2004 April

It’s a cold morning, hard to get out of the sleeping bags. But when we do get up we pack quickly to stay warm, and head down sheep corral canyon. It’s still cold and cloudy when we stop for breakfast, but the sun comes out as we climb up our last ridge before the 1700-ft descent to the Gila River. It’s longer than we anticipated, and we stop for a lunch break halfway down. We had planned to retreat to the highway if the river is too high to cross, but I find myself hoping we don’t have to climb out of this canyon again right away.

The river bottom is a totally new environment. There are huge cottonwoods, juniper, and knotty white barkless tree we don’t know. Knobby volcanic rock walls rise up from the canyon floor. It isn’t long before we come to our first crossing.
It looks a little fast, but not too deep. We spend 20 minutes getting all our loose gear secured and water-ready. I start across. It takes a second to get my footing. I move carefully across, moving only one foot or pole at a time to keep the current from taking me. It gets to about thigh-deep on the far side, then I’m done. Ann follows suit. Of course the water is higher on her, she does it solidly.

Several more crossings follow. Most are easier, except one that is deep and fast enough to catch Ann’s pack, so I take it for her.

Around 5 pm we start looking for a hot spring that’s on our map. We ask two kayakers floating by a crossing - the only people we’ve seen since leaving Silver City - but they only know about one several miles upstream. I poke around the shore a bit though, and soon see steam rising.

There is one large pool that is unbearably hot. A few others dug nearby are only tepid. It’s frustrating, but we settle for a nice hot sponge bath. Then I find a spot where I can sit as the spring drains into the river and get a good mix. Feeling nice and mellowed out, we decide to camp here. It’s a Friday night party, complete with hot cocoa in bed.

When we finally reach Bear Creek, I sit down with the GPS to try to locate us in a known position on the map. It’s off again. Ann notices the bearing is off by about the same amount as the magnetic north offset here. Eventually I find a Heading setting in the GPS receiver that’s set to AUTO. When I set it to TRUE instead, for true north, the bearing is correct. Relieved that the problem seems to be fixed, we carry on.

We start crossing some rocky canyons after breakfast. After passing some private property the trail goes from ATV tread to a series of cairns. These start out easy to follow, but get tougher when the trail enters a forrested canyon.

We’re using Jonathan Ley’s maps, and he has a note that part of the trail climbing a ridge has become a bushwhack after the trail was destroyed by a burn. This section turns out to be choked with thornbushes and briars. Our progress is painfully slow, and even with good GPS readings I overshoot the trail on the other side. It’s dinner time when we finally reach it.

We finish dinner around 7 pm. The sun is setting. We quickly reach a nice place to camp, but we both feel energized to walk some more. We have an exhilarating traverse below Tadpole Ridge with our best views so far in the fading light. Just as night is falling we reach a saddle and pitch the tent. It’s been a low-mileage, but satisfying day.

We start slowly through town with our packs on. It’s a different feeling from the days before - we’re traveling now.

A ways up Little Walnut road a car pulls over to ask if we are CDT hikers. When we say yes two hikers jump out, pull out their maps, and start talking about our routes. Ronnie and John, aka Mother Nature’s Son, are using the Jim Wolfe guidebooks, which we haven’t seen. I’m a little embarrassed when I don’t know where Tadpole Ridge is, but we soon figure out that we’ll probably all be Doc Campbell’s on Saturday. John also has an online trail journal.

We soon enter the Gila National Forest. It feels welcoming to finally be somewhere where hikers are expected.

Things go smoothly until after our second lunch break. We continue along the main road we’ve been walking, but when it doesn’t ever make an expected turn we figure out we’re off our route. I can’t possibly describe all our efforts to recover. They involve difficult-to-read maps, uncertain GPS work, and unsigned forest roads. We reach one dead-end, go cross-country to another, give up, find another fork to try on our way down, and follow that for several uncertain miles. Again we nearly give up, but at last find a sign that assures us we’re headed back to our route. We’re both hoping mightily that we have an easier time with these maps in the days to come.

