Day 82

Day 82: 23 miles

I was pretty stressed out about these damn trekking poles cause I wasn’t gonna go into the gila without them. I thought I was gonna have to take a zero day to wait for the small gear shops to open tomorrow. I went to check Walmart as my last hope for finding some and they were out. Conveniently, I ran into a guy that’s gonna be starting the trail in a few weeks and he said he had an extra pair of trekking poles. Hallelujah the trail provides. I got those and a new water filter from Walmart and was ready to begin the Gila alternate. This is an alternate route from the main CDT that 90% of hikers take because it is a great section.

For about the next week I’ll be following a fairly non existent trail going up the gila river. There will be about 50 river crossings and navigation will slow me down. It will be slower going but I just hear too many good things to pass on it. There will also be a pretty long food carry.

I started the alternate route today and was lost before I even started. I began taking the wrong trail and realized it about 20 minutes later so I cut across to connect to the correct one. This would become a theme. Later in the day there was a section of trail that was completely ruined by a big fire and there was no inkling of where to go. I bushwhacked up and down mountains while constantly running through sharp tree branches like it was the tire drill in football. I was amazed my shirt didn’t rip. But I was covered in ash. There were a few times I got pretty far off where I was supposed to be and had to scale a steep mountain side. I was so unique in getting lost I am confident there were numerous times today that nobody else had ever taken the route I did.

Then toward the end of the day, as I lost the trail again, this side of the mountain was covered in pretty deep snow. So it was fun trying to scale down the steep side of a mountain covered in snow where there really is no trail to follow, just a general idea of the direction to go.

I can’t complain too much though. My short time in the gila has already been extremely beautiful.

Song of the day: lithium-nirvana