When Dale Shewalter talks about hiking
the Arizona Trail, he describes a “sense of elation with what it
does for your life.” In the next breath, though, he admits, “I
kinda wore out my knees through the
years.”
Shewalter, who’s long been a fan of
long-distance backpacking, started looking for a north-south route
across Arizona in the early 1980s. He was surprised to find an
almost continuous corridor of federal and state land running
straight up the middle of the state. “I had some friends drop me
off in Nogales in 1985 and I started walking home (to Flagstaff),”
he says. When he got to the Utah border 24 days and nearly 800
miles later, he knew the route would work.
Since
1988, over 5,000 volunteers with the Arizona Trail Association have
constructed about 125 miles of new trail, connecting existing
trails and four-wheel drive roads. Another 140 miles await
completion, including a challenging section in southern Arizona
between Oracle and the Gila River. “It’s a tough piece of country,”
says operations director John Neeling: There’s virtually no water
in 40 miles. North of the Gila, the trail traverses the
Superstition Mountains, the Mogollan Rim, the San Francisco Peaks,
the Grand Canyon and the Kaibab
Plateau.
Shewalter says he’s not too worried that
the trail will be overrun by hiking enthusiasts, partly because
miles and miles of stark desert landscape can demand a special
appreciation for beauty. One hiker sent him this description of the
Babbitt Ranch section: “IT’S BORING.”
“But to
me,” says Shewalter, “it’s wide-open
Arizona.”
Contact the Arizona Trail Association
at 602/252-4794 or www.aztrail.org.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hard work in progress.
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