MRT: Can We Do 2020 Over Again?

I won’t dwell on current events but it’s been a difficult, trying and challenging time for everyone. Let’s hope that 2021 brings peace, good health, a vaccine that works and some sense of normalcy.

We had to cancel or at least postpone our Cotswold Hike in England this year for obvious reasons. We did manage to get away in the summer for a really nice camping/day hiking journey. Stops along Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, several Colorado lakes, Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains and Cloud Peak Wilderness, and Montana’s Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness on the Stillwater River. We capped it off with a week in a cabin on the Shields River (MT) in the foothills of the Crazy Mountains. Great flyfishing and a wonderful visit with my son and family coming down from Helena.

We recently had a great trip to one of our favorite Sky Islands, the Chiricahua Mountains in SE Arizona. Our AZ grandsons, with little complaint, enjoyed hikes in the hoodoos and to natural bridges. The nightly mesquite fires and the brilliant night sky were a bonus.

As for 2021 thru-hikes, the fairly new 500-mile Mogollon Rim Trail (MRT) route in Arizona, created by Brett (Blisterfree) Tucker, got my attention very quickly.

This is familiar territory, touching this route on previous hikes on the AZT and GET. One of my first backpacking trips with my dad was to Sycamore Canyon, the MRT starting point. We promptly ran out of water and had to boil water and floaties out of a stock pond. That long ago time before good water filters. Little did I know at that point that I would be drinking from plenty of stock ponds! In high school, I packed into Beaver and Clear Creek Canyons with a teacher and friends to explore remote cliff dwellings. And over the years, numerous family camping and fishing trips to Greer, Black River and Big Lake. This will be connecting the dots for me – thanks, Brett!