Disorganized notes on the Continental Divide Trail, part 2: blisters and dust

Day 06: 22 April, 18.6 miles today, 102.1 miles total, Hornbrook Mountain, NM

As we left Lordsburg our packs were laden with food for the next four days and water for the next 15 miles and it felt like the end of the world. The weight becomes easier to bear as you walk, but the initial shock of the fully-loaded backpack never fails to produce a grunt of complaint from the hiker throwing it onto her back. And this would be far from our longest food and water carries before we were done with New Mexico.

But we were finally done with Lordsburg. The German hiker Caterpillar had shared his impression over dinner the night before that several of the houses along the wall into to town had housed meth labs. I don’t know precisely why he’d have been equipped to recognize them, but widespread methamphetamine abuse remains endemic to rural communities in the American Southwest, so sadly he was likely enough to have been right. And it would have gone some way toward explaining the town’s general off-color vibe—though to be very clear, every local I ever met in Lordsburg was nothing but nice to us, and as far as I could tell everyone still had all their teeth. But it was nonetheless good to be moving on.

We left town well before dawn, confident that could manage not to get lost on the three mile road walk out even if the sun wasn’t yet up. By the time we crossed yet another barbed wire fence the morning sky was bright and we could clearly see where we were going—though not the CDT itself. H (trail name pending) found a trail marker laying flat under a blanket of long-dried mud. We navigated using GPS to find where “trail” was, where it was going, and heading toward a fixed point in the distance in that general direction. We kept this up for an hour, until Sean Meadow discovered a line of more recent markers, and we followed that until we lost it.

The wind was rising steadily throughout the day, and when we stopped for a break just a couple of miles before entering the mountains between L’Burg and Silver City, we could see the telltale plume of a dust storm on the plain below. The wind was forecast to get worse throughout the day and into the night, so finding a way to get out of it became the focus of the rest of the day. But first we needed water.

We had come across a comment in the CDT water report that had described the area around a water tank we visited at the end of day 2 as being “cow hammered,” and we had spend the days since running with it. Most of southern New Mexico is, to varying degrees, covered in cow shit, so the opportunities to ply this delightful phrase were plentiful—it was typically more a question of who would use it first.

The ground surrounding the trough two-thirds full of green water, random unidentifiable particles, and dead bees was indeed cow hammered—though not nearly so much as the ground around the trough full of cold, clear water which we’d passed without stopping five miles back. The water was gross, but not so nasty we couldn’t filter it. The wind was worse than ever, but did do us the favor of driving off the alive bees that had troubled hikers who had come here before us. We tried to rest in the shade downhill from the trough, but the wind made it impossible. So we pushed on.

The dust was really getting out of hand as we came around a bend a got a good view of the valley running between the mountains—or would have done if the dust hadn’t been so thick. We kept going, passing a marker made out of stones, noting where the trail hit 100 miles. We were in a dust storm in some mountains in the

Idle of nowhere, but we’d walked 100 miles to do it. Now we just had to do the same thing 30 more times and we’d complete the CDT.

We managed to find a short, quarter mile stretch of trail mostly protected from the wind, where we made camp and bedded down, hoping for better weather in the morning. Wind like this is no joke: when we’d stopped for water and the wind still wasn’t nearly as strong as it was going to get, I had a moment while I was off in the bushes, peeing, my back to the wind as any boy who’s learned his lesson the hard way will orient himself instinctively. A sudden, violent gust came seemingly from all sides at once, and the stream of urine coming from my body exploded in a burst of wind. And when I saw it exploded, it exploded. It took me a moment to accept what had just happened, though I’d felt it instantly. When the bomb went off, I’d felt drops reach my eyelids and my cheeks. I had peed on my own face.

I was hopeful the next day would go a little bit more smoothly.

Day 07: 23 April, 18.3 miles today, 120.4 miles total, Big Burro Mountains, NM

The dust had finally cleared by the time we got going in the morning, though the wind was as pushy as ever. Apparently yesterday’s clouds of sand and grit had obscured the changing scenery as we walked into the mountains, as we awoke in an entirely different ecosystem than the one we’d been walking through—and which we’d gone to sleep thinking we were still in. Though there was still plenty of scrub brush, now there were also small, stunted pine trees all over the place. And now, instead walking across flat desert plains with no shelter, we were hiking though mountains, climbing up and down over forested ridges.

We even got some trail magic in the form of a can of soda each from a woman living the van life, following the CDT up and down, hiking at her leisure and giving treats to hikers. It was a nice boost, even though the cooler weather was honestly treat enough. As we said farewell to our trail angel and headed back out, we almost right away came to the intersection of the CDT and US 90 where we’d stopped so excitedly on our bike trek just two months earlier. We paused for a quick photo and then continued on. As I was getting my pack on I saw H (trail name pending) do the misstep shuffle out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t think much of it, since I know that usually happens to me at least once a day. It wasn’t until I had my pack on that I noticed she had sat down and was rubbing her ankle. It turned out to be a very minor sprain, and after walking on it for a couple of minutes she was right as rain; but it was still a sobering moment. It’s so easy to get hurt out here.

