SUMMARY:  We started hiking at 6:20 am today and finished at 6:45 pm in Lordsburg.  Lots of miles!  Basically we spent the morning in very bare desert on the approach to Pyramid Peak, and the afternoon we spent circling around its base.  To our amazement, there was trail magic at the lst water cache, and we got to meet the rancher who owns all the cow critters around the Peak.  After that, it was one final walk, and we were back in Lordsburg.

DETAILS: What a day!  By 6:20 am, we’d eaten breakfast and packed up for the 1/2 mile walk to the next water cache, where we loaded up on water for 18 miles of desert hiking.

Today was pretty much dominated by Pyramid Peak, a dramatic cone-shaped mountain near Lordsburg.  In the early morning, it was on the horizon, and all day long we were getting closer, until in the afternoon we were circling around its base.

Today we also got lots of practice in crawling under barbed wire fences, and were very grateful whenever there was some sort of gate available.  The gates were quite varied–but mostly the good ‘ol loop of baling wire over a post .  Cows were everywhere, many of them a Hereford/Angus cross, with black bodies and white faces.  Lots of cute calves were scampering about–a lively bunch.  (We found out later that there was plenty of rain this winter and plenty of grass, so as one rancher put it, “The calves are just blooming this year.”)

There were some cow skeletons and remains, though, so I guess not all the cows have had a good year.

On the approach to Pyramid Peak, we were in very BARE desert, with hardly any plants of any kind.  But there were quite a few prairie dog towns, some quite impressive.  At one point in the morning’s hike, though, we were totally baffled as to where the trail went.  We finally “fired up” the Guthook app (it’s a big hassle to get to it, and our iphone battery won’t let us do this more than about 8 times before there’s no battery left, so we are very cautious about going to Guthook).  Yay for Guthook!  It pointed the way, we discovered that the trail went through a cow corral, and we needed to crawl under another barbed wire fence to continue.

We got to eat lunch in the shade of a lone tree–the only one for miles–it was wonderful to be in the shade, with  the temperatures  in the upper 80’s.  When we took our packs off, we discovered that the backs of our shirts are not just wet with sweat, they are also ringed with salt deposits.  Yikes!  We made sure to drink some electrolytes to make up for that.  After lunch, I indulged in a few minutes of admiring the brave wildflowers that were growing near the tree. ( I need my “flower fix”!)

As we got closer to Pyramid Peak, the trail got very rocky, and involved some scrambling.  We were very glad when we reached the dirt road that would take us around the Peak–much easier on the feet!  By 4:00, we’d reached the last water cache before Lordsburg, and to our amazement, there was trail magic!  Gatorade!   Apple pie!  All provided by a trail angel from Ohio appropriately known as “Apple Pie”.  Stummy and Masshole were there, and also the rancher who owns all the cows and solar cow water tanks around Pyramid Peak. We had a great time talking to him and Apple Pie.  “Do you just hang out here, waiting for hikers?” we asked.  And it turned out that no, Apple Pie has some kind of sensing device up the trail, and when a hiker goes by, it lets him know, and he goes out to the cache to meet that hiker.  The rancher sometimes comes too, just to hang out.  He said his family has been ranching here for generations.  “The 1920’s were pretty tough, though,”  he said.  “My grandpa had to go to work punching cows for somebody else, and my grandma took a job being a teacher for the kids in one of the big silver mines up by Pyramid Peak.”  Wow.  That’s determination!  We mentioned to him how frustrating the CDT “trail” had been, with so many marker posts fallen over and lying on the ground.  “Yeah, I figured that would happen,” he said.  “Those CDT people hired a bunch of college kids one summer to come out and put up posts.  The kids didn’t know what they were doing–should of asked the ranchers like me.  The wind blows so hard here that if you don’t dig a really seriously deep hole to put your post into, it’s gonna blow over next time there’s a big wind.  And it’s no joke trying to dig holes here–the ground is really hard and rocky.  Those CDT college kids dug little holes and stuck in the posts and that was it.  No wonder they blew over.”  Sounds like the CDT crew kids needed a bit more determination!

But there were still 6 more miles to walk in order to reach Lordsburg, so we had to exercise some determination and get going again.  So we shouldered our packs and headed into town, even though  we were tired from “pushing the miles” all day, and a little bit footsore  from the rocky trail.  Boy are we glad for our La Sportiva shoes!  The shoes we used to wear would never have coped with trail that rough.

We made it back to the EconoLodge  by 6:45, and met Zippy Morocco in the lobby!  He was actually just leaving, after taking a break to rest up a bit.  We headed for our room and SHOWERS!  Oh man, did it feel good to be clean again.  Between sweating and crawling in the dirt under fences, we were pretty gross.  Then I went in search of something for dinner, and the only thing I could find were the last 2 hot dogs from the Valero gas station next door to the motel, plus some ice cream.  No problem–we were happy to eat anything we could get.  Then we collapsed.  We’ll get back on the trail tomorrow!

