Wilderness of Rocks three day backpacking adventure - day 2 part 1 - Wilderness of Rocks to West Branch of Sabino Canyon

After the first day lugging the extra water, we had a good nights sleep.

I started to pack up and heard Jason stirring in his tent shortly after the sun came up over the top of the canyon. We decided to eat our breakfast along the trail when we got hungry later.

The fall of 2017 was a very very dry one in the mountains, so the mountain streams are nearly universally dry with few exceptions. As a consequence, on the first dat it was necessary for us to carry all of our water for 2 days with us, which amounts to about 14 pounds of water. But this is the second day, so we didn't need to carry nearly as much water.

We had enough water for the second day without carrying any extra, since we knew that there was water in Hutches pool, which we would be hiking past on the third day, and could make as much water as we needed.

As we continued through the wilderness of rocks, we continued to see very dry conditions, with no water in the holes along the drainages. We didn't dig down, so there might have been some water if a person looked hard enough. But we knew that there would be water in hutches pool, so we didn't bother.

We continued on through wilderness of rocks, and reached the junction of Lemmon trail with the WOR trail, and continued up to the ridge.

At the ridge, we felt like we had enough of an appetite to eat breakfast, so we dug out our cookstove and some food, and made some breakfast, and then took some pictures while we were waiting for the food to absorb the water.

The second day was relatively long and hard with our 40 pound packs hiking 7 miles and about 3,600 feet of elevation change.

Needless to say, we slept pretty good the second night after that amount of exertion.