It has been a busy few months.
In September, we did the Wave hike that only a rare few have ever experienced. In October, we did our first ever 3-day tennis camp at the beautiful Pebble Beach, California. In November, we had our 3-week “longest” visit to NYC.
The Wave is a once-in-a-lifetime hike (https://thewave.info/) in Arizona.
The Wave makes a dream destination for hikers. It is otherworldly, unique and unforgettable that I can stay there for days, and still be in awe of its natural beauty. Its photo tells a thousand words, but it pales compared to in-person experience.
The Wave in Arizona became widely known after Microsoft featured it as the default desktop wallpaper for Windows 7 on July 22, 2009. Fast forward fifteen years, many recognize the pictures but very few know about the place even fewer have visited the Wave. Why? It may have to do with its being managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rather than the more well known National Park Service (NPS). It may have to do with its accessibility.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the Wave. BLM manages one in every 10 acres of land in the United States, including vast stretches of desert, grasslands, sagebrush steppe, coastal areas, and some forested lands . The National Park Service (NPS) manages US National Parks. The Wave is not part of any national parks. BLM and NPS both oversee public lands in the U.S., but their purposes and management differ. BLM manages vast areas of land (mostly in the western U.S.) for multiple uses, and emphasizes a balance between resource use and protection. BLM often leaves the wilderness alone where you can explore. There is no lodge, often no marked trails, lucky to have a parking lot or restroom. You are more on your own.
NPS, which operates many world-renowned U.S. National Parks, offers recreational enjoyment while prioritizing conservation and strict protection. National Parks are more developed with visitor centers, with more infrastructure, more facilities, more accessibility and designated hiking trails. NPS makes the park enjoyable for generations while preserving them.
BLM operates Coyote Buttes, which includes The Wave, and limits visitation through a permit system. The Wave, being operated by the BLM, stays intact over millions of years. With only a daily maximum of 64 people getting the permit to explore the area, the human footprints are kept to the minimum. The least human footprints help the highest order of preservation. The Wave permit is hard to impossible to get. The permit can be obtained through an advanced lottery system, or a daily try-the-luck walk in. The advanced lottery system is simple. It opens four months before your trip date. You have the whole month to apply with a maximum of three preferred dates. The lottery is now open for April 2025 Permit.
My first recorded lottery was dated March 2020. I did not try every month, as summer could be dangerously hot and winter could be harshly cold in Coyote Buttes. I only drew for the months with more forgiving weather. I did at least six attempts in the past four years. On June 3, 2024, I received this email: “Coyote Buttes North Advanced Lottery (The Wave) Lottery Results Announcement – Congratulations!”. It was an amazing feeling of a long forgotten dream coming true when I least expected it. Many tried for years, even decades, and are still trying. It is the closest we ever get to the Wilderness, seeing the same sceneries as the dinosaurs. There is no way that I will pass up on this. We accepted the lottery results.
A few weeks after accepting the winning lottery, BLM mailed us the permit and some directions for going to the Wave from some trailhead. It was like eleven pictures with detailed descriptions we can use to get from the trailhead to the Wave. It even states that markers placed by visitors may not be on the most direct path to the Wave. If we miss a picture and a turn, who knows when we will discover the miss and then backtrack. In short, we are on our own. We are too old to feel that getting lost, without a functional cell phone to contact outside, is an adventure. The Wave, as beautiful as it is, can be challenging and life threatening. It needs wayfinding skills and decent physical fitness to navigate through the vast wilderness. We are not confident wayfinder in the wilderness. We need to carry at least a gallon of water in a terrain of mostly sandstones. Even with the information provided by BLM, we decided to find a tour guide. The tour agency is very clear that we need to be prepared to walk 7+ miles in the rocky desert terrain, exposed to the elements. (In hindsight, we probably can figure out the navigation with some misses and backtracking, but then we will be focused on the navigation than the landscape)
My group of 4 had three months to get fit. We started our once a week training hike to get fit. From early August to a week before the Wave, we did 6 training hikes at Coyote, Upper High Meadow, and Stephen E Arbors Loop at the popular Rancho San Antonio of South Bay. The 4 hour training hike covers 8.4 miles with 1686 ft elevation. That is not quite the 7+ hours Wave hike. To build more confidence, I also did some stairmasters during the week. We felt ready.
The Wave has an elevation of over 5000 ft. We arrived at page, Arizona a day prior to the Wave hike. It helps acclimatize to the elevation. There is just so much to do at Page, Arizona and its proximity. We did a short beautiful hike at the Beehive Trail, sometimes called the New Wave. We felt ready.
September 21 was the big day. The tour guide Tyler picked us up at 5:15am. We were half awake. It was cold. Tyler is a local. He knows the area really well. He is cautious and prepares his body well with frequent sips of water during the one hour drive there. After all, he must look after us in unexpected circumstances. The first half of the drive is on a smooth freeway. The outside was dark and peaceful. Along the way, there is zero signage to tell Wave’s existence. I think it is intentional to hide it from the public. Without the experience of Tyler, It would be so easy to miss the turn to the unpaved side road to the Wave trailhead. The road becomes unpaved and gets tougher after the turn. We did not see another car until we got to the parking lot. It was too dark to see animals. We did not find any visitor center. Instead, there was a logbook, we registered our group in a log book. That log book is likely the communication protocol for the park range to figure out if everyone leaves the Wave, or gets trapped in the Wave. The pink permit was attached to my backpack all the time.
It was overcast, it was cool. There were tiny showers from time to time. It made the perfect weather for a hike. We did not need to consume much energy to overcome the sun. For the first few hours, we had the wilderness for ourselves. We did not run into another group. It was quiet and peaceful. The tour guide helped us with the better routes and avoided slippery terrains.
Along the path, there was this big rock that was shaped like a hamburger. Some rocks that looked like cauliflowers, and some just looked like human brains. Because of the shower, we found a few tiny water bodies, with some tadpole shrimps. These tadpole shrimp species have existed for hundreds of millions of years and are likely to exist after we are long gone.
The blue sky was missing that morning. The cooler weather was a blessing. We were also rewarded with different colorings of the terrain. The red rocks, the subtle green and blue color of the terrain came out indescribably beautiful under the cloudy sky.
The Wave is under the “black line”
We arrived at the Wave entrance in about three hours. It felt surreal to finally be in the Wave after all these years of lottery, all these weeks of preparation. The photo may disguise the Wave as soft, curly and smooth. In reality, it is formed of incredibly hard sandstones. We enjoyed just staying there to appreciate and had a lunch break. After lunch, Tyler, our tour guide, took us to different “vista” points and an area with the dinosaur footprints.
The sun started to show after lunch. As much as we wanted to enjoy it for more hours, it was time to hike back. We saw a few small groups without a tour guide. They were all busy navigating and we wondered how many backtracking they would experience.
As confident as we felt about the direction and the distinct landmarks on our return trip, we soon realized that we could easily mix up the Teepees and Twin Buttes landmarks with many other look-alikes in the wilderness. The size of the landmark changes too with the distance we are from it. The landscape changes too. The look and feel of the landscape changes too with the weather.
We hiked for almost seven hours for the round trip hike to the Wave. We signed out on the trail-head register before leaving, so concluded the Wave Hike.
The Wave hike is up there as the top three hikes of my life, if not the top. I am going to cherish the beauty and the once-in-a-lifetime hike for the remaining years. I am missing it already.
oliviatamccue 
Leave a comment