The Arizona Trail: A Hike Too Far

On  Wednesday, August 8, I decided that Jack and I would Hike 8 miles on the San Pedro Trail, about 20 miles from Tombstone. When we arrived at the Trailhead, I was surprised to find that Amanda and Honey had arrived as well. Amanda had wanted to take Honey to the river and let her play in the water. I'm sure that Jack was happy to share the event so we walked down and let the dogs play for a while. I took some video in the process, but there were three problems. First, I hadn't learned the video applications of my camera and there was some shaking going on, seriously reducing the quality of the videos. Second, the I need to convert the video to another format to insert into my blog, and third, the videos were too large to email copies to Amanda. Our wifi is quite slow. I will just give Amanda a memory stick with copies of the videos.

When the dogs were done playing, Jack and I hit the San Pedro Trail. I had wanted to step up my miles to  7-8 miles, which would have been reasonable, but that's not what we did. 

The trail was quite rocky, with the kind of rocks that have sharp edges and roll around under your feet. That's what much of the trails are in the southern section of Arizona, and its a common complaint with hikers here. But the real problem with our hike was that, after trying a short cut that didn't pan out, and having difficulty finding the trail back, our hike ended at 14 miles. When we finished the hike we both had sore feet and were at the end of our tether. Not wanting to ever repeat that situation, I have learned to use the track back function on my GPS which colors the trail much more darkly and makes it far simpler to find the way back.

The worst consequence of my mistake was that Jack's pads were well worn and he spent some time limping. I applied a couple of layers of Bag Balm to his feet and gave him some time off, much to his disappointment. After three days his limp had all but disappeared, so I walked him 1.6 miles, and he seemed fine. Still, I will not take him on walks greater than a distance of 5 miles, and will increase his miles slowly to a maximum of 7-8 miles.