That afternoon we were coming to our first big climb of the trail, when another van camper approached us with Gatorade and a package of carrot cake cookie frosting sandwich which I’m having trouble describing but trust me they were amazing. It was more trail magic! Southern New Mexico was really spoiling us, but we were all happy to enjoy it while we had it. The guy was a recent triple-crowner (meaning he had thru-hiked the AT, the PCT, and the CDT) and he was in NM for Trail Days, an annual festival thrown by the CDTC in Silver City. We were going to miss the party by couple of days, but that was ok. We got to meet this guy and his two little dogs.

And then we climbed, hitting the peak and 8,000ft in the late afternoon. It was a real reminder that I hadn’t yet gotten my trail legs—and wouldn’t for a while, in fact. But the views on the way up were expansive—it seemed like we could see all the way back to Mexico—and we were rewarded on the northern side by a forested slope of full-sized pines and lots of shade. We had no idea how long it would last, but it was good to have gotten out of the blistering sun for at least a couple of days.

Day 08: 24 April, 22.3 miles today, 142.7 miles total, somewhere in cow country, NM

Today beat the hell out of me, and I’m not completely sure why. We did have our longest water carry so far at over twenty miles, but the weather was still relatively cooler than it had been in the first few days so we didn’t have to carry as much. Lots of ups and downs (some of them steep), but no sustained climbs. By the time we took our midday break, I felt completely done in even though we still had 10 miles left to walk. It was the first time on this walk I think I actually fell asleep during lunch.

I felt good about starting the afternoon’s hiking and things were going well until I felt burning, sharp pain in my right foot. I hadn’t noticed any running or hot spots; instead, a blister had abruptly sprouted on my sole without warning. It was several long minutes until I came upon a shaded rock where I could stop and investigate. Five minutes with a sterilized safety pin and a gel bandage and I was ready to walk again. Another 30 minutes and the pain was gone, I was walking normally, and I could return my focus to the other aches and pains in my legs and feet.

The last four and half miles oh the way were on the sandy bed of a dried out river. Sand is one of the worst things to walk on: it’s uneven, shifting constantly under your weight, and it absorbs the energy of your footsteps so that it takes more effort just to left your feet. I actually made fairly decent time through that area, but it was a such a slog it felt like I’d been walking the riverbed all day long.

When I finally reached the water source, an open cow trough on the other side of a barbed wire fence, I was too tired to do anything but sit in the shade for a while. Sean Meadow had been there long enough to filer all her own water, plus three liters for me. I don’t know that my humble “thank you” could possibly have conveyed the gratitude I felt.

I needed one more liter for the next day, so I shifted some things around to get at my water bladders, chatting idly with the lady half of an attractive Slavic couple who told me that they had walked 34 miles that day. I was flabbergasted, and too distracted to stop the guy half as he climbed through the barbed wire fence before watching me walk around the far side, just twenty feet further down. I didn’t understand the words he used when he realized what he’d done, but I have a pretty good idea what they meant.

After consulting with Sean Meadow, we figured out that the Attractive Slavic Couple had actually walked 34 kilometers—or roughly the same distance we had. I understood the confusion, however: when I walked the breadth of Spain on the Camino de Santiago I’d constantly been befuddled by the ongoing translation between miles and kilometers in my head. It’s a lot to ask to keep straight at the end of a long day.

We ended the day cowboy camping—i.e, sleeping on the ground outside without a tent (but using a ground sheet, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag)—just down the trail from the cow trough we were discouraged from camping next to, assuming that 500ft was probably far enough. I was just too sore and too tired to contemplate going any farther. The lowing of the cattle echoed continually off the surrounding mountains in a way that was almost soothing…but not quite. We lay down under the stars, hoping that an oblivious cow wouldn’t trample us in our sleep.

Day 09: 25 April, 15.1 miles today, 157.8 miles total, Silver City, NM

It took the cows several hours to quiet down after sunset, but eventually they settled in for the night and a deep silence lay over the valley. And then the temperature dropped. I’d been expecting it to be nippy, to be sure, but nonetheless warmer than it had been the last few night nights at higher elevations. I was wrong. I don’t know how cold it actually got, but I found ice crystals in my empty water bladder when I was packing up in the morning. The first words out of Sean Meadow’s mouth as we woke up to the chill of the starry-predawn sky were, “Fuck cowboy camping!” giving me reason to doubt the continued viability of my preferred method of bedding down at night.