During this ordeal we get a brief rainshower that brings out marvelous smells. We’re in a forest of Juniper, Pinon, and Ponderosa that feels like a different world from our previous hiking. Water has been available frequently. If we can find our way, the hiking should be great!

Resting is getting harder. We have lots of energy and want to get out, but also keep Ann off her feet. I run some errands on my own while Ann elevates and ices her ankles. Later we go out together to put a patch on her sleeping pad and mail some boxes. She says her tendons feel better, but still not 100%. We have one more night of rest to give them.

Determined to sleep in, I’m wide awake at 7 am. Oh well.

Silver City is perfectly organized for hikers. Hotel, food, coffee, gear store, laundry, and post office are all a few blocks from each other. We have a casually busy day visiting these places. They straddle a deep arroyo that runs right through town called the Big Ditch. It used to be Main Street until a flood excavated it over a century ago. The rest of the town survived partially due to the sturdy brick construction that is the norm here. Silver City probably owes its existence more to the establishment of a brick factory here than than the short-lived silver boom that launched it.

We do our laundry along the strip east of the Big Ditch, once famous for brothels with names like “Millie’s”. We’re amused to see that “Millie’s” is now the name of a senior assisted living home next to the post office.

Ann’s feet are better, but she’s still getting some pain in her Achilles tendons. Tonight we’re elevating and icing them, with more of the same planned for tommorrow.

The heavy machinery up in the Tyrone mine worked all through the night. We’re glad we didn’t camp any closer.

Ann’s feet seem much better when we start walking past the big copper mine. The variety of colors in the huge tailing piles is amazing. We see cascades of water running down the rocks in spots, into pipes that emerge in a little plant at the base.

Highway walking is tough on the feet, and after breakfast Ann starts limping again. We take it slow and theorize about the type of people who wave from cars, and how they do it. One enthusiastic RV driver nearly dislocates his arm giving us the thumbs-up, which brightens our mood considerably.

The prospect of town makes us giddy at times, but depressed when it never seems to come. Ann especially isn’t used to this process, and hits the extreme highs and lows. Eventually we stumble into Silver City, and are thankful when the Palace Hotel has a room for us.

We’re now well fed and in a cozy room. We’ll have two full days of R&R here before launching off into the boonies again…

I wake up at sunrise, get dressed, and head back down the road for water. I find a full stock tank, but the spigot is under water, so I have to filter it. This is the first time we’ve had to filter water so far, by good fortune. It takes half an hour to finish two gallons, the filter working well, and I head back in a bath of morning sunshine - which unfortunately leaves me smelling no sweeter!

Ann’s tendons are still hurting when we start walking. She hobbles along until breakfast. We decide if we find more water we should stay there for a day of rest, then skip the part of the trail that makes adds 12 miles to go up Jack’s Peak. My knee is still a little painful too, so I could also use a rest.

When we continue, Ann discovers that loosening the tops of her boots provides some relief to her tendons. She figures that tying her boots too tightly - which she did to prevent blisters - caused the tendon problem. When we come to a windmill with water she’s feeling optimistic and ready to go for Jack’s Peak. I’m heartened, and on we go.

There’s a lot of private property on this stretch, and we learn what we can about the owners from their fencepost signs and their beer cans. Bud Light is still the winner it seems when it comes to flinging empties around on your property, but some owners in the area clearly prefer Keystone Light, with Natural Lite and Coors Light also making a showing. Some owners have custom No Tresspassing signs made with their ranch name on them, some use the premade plastic signs, some put up paper signs and let the rot off, and some have paragraphs of fine print to read. None invite CDT hikers to help themselves to water.

By the time we reach the turn to the peak, Ann is still hobbling pretty badly. We decide it would be foolish to try for the peak. Even skipping the peak, we have 16 miles of highway to walk to Silver City. With a last glance up at Jack’s, we start the other way.

