Padegimas - Day & overnight hikes, Tonto National Forest

This book provides you with an outstanding opportunity to learn from my mistakes. I am not a wilderness expert who happens to be able to write. I am a writer (among many other things) who wanders through the wildernessjust for the fun of it.

I began hiking as a young lad, though my mother, probably more accurately, called it getting lost in the woods and secretly hoped Id take up a more sensible activity. Still, I always wanted to know where the trail actually went, and usually found a way to find out. As I grew older, and kept finding my way back, my mother resigned herself to watching as I walked off on more daring expeditions.

The Tonto National Forest is bigger than you would think. At just under 3 million acres, it is the fifth largest national forest in the United States. Its elevation ranges from 1,300 feet to 7,900 feet, but these numbers only hint at the scale of the place. The mountains arent particularly big, and the canyons arent especially deep, but there are a lot of them, and precious little flat land in between.

Much of what is really worth discovering can be reached only by foot. Wilderness boundaries and the sheer ruggedness of the terrain force you to get out of the car and lace up your boots to explore the numerous high peaks, deep gorges, babbling rivers, near-silent deserts, 100-year-old mining camps, or thousand-year-old Native American settlements scattered widely across this multitude of mountains.

Of course, for me, the other part of the challenge is that I get losta lot. Some of these trails, some surprisingly easy ones, took two or three attempts because I would get that lost. So when I advise that the narrow trail to the left doesnt go anywhere you want to go, Im likely speaking from personal experience.

A complete account of the 900 miles of official trails (much less the unofficial trails, trace roads, and bushwhacking routes) would be encyclopedic. This book can only describe a smattering of trails spread out across the Tonto National Forest. I started with a list of 50 hikes that I really wanted to do. That number was whittled down by logistical considerations, fire damage, river levels, and weather to the final 34 described here. Those that made the guide, then, are relatively accessible, though few are easy.

I hiked these trails over eight months with numerous companions, ranging from my 11-year-old son to retired seniors in a local hiking club. My hiking speed, while taking notes, is on the slow end of averagethus the hiking times might be a touch longer than youll need. A lot of these trails run through canyons where satellite signals are weak to nonexistent. Take all mileages as rough estimates.

There arent a lot of easy hikes in this forest. All but a handful in this guide are outright adventures. They are all, in my humble opinion, absolutely worth it.

When my mother dropped me off at the Washington Park trailhead (so I could hike the Highline Trailthe last trail I hiked for this guideback to my car 10 miles to the west), she said that it was still hard for her to watch her little boy (now over 40) walk off by himself into the woods.