We started with a three mile road walk out of Lordsburg. Our plan was to hitchhike to the trailhead and avoid the road walk. We made a sign and hit the road. At first we didn't have much luck, but about halfway to the trailhead a car pulled up and offered us a ride. Our first trail angel! Thanks Marteen! We gladly accepted. Any time we can cut road walking out, we will.
This last day in the desert was awful. It was hot, cloudless and dusty. As you can see in the picture, there was very little vegetation. Good riddance desert hiking!
On the first day of this section, we hit the 100 mile mark! Only 3,000 left!
As the miles wore on, our surroundings changed and we started gaining elevation. The trail was a series of small climbs and descents. Part of the trail was on a jeep road. Then the trail turned into a well designated path.
We summitted our first peak on the third day of this section. Burro Peak elevation 8,020 ft.
On the first day of this section, we hit the 100 mile mark! Only 3,000 left!
We summitted our first peak on the third day of this section. Burro Peak elevation 8,020 ft.
To help with the desert heat, we used hiking umbrellas. Unfortunately, on the way down from Burro Peak, Pooh lost her umbrella. We posted a lost and found snippet in FarOut and hoped for the best. As luck would have it, someone found it! Thanks Joja for carrying my umbrella!
People come from all over to hike the CDT. One of the experiences we were looking forward to was meeting other hikers. On this stretch of trail we met several hikers and one night we camped with a few other hikers. A good portion of the hikers are from other countries. So far we have met two hikers from Switzerland and one from Italy.
As mentioned above, this section ended in a beautiful canyon. After walking through the canyon, the trail turns into a 12 mile road walk into Silver City. No thank you! We made a sign for hitching and before we were even out of the canyon trailhead parking lot, we snagged a ride. Thanks Winnie! Winnie's nephew and his girlfriend were two of the hikers we had recently met.
Water sources were scarce in this section. Thankfully there is a network of trail angels who cached water along the trail. We met one of the angels, BB, while on a lunch stop. He also gave us some tangerines.
We slowed our pace considerably in the second section. In the first section, we'd done three 17-mile days in a row — not the plan, but cool and overcast days in the desert are not to be squandered. The original strategy had been to hike until midday, find whatever shade was available, siesta, then push on once the sun dropped lower in the sky. The weather let us skip all that and hike straight through what would normally be the strongest sun of the day.
Our original plan was to hike between 12 and 15 miles a day for the first month. This was to get our bodies accustomed to hiking 8 hours a day with 30 to 35 pounds of gear on our backs. Most of the people who have to quit their hike early do so in New Mexico with overuse injuries — sprains, stress fractures, soft tissue injuries, and the like. We planned to avoid this fate by starting slow and letting our bodies adapt before we picked up the pace. In order to finish the hike by mid-September, we need to average 18 miles per day. This doesn't include zero days — days spent resupplying in town. We also have two additional weeks of contingency built into our schedule so that if one of us does have a minor injury, we can take a few days off the trail and nurse it back to health.
To prepare for the hike, Pooh would walk at least 5 miles every day and do some stair work. She also swam laps to build her cardio. Captain Scoot does long cycle rides in the summer and is a Nordic skier in the winter. He was also walking 4 or 5 miles a day in the leadup to our departure.
To complicate our situation, we both had injuries that slowed our training. Pooh was diagnosed with melanoma at the end of February and the doctor immediately got her in for surgery. Two moles were removed — one on her ankle and one on her arm. The one on her ankle required an eight-inch incision, and the doctor ordered her off that ankle for the first two weeks of March, right before our departure. In addition, she has to wear a compression bandage for a couple of months after the stitches came out to ensure it heals properly. Pooh was unable to train for most of March.
It's worth pausing on that for a moment. Getting that kind of news two months before a major hike is a lot to absorb — and yet she handled it, got through surgery, and showed up at the southern terminus ready to walk to Canada. That demonstrates about who Pooh is and how much she is committed to the hike.
Captain Scoot had his own challenges, not nearly as dramatic. In November he had a prednisone injection for stenosis in his lower back, where a disc was pushing against a spinal nerve and causing pain down his right leg. The shot cleared it up, though it comes back in a minor way from time to time. On top of that, he was dealing with plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, or both, and spent most of March trying to calm those injuries down. The first day of the hike he was in pretty intense pain — but as these things go, the pain ebbed overnight to something minor, and by the second week it was almost entirely gone. He's been fighting these tendon and fascia issues for 20 years. He knew how this would go.
There really is no substitute for walking 8 hours a day with 30 to 35 pounds of gear on your back. The only way to really get in shape for this is to do it.
Needless to say, neither Pooh nor Captain Scoot started the hike in the kind of physical shape we had hoped for. We both had solid bases and feel confident we can finish. But we would have liked to have started a little more physically prepared. We had planned for this contingency — we just assumed it would happen on the trail, not the month before.
Here's the video for this segment...enjoy!
Days hike this section: 5
Total days hiked: 11
Miles hike this section: 77
Total miles: 163
Fun to hear how it's going! Congrats on the progress you've made so far; keep up the great hiking 😊
ReplyDeleteI love seeing how the landscape is changing as you head north. Glad you are done with the desert section!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work, we are rooting for you guys 💕