Continental Divide Trail, Take 2: Days 1-5

Crazy Cook Monument: the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail, just feet from the Mexican border

Day 1

Forward progress: 14.2 miles

Total distance on trail: 14. 2 miles

Dude... what am I doing here?

Even though I did this section of trail last year, I forgot how absolutely awful this first day is. When I asked Mitch if this day was better or worse than he thought it would be, he said worse. I thought I had adequately warned him.

The Continental Divide Trail Coalition shuttle doesn't really set you up for success that first day. Every other day in the bootheel, the move is to start hiking before sunrise, spend the hottest hours of the day hiding from the sun, and continue the miles after it starts cooling down. Unfortunately, the 3-hour shuttle ride from Lordsburg to Crazy Cook Monument takes away a hiker's ability to do morning miles, and we're forced to hike 14 miles to our first water cache starting at no earlier than 9:30am. (But for real, bless the CDTC and local volunteers for caching water throughout this section!!!) Hiking between noon and 4:00 is pretty unbearable, but you just have to hike through those hours because the more time you spend taking breaks, the more water you'll drink, and the more time you have until you can refill your water supply. The two fixes I see for hikers are probably not feasible for the CDTC: shuttle hikers out in the evening and have them camp at the border (which is probably dangerous), or shuttle hikers starting at 2am instead of 6:15am (which would make it very hard to find consistent shuttle drivers who would take those hours). But man, it does suck.

I will say, the feeling of starting is such a high. There's nothing quite as insane as looking at a terminus and realizing the only two paths forward are hiking thousands of miles until you get to the other one or having to give up and feel like a failure. My fingers, toes, tongue, insides, everything is crossed.

We started with 8 other hikers. Everyone spread out almost immediately. We mostly saw people at the end of the day, chugging water at the first CDTC-provided water cache, 14 miles into the trail, deprived of water until then. Everyone looked beat up.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: people are not meant to live in this kind of desert. And I don't mean like cutesy fun red rock desert; I mean there is barely an ounce of shade, water is impossible to acquire without human intervention, every plant is thorny and has no problem reminding you of that fact, desert.

When I had to leave the trail last year, I lamented that I'd have to redo the New Mexican bootheel section in order to make it a thru-hike. After today, I'd say I'm still pissed that I have to be here again. If (god forbid) I have to get off trail this year, I'm absolutely sectioning this hike, because the bootheel is not for me.

Thank god Mitch is doing the first 10 days with me, because today would have been brutal on my own. I know I would have been in my head every step of the way. As it was, I was struggling to keep a positive outlook. The dehydration didn't help. I carried 3 liters of water this time -- almost twice what I did last year -- but it still felt impossible to feel comfortable. Almost any time we saw meaningful shade, we took refuge in it. After one break, we saw we had 4 miles to get to a "Big Tree" that is actively noted as a waypoint by the map guide because of how little shade there is along the trail at the beginning. 4 miles -- 4 flat miles -- would never give me pause. It took us 3 hours, including several breaks, to do those 4 miles, because we just needed to stop moving to keep from passing out. The nausea didn't subside until we reached our water cache and I was able to drink a meaningful amount of liquid without having to ration each swallow.

We took a break pretty much every time we found shade. This 5 minute break stretched into 20 minutes.

Or we would make our own shade with the best piece of desert gear: sun umbrellas

Our feet already throb. So much of the day was spent hiking in long-dried river beds over variable-sized rocks and pebbles, making it impossible to let your feet settle into a good rhythm, forcing your feet to constantly change shape to mold to each specific stone shape and size. It was slow, it was painful, and the sun exposure was insane. We sought shade in the most pitiful spots.

So far, haven't met anybody I'd enjoy hiking with long-term. On the shuttle to the terminus, we passed all the day 2 hikers on the road. So far, including my day's shuttle, I've encountered one (1) woman. I hope more appear out here soon!

Day 2

Forwars progress: 16.1 miles

Total distance on trail: 30.3 miles

When I say the ability to wake up and start before the sun rises changes the whole game, I really mean it. We woke up at 5am so we could get some miles in before it got too hot. We did 12 of our 16 miles by 10:45, and then the rest of the day was trying to stay out of the sun as much as possible.

The desert has about 5 beautiful stages: sunrise, sunset, golden hour (the hour or so after sunrise and before sunset), and blue hour (the hour or so before sunrise and after sunset). The rest of the day is... harsh.

The first 9 or so miles of today's hike was a dirt road walk. After yesterday's loose stones in the washes, having packed ground was a blessing. Those miles flew by.