We gimp our way four miles along highway 90 by bedtime, with a dinner stop in a big culvert (where I fling our pot lid halfway under the highway after setting our dishtowel on fire from the stove).

At 7:30 pm we start looking for a place to sleep near the Tyrone mine, trucks still rumbling away up on the tailings. We find a secluded spot behind some bushes and watch the stars come out.

It’s calm in the morning. We sleep in until 7:30, it feels so nice.

While we’re walking the fenced corridor we stopped at last night, a bunch of gorgeous horses run up on one side. They’re part of the ranch we’re passing, a tidy, attractive spread. Later a truck with a horse trailer pulls up to talk with us. Paula and Joey invite us to stop at their ranch ahead for water and even showers if we want, then they take off again. We’re amazed at their hospitality.

We stop at a tree for breakfast, the first one we’ve seen since Tuesday morning.

We stop again at Paula and Joey’s for water, and leave a thank-you note.

There’s another really idyllic ranch down the road, with a shiny windmill, huge shade trees, and no power lines. We’re getting to like these places, even though we know many of them probably don’t like us, or the trail. We’re dependent on them, and their cattle, for water. We can both spot a windmill now from miles away.

Body parts are starting to complain more loudly now. It’s hard to tell if pains are things that will strengthen and go away, or weaken and force us to stop. Today my knee hurts, and Ann has trouble with her Achilles tendon.

We finish the day by walking too far because of another incorrect description in the guide book. In the morning I’ll have to backtrack a mile to get water for our next twenty miles.

Our bed is the continental divide tonight, with views of distant mountains and towns spread out before us. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be with my wife on our honeymoon.

The first half of our day is spent looking for roads that aren’t there. We even go to a GPS coordinate - nothing but fences and cows. Either things have changed since the guidebook author hiked this segment, or he was subject to vivid hallucinations. The searching causes us some aggravation, but once we give up and just head for Separ cross-country, we’re fine. We get more practice crossing barbed-wire fences, hoping we’re still on public land.

By the time we reach Separ it’s getting really windy, and the horizon is obscured by a giant dust cloud. At the Continental Divide Trading Post we encounter the first people since we started, Howard and Judy Carey. They have ridden their tandem mountain bike up from San Diego, and are now headed north up the continental divide bike route. We exchange some quick stories, then wish them luck as they ride off into the wind.

We stay to eat some sugar and make some calls before we follow them. The wind is crazy, but it’s mostly behind us. so the flying dust isn’t too uncomfortable. We walk on a dirt road, buffeted by winds, watching the strange spectacle of dust storms around us.

We take refuge and make dinner at a stock tank. It provides some shelter from the wind, but we get splashed by water blowing over the edge.

Another short windy walk and we come to a section of road with fence on both sides, so we decide to camp. There are no sheltered spots, so we walk off a ways and find the best place we can for the tent. The wind seems to be dying down now, so we may have a peaceful night.

We tried a food experiment last night - soaking macaroni and beans to see if they’d rehydrate without cooking. This morning after four miles of ancient roads and bushwacks it sounds good, so we have it for breakfast. Ann is amazed to be eating such fare, but even more amazed to be liking it! We both change our tune climbing up a hill later, when we get macaroni burps. So maybe there’s a reason people don’t eat cold macaroni for breakfast!

A little after noon we reach the food cache at hiway 9. I manage to get a digital signal on the cell phone and send off some posts, but it takes forever. I may have to go easier on the photos in the future.

Weighted down with five days of food and 2 1/2 gallons of water, we trudge north from NM9. It’s the strangest cross-country hiking I’ve done. We walk for hours in an unchanging sea of dust and creosote bushes. After dinner Ann is ready to camp, but we decide we should push a little further towards the next water. During this leg we talk over the coming days, and decide we have a good chance of making our hotel date in Silver City on the 27th. This lifts our spirits, just as we emerge from the creosote sea under a glowing orange sunset. Life is good.