and out of steam after a blister, wind-blasted sleepless nights and homesickness hit all at once.
For travellers, the takeaways are practical. Water sources can be 12 miles apart, so carrying capacity matters. Campgrounds like Grass Shack come with mosquitoes, so skip the cowboy camping. Spotty signal means a fully charged power bank, a GPS device and a downloaded offline map are essentials, not luxuries. And choosing an exit town — she rebooked her flight out of Tucson instead of Phoenix — can save a lot of hassle if plans shift.
Who is this for? Anyone considering a first solo section hike, especially women travelling alone who want a candid picture of what the fear-and-peace mix actually looks like. Her verdict: the AZT's emptiness is genuinely restful once you accept it, and she's already planning a return in April 2027, this time with company. Next stop on her calendar, meanwhile, is Spain's Camino Primitivo — the opposite problem, arguably: a walk famous for its social life.
