CDT + GDT: Mexican Border to Lordsburg – A Land Without Shadows

Resupply 1 | Mexican Border to Lordsburg

Day 1, 26.6 miles.

End of day one. No matter if you’ve thru hiked before, day one is always exciting and nerve wracking. Part of it this time for me is I know how unavailable I’ll be for six months, since I’ve been through it once before. I felt like I was shutting down my life, like I have to prepare to be dead to the world in order to be fully alive to myself. When I hiked the PCT, I shared stories and photos to a certain extent, but I mostly wanted to keep the experience for myself. Same with the Colorado Trail, which was an intensely personal period of healing that I wasn’t ready to share until only recently.

But this trail, I want people to know about this attempt and hopefully others will try to follow on this route. It’s just harder than I thought to get all this sharing done, like I’m working a job producing content while working another job of hiking all day and also being my own social media and communications manager. A learning process.

Started at the border today at 10am. I tried to sleep on the shuttle (which made me very antisocial) because I really had only had maybe 2.5 hrs’ sleep on the overnight bus. As we drove I could see the flat, shadeless landscape out the window: I know this will be my least favorite section. At the Mexican border our two shuttles dropped off maybe 12-15 hikers who all did our rounds of terminus photos. I read the English translation of my father’s send off speech for myself on video, at the terminus.

I got started at a good pace, 3.6 – 3.9 mph, but quickly this fell to 3.2 and then 3.0 by the time the midday heat set in. I was also walking through a lot of loose wash, with little to no shade and a lot of flash flood debris. It wasn’t easy cruising, despite being flat.

By mile 9 I was rationing my water and taking a big gulp of water in my mouth and holding it there, swishing it around and swallowing only a little at a time so that I could trick my brain into thinking I was drinking a lot of water. I muscled my way through five more miles to the first water cache, including some running. I realized at the cache that my electrolytes had fallen out of my pack while I was running. A trail angel who was shuttling hikers to the border stopped and gifted me a cold Gatorade, and I decided to wait for the next hikers to arrive in case they found my electrolytes (they had! So I’m set).

Then I set off again, around 4:30pm now that the heat had started to dissipate. It was still quite warm and by this point the adrenaline of starting the hike was wearing off and my drowsiness was settling in again. I stopped to take two dirt naps. I only started hiking in earnest again probably around 6:30pm.

Part of me was really really wanting to just stop for the day and sleep, and I was questioning if I had made the right decision to leave my job and do this. Hadn’t I already done this once before? Why was I here?

Fortunately I had cell service briefly and checked my messages – seeing all the love from friends & strangers made me decide to continue. I did 13 miles after the cache at mile 14 and stopped at around 9pm at the water cache. Was too tired to even soak water for dinner so I just ate as many snacks as I could stomach, a bag of tuna, and went to bed. Cowboy camped under the stars tonight and feeling grateful again.

Day 2, 24.2 miles.

Theme of the day is trying to figure out how to adapt to desert hiking. You’d think I would have already done it once, having hiked the desert section of the PCT – but my year, there was plenty of water and I was early season and had mostly reasonable temps.

I tried adopting the afternoon siesta strategy that many hikers swear by, but turns out this is not a good strategy (for me at least) to get enough miles in per day. I just don’t rest enough in the afternoon to be able to make up the five hours I’m stopped for in the afternoon. I also felt quite restless like I was losing all the work I’d put in before by just being stopped for so long. I tried to nap, but it was difficult with the heat and the wind blowing loose dirt in my face and the hikers showing up over the course of the afternoon.

It wasn’t bad though in the sense that the morning had brought a lot of hip pain for me, and the afternoon rest fixed it. The highlights for me were getting to see a lot of birds come through the oasis, and seeing a tiny bat hanging in a tree, sleeping. Once I started moving again at 5pm (I’d arrived to the oasis at noon), I tried to hike until about 10 or 11pm, but was quite tired by that point.