SUMMARY:  A 2013 thruhiker said, “Epic!  Everything about the CDT is epic!”  I would agree.  So far it has been WAY harder than the PCT, but walking through the desert today and looking at the epic scenery–vast and sort of alien but also beautiful–wow!  And it was  way easier today to find our way, so we made good miles.  Having cooler weather till late afternoon helped, too.  We made a cowboy camp again, and a pack of coyotes went by in the night.

DETAILS:  Brrrrr, it was COLD this morning, and we weren’t 100% sure where the trail was, so we decided to eat breakfast before we started hiking.

It didn’t take too long, though, before we were sure of our route again, and from that point on, it was mostly easy to find and follow the trail.  There were only four times when we were perplexed and wrassling with our maps trying to figure out “Which way now?”  In all four cases, we did figure it out and didn’t have to turn on the Guthook app.

It is amazing to be out here, walking through miles of total desert, yet safe and secure, with our packs full of water and food.  Most of the day there was no “trail”, and we were just following a line of posts, which turned out to be quite unpredictable–some were ridiculously easy to spot and some very difficult.  There were also a number of PUDs (Pointless Ups & Downs) over very rough rocky hills.  The one “plus” with that was looking at the geology–there are a lot of obviously volcanic features here in the desert.  Sometimes we were walking on pumice, and sometimes on sand.

A 2013 thruhiker said, “Epic! Everything about the CDT is epic!” I would agree. So far it has been way harder than the PCT, but walking through the desert today and looking at the epic scenery—vast and sort of alien, but also beautiful, was actually enjoyable.

We finally crossed the actual Continental Divide for the first time and nearby was a little oasis of green grass and shady trees with an old tire as a water trough—it looked like a fishpond with no fish.  We stopped for lunch at the bear box water cache, and I was glad to be able to set up our little Esbit stove out of the wind.  It’s been hard to do our usual hot lunch, because around 11:00 am, the wind begins to blow and by noon, it’s really blowing.  The Esbit setup does not work well in the wind.  While we were there, we met Juan (who keeps the caches stocked with water) and he told us that the guy who got lost on his first day hiking the CDT is not the only hiker who had to be rescued after the first day—a couple of years ago there was an older man who got confused and wandered off the trail.  When he didn’t show up in Lordsburg, a search began, and they found him, lost and dehydrated and hungry, but otherwise OK.  Fixit and I were amazed, because we had been able to follow the route just fine on that first day.

The afternoon was quite warm, and it included our first “squiggle” under a barbed wire fence (the first of many such squiggles!)  At the end of the day, we just cowboy camped again, and were still settling in, when along came Zippy Morocco, eating his dinner as he hiked.  Turns out he started only yesterday!!  But he is very fast, and he told us he skipped all the gullies and just walked along the road and took shortcuts wherever possible.  We thought, “Well, it took awhile, but we are glad we toughed it out.”  Zippy took off–we won’t see him again, I am sure.

Stummy and Masshole are now ahead of us, too.  They are determined to reach Lordsburg by tomorrow night.  I am not sure if we will make it that far.  If this were the PCT, and regular trail, no problem–but constantly hunting for posts and spending a lot of time trying to figure things out…that’s rough.  I still can’t “embrace the brutality.”  All I can do is take a deep breath and keep going.

But it is a beautiful, quiet evening in the desert.  Very quiet.  Here in the bootheel of New Mexico, there are no airplanes going over, no roads full of cars, no trains going by.  Just a vast sky with a zillion stars.  A pack of coyotes went by, talking to each other in their weird voices, but other than that it was just quiet.

SUMMARY:  OK, today was “Embrace the Brutality Day.”  We spent the morning playing “Where’s the Trail?” as we searched for elusive marker posts in the chaparral, while walking on very rocky ground, laced with gullies.  Some of the gullies were pretty deep.  Things are better now–we are following a 4WD road, and the cactus are starting to bloom–very pretty!

DETAILS:  Well, this was “embrace the brutality” day for sure! We spent the morning playing “where’s the trail?” as we searched for elusive marker posts in the chaparral, while walking on very rocky ground laced with gullies—some pretty deep, to the point where it was hard to scramble/slide down into them with a pack on. To add to the fun, there were plenty of cactus and thorny stuff to deal with while we were scrambling and sliding.   (We found out later that some of the hikers got so frustrated with climbing in and out of gullies, that they left the trail and went farther down where the land was flat, then just “paralleled” the trail)

And it’s a good thing there are TWO of us looking for CDT marker posts.  It was really hard to find them, since many have fallen over.  (Fixit was able to live up to his name and fix some of those fallen posts)  We also sort of ended up taking turns spotting them.  Sometimes it would be me saying, “There it is!” and sometimes it would be Fixit.

We are in cow country now, and the CDT often has special gates for hikers to go through instead of crawling under barbed wire. Nice!  And finally there was an improvement–somebody made BIG rock cairns to hold the marker posts up, so they were a lot easier to spot, and didn’t fall over.

The weather all day was pleasantly warm with a breeze. More and more cactus are blooming—yellow, pink, and apricot. We finally made it to the water cache, and sat on the bear box to eat and drink.  We were tired. Stummy and Masshole were there, too, and that’s when we found out from them about the hiker with the big pack who started the same day as we all did, and how he got lost plus injured on his first CDT day.  They also told us that last night while they were camped near the first water cache, a large vehicle with no lights on went creeping by on the road.  Stummy said, “We were so scared.  And our air mattresses are so noisy, we didn’t dare move. We were holding our breaths.”