Dirt roads + sunrise = <3

We aimed for 12 miles before the heat of day so we could get to a water cache, where we planned to fill up and spend a few hours. At the cache, we met the lovely volunteer who replenishes the water, and she suggested we continue about a quarter mile down the trail to a trailhead sign with a roof so we could get better shade, and we really just chased that tiny square of shade for 3.5 hours before we finally got antsy enough to continue hiking.

This small roof provided our shade for many hours.

And then from there, we hiked a whopping 2.5 miles to get to a water tank. Even though it took less than an hour, it felt terrible. We should have waited another hour under the shade. 3:00 is too hot to hike if you can avoid it, and we could have avoided it. We had to take 2 packs-off-sit-down breaks in the span of that hour.

We spent so much time at this tank!

Honestly, we should have gotten to the tank for our break. It was much bigger than our tiny sign. 6 people were there taking their afternoon break, so maybe there wouldn't have been room, but at least it was right next to the water hose that feeds the stock pond. Last year, the stock pond had a drowned cow in it, and this year, the cow is gone. Similarly, last year in the wash, there was a partially-decomposing cow corpse, and this year it was gone, too. So we're 0/2 on cow corpses that I was fully expecting to see. Hopefully that's a good omen! Although my fracture area has been a little sore today. Although that's likely more a manifestation of my anxiety than real pain, so... who knows.

Our view leaving the water tank

We hung out at the water tank for another few hours, waiting for the sun to go down. We didn't really have a planned end in mind, so we just hiked along another dirt road (the theme of this trail) until the sun was almost down and we found a relatively flat and open spot to pitch our tent.

Honestly, the combination of shade, water, and rest made today a good day. The basics of human needs.

So far, Mitch and I haven't really made other friends out here. There are a few groups of men traveling together, but no one I'm viewing as long-term hiking partners once he leaves me in Silver City. But the trail is young, and we have time.

Day 3

Forward progress: 20.4 miles

Total distance on trail: 50.7 miles

Ok ok I knowwww I said (at least to myself if not to others) that I wasn't going to do any 20s until I was a week or so in, but hear me out. Today made a lot of sense, I think!

We woke up at 4am so we could get another hour of pre-sun hiking in. Well... my alarm was set for 4:00, but I woke up around 3:00 and couldn't fall back asleep. We did half of our mileage by 10:00, and then we took a long break in the shade of a water tank on some guy's ranch. I remember camping here last year. This is where we got stopped by border patrol. This year, we were just stared down by some apprehensive cows.

But then we got bored by 11:30 and decided to do a few more miles to get to a shade tree. Trees with the size and leaf coverage to provide adequate shade are few and far between out here, so we take advantage where we can. We've learned that each day, our planning has to include a morning water break, and afternoon shade break, an evening water break, and a place to camp. Once we've established those places, we're good to go.

We took a 3 hour break at that tree. I don't even know how we filled that time beyond a short nap and eating the Chips Ahoy chewy cookies that Mitch was brilliant enough to pack out. We left a half hour early because we were exhausted of sitting, and we did another 2.5 to the CDTC-provided water cache to fill up and make dinner. We'd originally planned to camp there, but we decided we had 5 more miles in us to get a little further down the trail. (A comment in our guide app mentioned that it would be mostly flat, and it was right.) Our goal is to be in good position to hike into Lordsburg on the fifth day.

The most shade we've seen for miles

The moon tonight is bright orange and almost full. We've been sleeping without the rain fly on, which is certainly a little brighter than desired for sleep, but it's been lovely to get ready for bed and pack up in the morning almost exclusively by moonlight.

The bat above the water source really did not want me to be there.

My hips -- both sides -- have been aching a bit. I stretch before the day begins, at every break, and after getting to camp. I keep reminding myself that it's not unusual to have soreness and pains that don't amount to anything bigger out here. On the Appalachian Trail, the first three weeks saw a consistent cycle of knee, hip, and Achilles tendon pain. But after last year, I'm a little stressed.

Day 4

Forward progress: 19.9 miles

Total distance on trail: 70.6 miles

Another day in the desert, another 4am wakeup call, another day waking up well before my alarm and not being able to fall back asleep. But again, worth it to not have to hike in the mid-day heat!! (Not that it even mattered today... there was a huge wind storm for most of the afternoon, which made hiking during those hours significantly more bearable.)

One of my favorite parts of hiking in the dark is that the CDT sign posts reflect headlamp light, so you can usually find them more quickly than you can by day. The first many miles were very straightforward, and we took a short rest on top of a saddle to watch the sun rise. It was fun going from relying on headlamps to see anything at all to putting them away in the span of a 15-minute break.

