SUMMARY:\u00a0 A 2013 thruhiker said, “Epic!\u00a0 Everything about the CDT is epic!”\u00a0 I would agree.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 And it was\u00a0 way easier today to find our way, so we made good miles.\u00a0 Having cooler weather till late afternoon helped, too.\u00a0 We made a cowboy camp again, and a pack of coyotes went by in the night.<\/p>\n
DETAILS:\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 There were only four times when we were perplexed and wrassling with our maps trying to figure out “Which way now?”\u00a0 In all four cases, we did figure it out and didn’t have to turn on the Guthook app.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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\u00a0easy to spot and some very difficult.\u00a0 There were also a number of PUDs (Pointless Ups & Downs) over very rough rocky hills.\u00a0 The one “plus” with that was looking at the geology–there are a lot of obviously volcanic features here in the desert.\u00a0 Sometimes we were walking on pumice, and sometimes on sand.<\/p>\n
A 2013 thruhiker said, “Epic! Everything about the CDT is epic!” I would agree. So far it has been way<\/span> harder than the PCT, but walking through the desert today and looking at the epic scenery\u2014vast and sort of alien, but also beautiful, was actually enjoyable.<\/p>\n We finally crossed the actual Continental Divide for the first time\u00a0and nearby was a little oasis of green grass and shady trees\u00a0with\u00a0an old tire as a water trough\u2014it looked like a fishpond with no fish.\u00a0\u00a0We stopped for\u00a0lunch at the bear box water cache, and I was glad to be able to set up our\u00a0little Esbit stove out of the wind.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The Esbit setup does not work well in the wind.\u00a0 While we were there, we\u00a0met Juan (who keeps the caches stocked with water)\u00a0and he told us\u00a0that the guy who got lost on his first day hiking the CDT\u00a0is not the only hiker who had to be rescued after the first day\u2014a couple of years ago there was an older man who got confused and wandered off the trail.\u00a0 When he didn’t show up in Lordsburg, a search began, and they found him, lost and dehydrated and hungry, but otherwise OK.\u00a0 Fixit and I were amazed, because we had been able to follow the route just fine on that first day.<\/p>\n The afternoon was quite warm, and it included our first “squiggle” under a barbed wire fence (the first of many such squiggles!)\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Turns out he started only yesterday!!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We thought, “Well, it took awhile, but we are glad we toughed it out.”\u00a0 Zippy took off–we won’t see him again, I am sure.<\/p>\n Stummy and Masshole are now ahead of us, too.\u00a0 They are determined to reach Lordsburg by tomorrow night.\u00a0 I am not sure if we will make it that far.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I still can’t “embrace the brutality.”\u00a0 All I can do is take a deep breath and keep going.<\/p>\n But it is a beautiful, quiet evening in the desert.\u00a0 Very quiet.\u00a0 Here in the bootheel of New Mexico, there are no airplanes going over, no roads full of cars, no trains going by.\u00a0 Just a vast sky with a zillion stars.\u00a0 A pack of coyotes went by, talking to each other in their weird voices, but other than that it was just quiet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\t\t