Tenting definitely has it perks, chief among them the fact it retains a touch more heat than not tenting. I just like sleeping under the stars, and/or the peaks of surrounding mountains, and/or the trees, and/or the cacti or whatever. On top of that, both Sean Meadow and I had started to smell, um, not great—and tenting had a way of putting us face to face with this less well-advertised truth about thru-hiking: hikers stink. Like, badly.

You can go a few days without taking a shower; you can climb mountains and walk through the desert, sweating through everything you own, wearing the same clothes each day. You can do all these things and bounce back with a single shower and a load of laundry…until one day you can’t. There’s a point of no return where you and everything you own just smells horrible. It’s not BO, exactly. It’s not sweaty socks, either, nor is it unwashed ass or crotch or bad breath. It’s a unique perfume that hangs over every thru-hiker like a cloud and permeates all of their belongings. The way I used to describe it on the AT was “first, imagine a dead rat in an old gym sock…” but that doesn’t quite get it, either.

You can scrub yourself silly when you get to town and wash your clothes all day long, but you will still reek by the time you’re ten minutes up the trail. It’s embedded in your clothes, your gear, your self; and none of those things will ever smell quite the same/ It’s honestly hard to describe, but any veteran hiker (and any family member or friend who has ever met up with one during a hike) will recognize exactly what I’m talking about.

I had thought it would take us longer to develop our particular CDT hiker stench, but by the end of the first week, getting into the tent required special breathing exercises as our noses adjusted to the miasma we had ourselves created. Still, it was warmer than cowboy camping.

We were walking before the sun cleared the mountains, with Sean Meadow taking an early and commanding lead. We passed the tent of the Attractive Slavic Couple, who apparently “didn’t do road walking” and would be getting a ride into town, allowing them to sleep in while the rest of us walked.

The CDT takes a right (if you’re NOBO) onto hwy 180 and then just follows that for 13 miles into Silver City. Pavement punishes your feet in a way no other surface can quite match, and of course there is typically no shade of any kind on a road walk. It was a brutal way to end this stretch of trail, though not unexpected. We tried to get it over as early as possible, but I still didn’t make it in until noon. When I finally made it to the Triple Crown Hostel, I felt like I had known nothing in my life but walking on the side of the highway under the pitiless sun. But my life was about to change drastically for the better.

I was given a towel and directions to the shower, and stopped to examine the fridge with sodas for sale before heading to clean up. “How much are the beers?” I asked, noticing a bunch of craft pilsners in one of the trays. “Those were put there by a hiker; they’re not for sale,” I was told. “Oh,” I said, defeated. “What I mean is, those were left here by a hiker who’s already gone. They’re free.”

There is no creation in the works of human kind more sublime than the shower beer. Hot, steamy water, frothy soap suds, ice cold brew. I don’t know how long I stayed in that stall, but I left it a changed human, ready to take on the world, or maybe just take a nap. But in either case, the shower beer had done its noble work: I was clean, refreshed, and ready to let my battered feet heal for a day. We’d hit the local brewery a couple of times, and I’d hang outside for a portion of the “Monday night hiker jam” before heading to dinner. I was happy to noodle on the guitar and even sing an old Prine standard, but I was really happy to get to play percusssion on a couple of jazz tunes with the hostel owner blowing away on bass clarinet, even if it was just on the cajon. The trail provides, as they say, but I have yet to see it provide a full drum kit. Whatever; I’ll take what I can get out here.

Day 10: 26 April, 0.0 miles today, 157.8 miles total, Silver City, NM

Silver City, it turns out, is not necessary the bustling metropolis implied by its name—though it is very nice in most respects. At 0800hrs, Sean Meadow and I were ready to tackle all town chores, save for the fact that we couldn’t find a ride. The shuttle service advertised in the hostel didn’t answer the phone, nor were there any Uber or Lyft drivers working at that hour. That left us basically two options: we could walk the 2.5 miles uphill to the Walmart on the other side of town on our rest day, or we could grab a couple of the hostel’s available loaner bikes and ride.

We had not been feeling particularly nostalgic for this section of our cross-country bike trip, and yet we found ourselves peddling madly on ill-fitting bicycles in the same traffic we’d mentally (and occasionally vocally) cursed only two months prior. But the bikes got us where we needed to get, all supplies were purchased and packages mailed. And then it was finally time to really lean into the self-care portion of this day off from hiking. We soaked our feet, cleaned up our gear, and luxuriated in long, hot showers. We made plans to meet up with the group of guys still lagging behind us, who now seemed to be planning to take yet another day off once they got here, meaning we wouldn’t be hiking out with them in the morning as we’d planned. That was a problem for later, though. The only problem I was willing to face that afternoon was where we were going to go to eat next.