Our big morning break was at the next water cache. A man called Apple manages this cache, and he was also our first trail angel! His car pulled up to the cache less than a minute after we had gotten there, which was a crazy timing coincidence, and I noticed his car had Ohio plates. Turns out he lives in West Chester! Ohio against the world, as always. He's never hiked a long trail, but he's angeled a bunch of them, and he really knows what hikers need. He had camp chairs so we could have seats (!) off the ground (!!!) with back support (!!!!!), he took our trash, he gave us non-water beverages, and he even brought water guns so he could spray hikers down before they continued hiking into the desert.

Apple and his trail magic goodies, water gun and all.

This stretch made me laugh. There are so many times that the trail follows a network of cow trails that kind of link but kind of don't. The expectation is that you hike from sign post to sign post. I distinctly remember getting lost in this section last year, following a very obvious footpath, only to realize I was about a quarter mile to the right of the trail. In the exact same spot, I made the same mistake! I genuinely don't know how anybody follows the actual trail in that spot.

Definitely on a path... whether or not it was the right one, who knows.

We did another 7 miles to a shady tree, and it didn't take much effort to find because it was the only tree within miles that was a tree and not a shrub. The shade was as plentiful as the cow poop underneath the tree, but we found a few patty-less square feet to call home for a few hours. We'd made very intentional plans to stay until 4:00, even though we got there at noon, but we left just after 2:00 because the wind and cloud coverage negated the worst of the heat, so we could continue hiking without repercussion.

This was the best shade tree so far. Too bad we didn't really need it!

We listened our own audio stimuli to distract us for the following hours, and it was the first time I really thought to myself that I was really doing a thru-hike. Something about plugging in, doing head-down-get-through-it miles, and zoning out just felt like the reality of most of thru-hiking.

This afternoon, for the first time since starting the trail, we gathered water that was from cow tanks. This one looks really bad, but we were able to filter water from the spots between the algae blooms and it was pretty clear and relatively flavorless, which is very exciting.

It actually was fine, just looks really bad.

Yum yum yum cow water

For the first time in days, we got to our campsite before the sun was down, and we also were able to stake out our tent instead of weighing it down with gear and calling it good enough because the ground was sandy dirt and not just rock! I can already tell I'm gonna sleep great tonight.

Home sweet home

Enjoyed hiking at sunset

Day 5

Forward progress: 13.4 miles

Total distance on trail: 84 miles

I still woke up before my alarm, but only by a half hour. I don't know what it was, but I swear I could hear a kind of "ding-ding" every few seconds. The sound actually woke me up, and I couldn't place it, and it didn't stop for a long time, and I swear I'm not hallucinating, but I also can't explain what was producing it. Mitch didn't hear it at all, though. Maybe the desert is playing tricks on me.

We were hiking by 5:00, intent on getting to Lordsburg as early as possible. Much of the hiking today was easy, but the first mile was the worst part. I remember having a hard time navigating this part last year. In the dark, it was nearly impossible. It took us 40 full minutes to do a mile. Even with our headlamps illuminating the signs, they were hard to find. We had to backtrack and find new paths many times. It was a relief when we got to the dirt road that would eventually lead us to the final water cache.

Sunrise was delayed by the immense cloud cover today. It's kind of annoying, doing a lower mileage day on a perfect weather day. I was actually a little chilly for the first several hours!

But when sunrise did come, it was lovely.

From our water break, we opted to hike the dirt road into town instead of the official trail. Honestly, for anything I did last year, I don't feel bad being a little lazy. The road walk cut off a mile of hiking, and I remember the official trail being really boring with a lot of pointless climbs. Mitch's feet were bothering him, my hips were bothering me, so a shorter and easier route to town made sense.

We talked perhaps too much today about the milkshakes we were going to devour as soon as we got to McDonald's, and we made a beeline there as soon as we got to town. We probably ate 2000 calories for lunch. It was divine.

Shakes and fries for part 1 of our lunch before we got other food

Today, we met a ton of hikers at the Econolodge, where most of us stay because they offer CDT hikers an 11% discount (which seems like a weirdly specific number). Finally!!! Including three whole women!!! I'm excited to get to know people more coming out of Lordsburg.

I had a call with my physical therapist about my hips. He speculates that I am actually stretching too much -- I've been stretching before hiking, when getting to camp, and most breaks -- and that my brain is probably freaking out in me for being back out here. I'm usually not a fan of being told pain is in my head because that's such a classic dismissal of a woman's pain, but it's what I wanted and needed to hear tonight.

I can't wait to not set an alarm for tomorrow. I'm awake way later than sunset watching The Office. Our clothes have been laundered. I was able to scrub away all (at least most) of the sand, dust, sunscreen, sweat, and grime that were crusting my body.

And I got a Shamrock Shake at McDonald's.