Quickdraw’s final trail magic and a walk with him, Swampy and Bird
On the Bonita-Zuni alt (blue line)
The magic of the trail is full of us – thanks Quickdraw!
One of the few places without lava!
The next morning we entered the famous Malpais (“bad country”), a landscape of lava fields. It was surprising how many trees and bushes grew among the hardened lava, and it was beautiful. The hike was quite slow – FarOut’s comments were right. I even fell into one of the lava cracks and scraped my knee up pretty badly. Note to self: take plenty of time for this section!
We had to cross cracks like this!
The Malpais
Quemado turned out to be much less of a town than we expected; We were really looking forward to a meal in town, but there were no restaurants open (most were permanently closed and one was in transition of ownership). After a while, we found a hitch to Pie Town, which was not my favorite hitch, as we were in the bed of a pickup truck that was going pretty fast down the road. Wow, the options were limited. But it wasn’t long before we arrived in Pie Town!!
The meeting place
We were pretty hungry, so we ate and picked up our package at Gatherin’ Place right when we got into town. We love all the green chile food in New Mexico!
The toaster house
We spent the night at Toaster House with a few other hikers and a handful of Great Divide riders from Australia and Europe. We had a lot of fun meeting a female cyclist who was very happy to finally interact with other women after weeks on the male-dominated cycle route.
Only a few days left until we meet Cookie Monster’s parents at Doc’s to celebrate his birthday! That meant there was time to speed up the first part of the Gila as best we could. At first it was quite crunchy. We also met up with our friend Butter who we went to college with! It was so nice to see it. The last time we saw him was near Monarch Pass and we weren’t sure we’d be able to hike him again. It was definitely a morale booster walking with him! We also got to see Stripes in this section, who we met for the first time on our first day on the trail.
We had some pretty tough conditions on this section, including very hot hikes and some pretty questionable water sources that were definitely cow water.
We had to go through cow pens to get to this tap.
At Snow Lake, we had our coldest morning on the trail yet. My guess was that he was in his teens. We had been pretty good about not eating in our tent up until this point, but we couldn’t stand the cold this morning!
Cold breakfast in a tent
The cold morning was not only difficult because it was hard to get up and do it… it was also an unexpected challenge because we had planned to draw water from the tap set up at the campsite, but the tap had frozen overnight and showed no signs of thawing anytime soon. There was a huge lake, but we had heard/read comments about it being very polluted/full of dead animals… so we opted to hold on until we crossed a tributary of the middle fork of the Gila.
The first part of the Gila (air and water) was also very cold in the morning, but we avoided wet feet for the first dozen stream crossings, until it got warmer around noon. We were expecting a nasty, messy burn zone, but it looked like the fire hadn’t killed many trees, mostly just charred the outside a bit. It was a pleasant surprise, as was the fall foliage we were still seeing so late and so far south!
We saw/heard javelinas several times, got our feet very wet and enjoyed some truly extraordinary scenery. This section was so different than anything we had encountered before, at the CDT or anywhere else! We also made sure to appreciate all the trees and access to nice water before it all disappeared…
On our second day in Gila, we met up with Pedi and Frizz. With all the strange routes we had been taking, we had been able to see a lot of people we hadn’t seen in a long time! Cookie Monster and I jumped with them all morning, and we all enjoyed some hot springs together near the trail. The warm water felt amazing after splashing around in the almost freezing water in the frigid morning air temperature!
Cookie Monster and I took another spontaneous alternate route through the Upper Gila Route, at one of the many places where it crossed the lower (river) route. We were mostly curious and felt like we could save a few dozen more water crossings.
Late in the afternoon, we walked to the small town surrounding Doc Campbell’s, where we had planned to meet Cookie Monster’s parents. Our timing was almost perfect as they arrived at our Airbnb moments after us!
We had an amazing time with Cookie Monster’s family celebrating Halloween and Cookie Monster’s birthday! We were able to explore some of the cliff dwellings, took his parents on a short stretch of the trail to experience the river crossings, and enjoyed the hot springs. Back at our Airbnb, we also carved pumpkins, did some Halloween crafts, and ate lots of delicious food and birthday cake.
We are so grateful to have been able to spend this double zero resting, celebrating our beloved Cookie Monster’s birthday, and hanging out with his wonderful parents!
Now to Silver City! We were both excited to get back on the trail again, but now we were in a strange place among groups of other hikers. Wanting to finish the trail with others, we decided to take our time getting to Silver City and wait for other hikers there.
The Gila south of Doc’s was calmer than before (more light, more open canyon) but still beautiful! But we ran into some problems there. When I pulled out the stove to make dinner the night after leaving Doc’s house, I realized we didn’t have a stove. Turns out it got mixed in with the stuff we sent to Cookie Monster’s family, so we were left soaked in the cold for a couple of days!
The other unfortunate thing was that I started getting hot spots in my shoes for the first time in the entire CDT! They had worn down quite a bit where they touched my Achilles tendon (pictured below), I think from all the sand and grit that got into them in the Gila. It was very painful, but luckily I was able to bring the worn stains on my shoes back to life with Leukotape, at least for the most part!
The section leading into Silver City was really impressive! Apparently a lot of people choose to walk along the road to get to town faster, but I’m glad we didn’t skip this area. There were many cool rock formations, although smaller than some on the Gila, and many trees. We enjoyed the abundant shade for the last time on the trail…
Once we almost reached Silver City, we found some much appreciated refreshments and a water tank! While we were refueling and stopping for a break, the kind person responsible for the cache came to refill it. It’s rare to be able to thank these people in person! He also generously offered to drive Cookie Monster and me into town, which we did to avoid having to walk down the road for the last stretch.
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