A thru-hiker's account of the stretch from Pine, Arizona up onto the Mogollon Rim offers a candid look at what hiking the Arizona Trail (AZT) actually feels like — weather chaos, small-town kindness, and all.
The story starts in Pine, where the writer credits a local brewery and pub with rescuing a lost resupply package before hitting the trail again with a belly full of elk chili. Storms were rolling in ahead, and the climb toward the Mogollon Rim — the dramatic escarpment that guards the edge of the Colorado Plateau — was about to test that optimism. It did: rain, hail and lightning moved in fast on an exposed stretch, forcing the hiker to shelter among boulders while trail runners jogged cheerfully past through the worst of it.
Once the weather cleared, the payoff arrived. The route from Washington Park Trailhead up to Rim Road turned out to be a highlight of the whole trip — not because of postcard views, but because of the satisfying, humbling climbing and the first sight of the vast Ponderosa pine forest that stretches toward Flagstaff and Humphreys Peak. Along the way there's history too: a stop at General Springs Cabin near Rim Road, and the nearby site of the Battle of Big Dry Wash, one of the last battles between the US and the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
The piece is also refreshingly honest about trail life. There's a bout of what hikers politely call a "code brown" three miles out of town, complaints about hiking soaked in humidity, and a run-in with the FarOut navigation app where the trail shows as off-route — a known glitch hikers learn to push through. Best of all is a cringe-worthy human moment: asked by a well-wisher whether he was enjoying the hike, the exhausted writer managed only "I'm trying to" — delivered, apparently, with a full resting scowl — and got told off as a jerk before he could explain the climbs were killing him.
For anyone eyeing the AZT, the takeaway is useful: the stretch between Pine and the rim is one of the trail's gentler, greener and more sociable sections, with reliable water along the East Verde River, weekend crowds of Payson families on side trails, and cooler temperatures than the desert miles to the south. It's also the psychological halfway cheer point — once you're above the rim, the trail famously runs "smooth as butter" toward the Grand Canyon. Or so this hiker thought.
This is a great read for hikers planning an AZT thru-hike or section hike around the Payson area, and for anyone curious about what long-distance trail culture — and trail-runners' sanity — looks like up close.
