After deliberating for the past couple of days, we decided to go ahead and call it here on the Arizona Trail. We have officially done half of the trail, 400 miles! The mountain ranges and low Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona have been beautiful and a marked change of scenery from the usual places we hike, but we have both been feeling ready to get back to where we really feel at home – in the red sandstone canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau in the northern part of the state. Thru-hiking has given us the chance to learn a lot about our backpacking setup (and ourselves!) and gain lots of strength and experience on the trail in a short period of time. At this point though, we are having to hike 15 miles a day on average to get through the rest of the trail on time, and the pace is making it more grueling, exhausting, and rushed than we’d like.

So, we are pivoting up north to the Big Ditch. The normal AZT route through the Grand Canyon is closed until mid-May because of a wildfire last year. Luckily, we scored permits for a week-long trip through the Gems Route, a lesser-visited part of the canyon with lots of scenic side canyons and multiple opportunities to hike down to the Colorado River. We’re excited to get to spend lots of time in the crown jewel of the AZT and Arizona in general, and we timed it so that we can hike fewer miles each day and really savor our time down there. It’s a place we’ve wanted to hike for a long time, and I think it’ll cap off our Arizona adventure perfectly. We made it from Payson to Flagstaff yesterday, and this afternoon we loaded up on groceries and got everything else prepped to head out to the park in the morning.