We kept on going after the water cache, but the posts disappeared and we had a terrible time finding the trail.   Fixit finally managed to figure out the Guthook app and use it, so we located the trail again.  He had been pretty disgusted with the app up to this point, and figured it was a waste of money, but now has changed his mind!  By 4:00 pm, we reached a 4WD road and were walking along the base of the mountains with awesome desert views, and a huge sky with big puffy clouds.  What a relief after the tough going up till now!

At 7:00pm,  I was so tired and very glad to stop. We got a few drips of rain while setting up camp, so for the first time, we put up the tent.

• SUMMARY:  Today was the beginning of the real CDT adventure!  We piled into a very tough vehicle for the 3 1/2 hour ride to the official start of the trail at Crazy Cook monument.  Wheeeeeew, that was one rough ride!  We were being jostled and tossed about, though the driver did his best to go slowly over the really bad spots in the road.  We finally made it, took pictures, and we were off!  The morning and early afternoon were easy–just follow clear signs and posts.  Wow, the scenery was great, too–classic desert mountains.  But the rest of the afternoon was endless rocky gullywalking.  We finally made it to the first water cache and cowboy camped near the “trail” which is now simply little brown plastic posts placed on ridges, so we can stand at one post, spot the next and walk over to it, dodging the cactus and climbing in and out of gullies.  No more trail!   Oh well.  It’s a beautiful night, and we are cowboy camped, looking up at the stars!
• DETAILS
• The EconoLodge has a 6 am breakfast for the CDT hikers and we took full advantage of it!  Masshole and Stummy were there–also Czech Mix (he’s from Czechoslovakia) and another guy whose name I never discovered.  Also keeping an eye on us all was Radar–he’s sort of the “shepherd” of us hikers as we get started. He made sure we all got our stuff into the van and had our paperwork in order, and then he  was worried because our driver was late.  He was just about to drive us all himself when the driver finally did arrive.
• At 6:45 we were off, just as the sun was starting to come up.  A song from church began to run through my head: ” The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning; it’s time to sing Your song again.  Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, oh my soul–worship His holy name”.  Amen.  That is my prayer for today!  And the early morning light was so beautiful.  What a great time to start our CDT adventure!It was a 3 1/2 hour ride to the Crazy Cook monument. At first it was nice highway, but at the end came 25 miles of seriously ROUGH road.   We were being jostled and tossed about, though the driver did his best.  We stopped at the first water cache for a break, and boy, did we need it!   Once we got to the monument, everybody cheered and piled out to look around and take lots of pictures…and dump out a lot of the extra water we’d put into our packs.  (The CDTA asks hikers to bring lots of water for the ride to Crazy Cook, in case of a vehicle breakdown.)

Czech Mix was the first to leave–I doubt we will see him again; he’s a strong, tall, fast young guy.  We were next.  Stummy and Masshole were still busy taking lots of pictures, and the last guy had a HUGE pack and seemed very unready for the trail.  Hope he will be OK.

The morning and early afternoon were easy—we could follow clear signs and posts, plus there were plenty of hiker tracks.  The scenery was great!  Classic desert, and the ocotillos were in full bloom, with a vivid red “flame” on every branch tip.  The route (still not a trail, really) climbed up into the Hatchet mountains, and we were able to follow it without a problem.  We leapfrogged a lot with Stummy and Masshole, who had finally caught up with us.

But later in the afternoon we found ourselves doing endless rocky gullywalking. Wow, were we glad for our TOUGH La Sportiva shoes.  No way could we have made it without them.  By 5:30 pm, we finally made the first water cache and ate dinner there, feeling a bit frustrated because we’d only covered 14 miles.  We were also frustrated because we didn’t know where the trail had gone.  The water cache is NEAR the trail, but not on it.  Just then, along came Stummy & Masshole again–they filled us in on how to locate the trail and said it was really hard to spot.  No kidding.  We did finally find it, only to discover that it had changed–now there were no CDT signs, just thin, flat brown posts on the ridges.  We tried to follow it–no luck.  Fixit tried to use the Guthook GPS app–no luck there either.  In disgust he said, “Forget this, let’s roadwalk.”

So we went back to the water cache by the road and discovered Stummy/Masshole were camped there.  Stummy showed us how to use Guthook, and when we saw that the trail was uphill above the cache, we said, “Let’s just bushwhack up.”  So we did, until at about 7:00 we reached what Guthook said was the trail route.  The wind was blowing and the ground was so rocky that we couldn’t set up our tent, so we found a sort of flat place in a little hollow  and cowboy camped. The wind finally died down, and our campsite has a beautiful view.  Wow, it feels good to finally lie down and rest!

We found out later that the guy with the huge pack who’d seemed so unready had a terrible “first day on the CDT.”  He got completely lost and wandered off into Mexico (without knowing it), then sprained his ankle so badly that he couldn’t walk and had to hit the “help, come rescue me” button on his “SPOT” device.  Bummer.