Captain Scoot & Pooh's YOLO adventures: CDT: Gila River alternate

The Gila River alternate is a stunning canyon trail that is 106 miles long. There is so much beauty in the canyon, we decided to do a post about it.

The Gila River is a major tributary of the Colorado River. It begins in New Mexico and runs to Yuma, Arizona. It is 630 miles long.

The alternate trail is a favorite of many CDT hikers because of the beauty of the canyon.

For the most part, the trail is straight forward and easy enough to follow. However, there are plenty of sections where you lose the trail and have to bushwhack. Bushwhacking is tiring and losing the trail is frustrating. The rule of thumb is to follow the river. If you lose the trail, eventually you will find it again by following the river.

Here it's easy to see the trail

The biggest challenge on this route is water crossings. We've heard the crossings number between 100 - 200. Pooh thought this sounded like a challenge and decided to count the number of times we crossed water. It wasn't 100 or 200. It was 318! One day we crossed the water 120 times.

The water varied in depth. This was a low snow year and we believe we got lucky because the deepest crossing was mid-thigh for Pooh and just above the knees for Captain Scoot. We've read that some crossings can be up to your chest.

With so much time spent in the water, it's impossible to keep your socks and shoes dry. Every time we stopped for a break or meal we took off our socks and shoes. Even with the abundance of water, the air is very dry. Laying our socks and shoes in the sun dried them out a bit while we were resting or eating.

At night, we hung them on a tree branch.

The canyon isn't just about water. There is plenty of wildlife here. We saw two bears, several snakes, and countless ducks.

The beauty of the canyon comes from the walls and rocks. Sometimes it was difficult to enjoy because we were so focused on the water or finding the trail. We would stop occasionally just to look around or look up.