SUMMARY: This was an unbelievably tough (took us all day to make 18 1/2 miles) but it was beautiful.  On the “beauty” side, we reached our first creek, walked around a natural amphitheater, saw amazing rock formations, and hiked creek canyons full of greenery–ferns and wildflowers.  On the “tough” side–there were climbs so steep I wondered if I’d make it, many miles of horribly rocky trail, and downhills so steep, slippery and rocky that I had a really hard time.  But that’s OK.  I like the contrasts much better than hiking all day in the “same ol’ same ol’ stuff”.

DETAILS: It was a really cold morning to start with as we walked along a fire road admiring the many desert-looking but pretty plants along the way.  It wasn’t long before we reached our first CREEK !  That was seriously a big deal after so many days of water caches and wells and occasional cow “tanks” (muddy gross ponds).

After the creek, we entered a natural amphitheater, surrounded by high dramatic cliffs.  We were down below in a green meadow, walking along and periodically turning to look up and around at the amazing rocks.  There were also extensive ruins of an old mine.  For us it’s tempting to stop and look and try to figure out how the mine operated, but we said, “Nope, gotta make miles,” and pushed on.

Unfortunately, we pushed onto a wrong trail and it took us about 20 minutes to figure out we’d messed up, and head back to the right trail.  Bummer.  But that did connect us with Czech Mix again!  For the rest of the day we were leapfrogging with him regularly.  He is a great guy to hike with–cheerful, kind and encouraging.  By midmorning the three of us had reached what the map called “The Devil’s Rock Garden”.  It is truly amazing–there are scores of rock towers everywhere.  I said it should be called “Rock Giant City” because it looked like a whole cityfull of rock giants standing around.  We all took a lot of pictures–Czech Mix was glad to have us there, because we took pictures of him in the Rock Garden.  That was a lot better than selfies!

The beauty continued, with many, many flowers.  Among the rocks, there were cactus blooming, and near the creeks there were ferns, greenery and lots of “regular” wildflowers.  Beyond the Devil’s Rock Garden, the trail crosses large sheets of volcanic rock, but hooray, somebody had made plenty of rock cairns to show which way to go.  At one point, they even used sticks to spell out a large “CDT” sign!

But on the tough side of things, the trail today was seriously hard.  It included some of the steepest uphills and downhills I have ever seen, on very rough & rocky & slippery trail.  I actually had to stop and rest in the middle of some of the uphills.  Even Czech Mix got winded; we’d all sort of stagger over the top of a climb and stop to huff ‘n puff a bit.  None of us were able to walk very fast.

Towards the end of the day, it became more and more difficult to locate the trail.  But Czech Mix would whip out his iphone and instantly be able to point out “It’s that way.”  We are thinking we should have gotten a new iphone like his instead of our slow old one.   The hiking got a bit easier, and Czech Mix zipped on ahead of us, but we caught up with him for one last time at a large water tank where he’d stopped to filter some water.  We got water, too, and Aqua Mira’ed it.

But Czech Mix was looking really sad and we asked him if he was OK.  No, he was not.  He was agonizing over a very tough decision that would determine whether he’d continue hiking the CDT.  He told us that back in Silver City he’d called his girlfriend in Czechoslovakia to see how things were going, and got some very bad news.  She went to the doctor for some sort of very routine medical procedure and they discovered she has a serious and life threatening condition (Czech Mix didn’t say what it was–cancer, maybe?)  So poor Czech Mix was agonizing over “Should I go home to be with her, or keep on hiking?”  I asked him, “What kind of girl is she?  Is she the kind who would say, ‘I’m so proud of you, heading for your Triple Crown on the CDT!  Come be with me after you are done’ or is she the kind of girl who would say, ‘I need you; I’m so scared–please come home’?”  Czech Mix sighed and said, “She would want me to come home now.”

So we talked a bit about his options.  The water tank was right by a dirt road that could take him back to a highway and from there to Silver City and transportation back to Europe.  After this dirt road, there were no more “turn back options” for a long way.  Czech Mix very sadly said, “I think I must go back.  I will go to Silver City again and phone to find out how bad it is and make a final decision there.”  We promised him that we would be praying for him and for his girlfriend.  I had to choke back tears; I felt so bad for him.  When they say hikers are sort of one big family, it is true–we do really care about each other.

We never saw Czech Mix again on the trail, nor did we hear any word of him, so we are guessing he did go home. But we did pray for him a lot and I hope his girlfriend will be OK.

The day finished up with a long haul down along a creek–very rocky going, plus a final “Oh no–where is the trail?”  We did locate it again, and tonight we are camped about a mile from the Gila River, and are already getting glimpses of its famous mountains and canyons.  Clouds have been threatening all day, and they are even nastier looking now; the wind is howling and fierce, so it was pretty tough setting up the tent, but we managed it in the end.  My feet are so sore from all the rocks, even with the protection of the La Sportiva shoes.  But we are excited about reaching the Gila tomorrow, and I thought about our CDT Bible verse, Micah 4:5: “For all people walk each in the name of his god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God, forever and ever.”