5/11 - Day 12: 108 miles until Pie Town (due to the mileage of the alternates, it’s hard to keep track of how many miles from Mexico we are)

We woke up on the porch at Doc Campbell’s. The water here is sourced from the hot springs, which means everything is warm, including the toilet seats. It’s pleasant and comforting, we enjoy one last trip before packing out. The proprietors say they have trouble thinking of ways to cool water, and their showers will run out of cold water from time to time. That explains the bucket of ice they plopped into the water cooler for us to use overnight.

We start the road walk on Highway 15 out of Doc Campbell’s in the morning. Our packs are so heavy with six full days of food. We make our way to the Gila Cliff Dwellers visitor center, where we fill up water, and make our way down the road to the actual cliff dwellings. We are still undecided wether to take the high route or the low route, and thunderstorms are expected in the afternoon. Instead of making a decision we kill time we don’t have walking to the cliff dwellings, plunking down $10 each to go walk through these 700-year old caves. Some rooms even had petrified corn inside.

I’m very glad we took this detour, but now we have to walk back to the trail. We remain indecisive even at the first junction. It’s Saturday, so day hikers pass by us, most looking unprepared as black clouds form above. We hear the first rumblings of thunder. We decide to go on the high route to make up miles faster, rather than deal with fording a swelling river in the canyon below. We set off on a fevered pace, but I think the rain only lasts 10 minutes or so. I thought it was maybe an hour.

The afternoon clears up a bit, but it’s cold. The climbing helps. We sit for lunch right before the first water on the high route, hoping to avoid the afternoon showers.

When we get to the water source, the creek is completely dry. At the next junction, our fate is decided for us (everyone out of water, massive river in canyon below) and we descend into the lower Gila route, after enjoying a sublime view of the canyon.

When we make our way down, the rain clears again and the entire forest shimmers with dew and afternoon light peeping through clouds. It looks magical, we are in awe for the first few crossings.

The sun stays with us the rest of the day as we plod across the river, back and forth, finding and losing trail.

We finally settle on a gorgeous tent site after a few missed ones. Even though we didn’t cover as many miles today as we had hoped, the timing actually works out pretty well for Pie Town, our next town stop where we have a box waiting.

5/12 - Day 13: 86 miles until Pie Town

We woke up early to a very cold morning. We put back on our cold, wet shoes and made our way back down to the river where we had about 16 miles left of river crossings to complete today until the Gila River section was done. The actual river trail was more or less more of the same - we saw some cool underwater and cliff caves, pretty wildflowers, and walked through a few nice meadows. The canyon opened up a bit more today which was nice. We also walked through a thunderstorm in the late afternoon.

When we finished the river section we made our way to Snow Lake, which was a man made boating lake. When we came upon it, it looked otherworldly especially against the dark storming clouds above. It was really cold up there! We made a bee-line to the bathroom structures where we sought some shelter from the storm and the cold.

A man in a camper van approached Radio and Dan, offering us root beers, real beer, and Yoo-Hoo. The cold root beer tasted delicious even though my hands were turning numb from the cold.

We sat by the bathrooms and ate lunch and tried to warm up a bit - I put on every layer I had with me. We then walked out of the lake campground to try and bust out another 6 miles.

We followed a really picturesque creek for most of those miles, a stark contrast from the golden hills above. It was really beautiful. We were hoping to camp at the pond, the last reliable water for about 20 miles, but when we got there, there weren’t any good campsites. Radio went ahead to scope out what was down the trail and he reported back that he found some great tent sites. We loaded up on water and made our way up the very steep trail. I was already struggling with the heavy pack when Dan started going off on a hilarious story. I straight up could not breathe, wheezing and having a full on panic attack. I begged him not to talk until we got to the tentsites because laughter was just too painful.

We got up to some tentsites on a rarely used Jeep road and you could see for miles - it was stunning. We ran around taking photos and soaking in the view - really wonderful tentsites.

5/13 - Day 14: 355 miles from Mexico, according to the official CDT trail. The Gila River alternate we took cut off some miles, but we still did 27 miles today - our first big day.

We woke up from our beautiful campsite to find it covered in frost. It was hard to get out of bed but we did pretty well considering the freezing temperatures!