I kept losing the trail since the reflective signs disappeared at one point on the trail, and the slight indent of dirt that indicates the trail was difficult to spot with the bright and direct light of my tiny headlamp flashlight. Decided to call it at that point since I was no longer hiking efficiently – I felt my time would be best used asleep.

Notably, this is an attitude I would be well served to apply in my normal life: sometimes if you realize the marginal gains aren’t worth it anymore, stop and go to bed. You don’t have to do it all today.

Today I started getting to know some of the other hikers I’ve been leapfrogging, which was nice. I didn’t expect to have that on this trail. Trying to adapt to heat and the conditions in this section is hard, but I’m also grateful for the chance to be in a new place that my body has to learn to adapt to. What a privilege that is, to migrate beyond your natural ecosystem.

Day 3, 27.6 miles.

I’m only 80 miles in and already I’m noticing things I want to change with my gear. Testing it in a stable environment is just not the same as actually using it. Also, today I started to see the famously disgusting CDT water sources. Luckily I didn’t have to source my water from any of the worst sources (so much algae growing in the tire wells!).

It’s only day 3 and already I’m feeling very much like I’m deep in thru hiker territory; I have sunburns, chafing, a couple blisters, and sunscreen / sweat / salt / dirt seasoning my legs.

I’ll get into Lordsburg tomorrow, but I don’t feel motivated to find a shower, since I think I’ll get in early and leave the same day. Why take a shower to be clean for an hour? Didn’t wake up as early as I would have liked, which is just as well because I think I did need the sleep. I pushed through the hot part of the day today, and that actually worked ok. There was more of a breeze today that kept it manageable, but the heat was oppressive once the breeze was gone. It was very exposed today, scene after scene after endless chaparral, though we did have more texture like some elevation and occasionally lava rocks (?).
One thing I think is cool about the CDT is that it’s often not someone’s first thru hike. So there’s less of that “freshman year” feeling that there was on the PCT. In fact, many hikers have done the PCT. So I could reference, today, how the day reminded me of Hat Creek, and the other hiker under the tree would nod in agreement. It’s nice not to have to explain things like that.

Nutritionally I think I’m not eating snacks as frequently as I need to be? Otherwise I think I’m managing well. Feet hurt but that’s to be expected. All joints are otherwise working well so far; I’m quite pleased.

Day 4, 8.4 miles into Lordsburg.

I’m still too tired to manage to get up early after hiking till late into the evening. Yesterday night I had to stop where I did because my headlamp died. I switched to a tiny Rovyvon flashlight and it doesn’t hold as much battery.
Started this morning around 6:30am and had breakfast at the water cache about 1.6 miles north. At the cache I met Riveter, Jedi, and Jinx again whom I’ve been leapfrogging all of the last stretch. Jedi and Jinx are siblings (Riveter is Jedi’s partner) from Wyoming, and their father who passed away in 2014 had the CDT on his bucket list . I loved this story.
Every walk into town I always start to have some consistent cell service so I was heads down while walking responding to things. I didn’t realize then that my soft flask water bottle had fallen out of my pack. When I went back for it, it had been run over. Oops. Immediately went to the grocery store to look for an outlet to charge my things while I shopped, since this is the “long pole in the tent” for the time I need to spend in town.

A hiker (Bam) at checkout recognized me (!) and offered that I could charge my things at her hotel room which she shared with another hiker, Care Bear. This is such a kind offer. I even took a shower, which I was not expecting.

I topped up my resupply (I had a day and a half worth of food left) and decanted everything and washed some things and ate: a jar of pickles, a bottle of chocolate milk, a bunch of grapes, a bag of carrots, a bag of cubed ham, a box of strawberries, a mango juice, a small Gatorade, and a salad that I didn’t finish and gave away to an injured hiker.

I’m now on the roadwalk out of Lordsburg trying to wrap up all the “computer things” I need to do while I have service. Soaked my sun hoody in the sink before I left the Econolodge lobby hoping for some relief on the 3 mile roadwalk, but I was nearly dry before I even left the town’s edge. Will try to hike another 6 hours into the evening.