This morning we left Roosevelt Lake behind and began a very steep climb into the Superstition mountains. Once there it was a series of challenging climbs and descents, one after the other. It was a pretty section of trail but my goodness was it exhausting for the horses and for me as we were constantly climbing straight up or straight down. I had to adjust the pad under Shyla's many times as it wanted to constantly slip out the back. We finally made it to camp just after dark, having covered 26 difficult miles. One of the water jugs that I had cached earlier had sprung a leak, so we only had 10 gallons of water for the horses overnight. That meant in the morning we had to back track a wee bit to get to some pools of water in a creek bed since it was going to be 8 miles till our first water on the trail, and with the heat and the way the horses sweat on the tough trail, I didn't want to take any chances with them not having enough to drink.

#2017AZT