Mar 7

Mar 7 AZT 2025, Day 3: Snow Day!

Roo Giordano

long distance hiking, Arizona Trail

It wasn’t much snow, but, as ever with snow, it enchanted.

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
”

— Beverly Sills

Start: Mile 15.2, Stealth Site in Sunnyside Canyon

End: Mile 33.8, Hunkered Down Under Desert Skies Stealth Site

Miles Hiked: 18.6

Total Miles: 33.8

Elevation: 2,800 feet

Snow day gear not meeting the moment

I’m trying something new this hike. Normally for rain I carry an umbrella, a Montbell versalite jacket and a rain skirt. I haven’t worn the rain skirt since 2019, but it is great as a door mat and ground cover, so it stays in the pack. But, oh my, it’s not a thing you want to actually be seen wearing.

I figured I wouldn’t need much in the way of rain protection on the AZT because, you know, the desert isn’t known for precipitation, FFS.

So I left the umbrella (even though lots of people carry them for sun protection). And I left the rain jacket (too many pokey things out here waiting to shred delicate, expensive gear to smithereens). Instead, I threw an emergency poncho from Walmart into the bottom of my pack, smug in the security that I’d probably never need it.

Today, I needed the poncho.

And I needed the rain skirt, with its zipper cranky from having been marinating in dirt for the past six years.

And thus hideously clad, I pined for both the rain jacket and the umbrella because what the poncho lacked in style, it also lacked in coverage, eco-friendliness and rizz.

Poncho Pros and Cons

PROS: Covers the pack; good air flow, which is important when you’re basically wearing a plastic garbage bag with a wonky hood. Better than nothing.

CONS: Butt ugly. Flaps around like a bucking bronco. Doesn’t cover arms or legs or even your head very well because of the flapping and because the dimensions are off. Impossible to fold up for reuse. Easily shredded by cacti. Plastic. Did I mention it’s butt ugly?

So…two thumbs down on the poncho, but I wasn’t sorry I had it during this day of intermittent snow showers.

But forget about getting more than one use out of it. It’s now stuffed into my trash bag and I’m not sure what I’ll do if we get more rain. Wear my rain skirt like a cape?

Random rusty thing along the side of the trail.

I passed Roadrunner, who I met yesterday. She was parked up under a shrub eating a hot meal in the middle of the day during a break in the snow. It smelled delicious as only Chili Mac from a pouch can smell in between show showers in the middle of nowhere Arizona. Oh how I envied her stove and longed for one of my own at the end of the day when the temperature was dropping fast and my cold-soaked noodles swam limply in my Talenti jar, offering no comfort in a tent on a cold desert night.

I met a Border Patrol agent named Eric who’d humped up the mountain in full border patrol regalia—gun, bullet proof vest, tool belt, aviator shades. He told me a little about his job—”I get paid to hike!” We studiously stayed away from politics and parted on good terms after hiking along the ridge together.

I saw a cactus that looked like a hand-knit beanie.

The colors after the snow made my artist heart go pitter patter: red-violet, ochre, wheat and flax, olive green, burnt orange and the crimson of the manzanita stems. Swoon!

View of the ridge where I met Eric of the CBP.

A new way to die out here…

I smelled and saw a dead skunk in a ravine, but didn’t investigate because, news flash! There’s a new way to die out here this year. Rabies! Apparently there’s an outbreak and anything with fur is now to be given a wide berth.