{"id":105,"date":"2016-04-30T06:12:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T06:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=105"},"modified":"2017-01-30T15:36:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T15:36:39","slug":"first-leg-of-the-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/04\/30\/first-leg-of-the-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, April 30     Opening Rock Walk :  CRAZY  COOK  MONUMENT"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-171\" src=\"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-6.jpg\" alt=\"april-30-6\" width=\"295\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-6.jpg 800w, https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-6-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-6-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 295px) 100vw, 295px\" \/><\/strong>SUMMARY:\u00a0 Today was the beginning of the real CDT adventure!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Wheeeeeew, that was one rough ride!\u00a0 We were being jostled and tossed about, though the driver did his best to go slowly over the really bad spots in the road.\u00a0 We finally made it, took pictures, and we were off!\u00a0 The morning and early afternoon were easy&#8211;just follow clear signs and posts.\u00a0 Wow, the scenery was great, too&#8211;classic desert mountains.\u00a0 But the rest of the afternoon was endless rocky gullywalking.\u00a0 We finally made it to the first water cache and cowboy camped near the &#8220;trail&#8221; 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.\u00a0 No more trail!\u00a0\u00a0 Oh well.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a beautiful night, and we are cowboy camped, looking up at the stars!<\/li>\n<li>DETAILS<\/li>\n<li>The EconoLodge has a 6 am breakfast for the CDT hikers and we took full advantage of it!\u00a0 Masshole and Stummy were there&#8211;also Czech Mix (he&#8217;s from Czechoslovakia) and another guy whose name I never discovered.\u00a0 Also keeping an eye on us all was Radar&#8211;he&#8217;s sort of the &#8220;shepherd&#8221; of us hikers as we get started.\u00a0He made sure we all got our stuff into the van and had our paperwork in order, and then he \u00a0was worried because our driver was late.\u00a0 He was just about to drive us all himself when the driver finally did arrive.<\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li>At 6:45 we were off, just as the sun was starting to come up.\u00a0 A song from church\u00a0began to run through my head: &#8221;\u00a0The sun comes up, it&#8217;s a new day dawning; it&#8217;s time to sing Your song again.\u00a0 Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes, &#8220;Bless the Lord, oh my soul, oh my soul&#8211;worship His holy name&#8221;.\u00a0 Amen.\u00a0 That is my prayer for today!\u00a0 And\u00a0the early morning light was so beautiful.\u00a0 What a great time to start\u00a0our CDT\u00a0adventure!It was a 3 1\/2 hour ride to the Crazy Cook monument.\u00a0At first it was nice highway, but at the end came 25 miles of seriously ROUGH road.\u00a0\u00a0 We were being jostled and tossed about, though the driver did his best.\u00a0 We stopped at\u00a0the first\u00a0water cache for a break, and boy, did we need it!\u00a0\u00a0 Once we got to the monument, everybody cheered and piled out to look around and take lots of pictures&#8230;and dump out a lot of the extra water we&#8217;d put into our packs.\u00a0 (The CDTA asks hikers to bring lots of water for the ride to Crazy Cook, in case of a vehicle breakdown.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Czech Mix was the first to leave&#8211;I doubt we will see him again; he&#8217;s a strong, tall, fast young guy.\u00a0 We were next.\u00a0 Stummy and Masshole were still busy\u00a0taking lots of pictures, and the last guy had a HUGE pack and seemed very unready for the trail.\u00a0 Hope he will be OK.<\/p>\n<p>The morning and early afternoon were easy\u2014we could follow clear signs and posts, plus there were plenty of hiker tracks.\u00a0 The scenery was great!\u00a0 Classic desert,\u00a0and the ocotillos were in full bloom, with a vivid red &#8220;flame&#8221; on every branch tip.\u00a0 The route (still not a trail, really) climbed up into the Hatchet mountains, and we were\u00a0able to follow it without a problem.\u00a0 We leapfrogged a lot with Stummy and Masshole, who had finally caught up with us.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0later in the afternoon\u00a0we found ourselves doing\u00a0endless rocky gullywalking. Wow, were we glad for our TOUGH La Sportiva shoes.\u00a0 No way could we have made it without them.\u00a0 By 5:30 pm, we finally made the first water cache and ate dinner there, feeling a bit frustrated because we&#8217;d only covered 14 miles.\u00a0 We were also frustrated because we didn&#8217;t know where the trail had gone.\u00a0 The water cache is NEAR the trail, but not on it.\u00a0 Just then, along came Stummy &amp; Masshole again&#8211;they filled us in on how to locate the trail and said it was really hard to spot.\u00a0 No kidding.\u00a0 We did finally find it, only to discover that it had\u00a0changed&#8211;now there were no CDT signs, just thin, flat brown posts on the ridges.\u00a0 We tried to follow it&#8211;no luck.\u00a0\u00a0Fixit tried to use the Guthook GPS app&#8211;no luck there either.\u00a0 In disgust he said, &#8220;Forget this, let&#8217;s roadwalk.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So we went back to the water cache by the road and discovered Stummy\/Masshole were camped there.\u00a0 Stummy showed us how to use Guthook, and when we saw that the trail was uphill above the cache, we said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just bushwhack up.&#8221;\u00a0 So we did, until at about 7:00 we reached what Guthook said\u00a0was the trail route.\u00a0 The wind was blowing and the ground was so rocky that we couldn&#8217;t\u00a0set up our tent, so we found a sort of flat place in a little hollow\u00a0\u00a0and cowboy camped. The wind finally died down, and our campsite has a beautiful view.\u00a0 Wow, it feels good to finally lie down and rest!<\/p>\n<p>We found out later that the guy with the huge pack who&#8217;d seemed so unready had a terrible &#8220;first day on the CDT.&#8221;\u00a0 He got completely lost and wandered off into Mexico (without knowing it), then sprained his ankle so badly that he couldn&#8217;t walk and had to hit the &#8220;help, come rescue me&#8221; button on his &#8220;SPOT&#8221; device.\u00a0 Bummer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-174\" src=\"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-16.jpg\" alt=\"april-30-16\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-16.jpg 800w, https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-16-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/april-30-16-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SUMMARY:\u00a0 Today was the beginning of the real CDT adventure!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Wheeeeeew, that was one rough ride!\u00a0 We were being jostled and tossed about, though the driver did his best to go [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}