Today involved an almost 22 mile road walk along gravel forest service roads. We saw some snow early in the morning, and the road was pretty well traveled for being a forest service road. We ran into some wild land firefighters as well, the Gila Hot Shots.

We had a long water carry to another cow trough - the cows were pretty noisy today, mooing and bellowing at us, but mostly leaving us alone. There were a lot of cute rambunctious calves running around as well. When we got up to leave, one of the bellowing cows started fighting another bull, and we witnessed a full on cow fight. It was pretty wild. Luckily, Dan got some pretty good footage.

The rest of the day went a bit slower than our quick 12 miles out the gate, but the road travel was pretty easy going. We hit a climb at the end of it, stopping for a break at one of the last springs. My feet were starting to ache at this point, about 23 miles into the day. The only downside was that the next four miles were all going to be over 9,000 elevation, and we didn’t want to risk being freezing cold again. We ended up pushing on just over four miles to reach the closest saddle and camped at 8,300 feet.

We were all burnt out from a hard day - the very last climb was especially rough over logging terrain. But we had a beautiful sunset and dinner party to make up for it. Overnight, we watched a far off lightning storm light up the sky.

5/14 - Day 15: 377 miles from Mexico

We woke up to a beautiful, sunny morning at our campsite, which was a nice surprise.

We packed out and headed towards the first (and one of two) water sources for the day, which ended up being a muddy pond. Both Dan and Wonder Woman don’t have filters (using chemical treatment) so we helped filter some of the muck out of everyone’s water, and my Sawyer definitely got plugged up from all the filtering.

We had a pretty long day again today (25 miles) and most of it was over a nice ridge line - lots of climbing, but lots of views. I was plugged into music for most of today and really jamming out, which helped the miles go by quicker. Radio has been having some ankle tendon pain, so we taped him up with my KT tape and I think that helped a lot.

We ran into Driver and Backtrack today, at the next water source which was a cow trough (with goldfish swimming in it!). It was crazy hot at the water source, and I couldn’t drink my filtered goldfish water fast enough.

We had another dirt road climb until the end of the day, and got rained on, and we camped in a meadow with another muddy pond that night.

5/15 - Day 16

I am so bored I want to scream. I lock eyes with the millionth cow I’ve seen on trail and think, come at me, bro. At least it would be interesting. We have about 20 miles of dirt road to walk through the same pine forested landscape today. The 4x4 road is bumpy, so bumpy we need to keep our eyes trained on the next step. We are moving fast and when I bring my eyes up, I’m dizzy and trail sick from taking the same damn steps over and over again and the tunnel vision of my hat, like trying to read a book in a moving car.

To pass the time I’m listening to every song on my phone, limited skips, in order of artist. I’ve been doing this for three days now and I’m partway through Taylor Swift’s Red when the road turns nice and even as far as my eyes can see. I try playing a game where I try to walk with my eyes closed for an entire song. I drift along the dirt road but don’t trip. When I open my eyes I pray something looks different, but it doesn’t.

The goal for the day is to make it to Davila Ranch, a rest stop constructed by a rancher in the area with a makeshift kitchen, fridge full of food, showers and laundry. Everything is on a donation based system and John, the rancher, is funny and disarming.

Radio tells John how he saw his neighbor, another rancher, drive by in his flat bed with a Bud Light in between his knees and a shotgun and dog in the front seat. Cute dog, says Radio. That dogs dumber’n mine, replies John. And my dog needs shootin’.

Wonder Woman and I man the kitchen - chopping up potatoes and onions for a hash, grilling up some ground beef in the fridge (from one of Johns steers - he is a cattle rancher) and finally scrambling some eggs and reheating beans. Hiker scramble, for everyone posted up at the ranch. There are three other hikers here - Driver, Armstrong, and Boot Scoot, and we couldn’t have made enough food. We throw in a load of laundry and settle in around the WiFi and keg of Budweiser.

 5/16 - Day 17 - Pie Town, mile 425 of the official CDT route

We grill up some bacon and eggs at Davila before heading out on a 13 mile dirt road walk to Pie Town, where we stay at the Toaster House hostel and eat pie from two different restaurants. 

Morning Glory’s dad Scott whipped up some trail magic dinner - Thai lettuce cups - out of their Sprinter van which was amazing. We hung out with the other hikers and a very friendly, flea-ridden cat.​