North of SILVER CITY, NM
I’m in the land of cairns
Got a bit of a late start this morning and hit the street. After a while it seemed I was heading back into town. I missed the turn to go north. I’m not even out of town and already lost!
I decided to take it easy and cut off a few miles going up Little Walnut road. After about 7 miles walking the road I came to the Little Walnut picnic area where I had breakfast and took advantage of a clean privy.
I took the Wagon Wheel trail up to 506, a dirt road, and headed west. I came to a point on the Jon Ley map where it says to look for a turn. I missed it several times before I found what I think was the right turn. It seemed fine until it came to a dead end. Heck!
I pulled up my CDT Hiker app and it said the trail was uphill north. I bushwacked through some steep and thorny stuff, climbed over a fence, and found the dirt road. I really don’t know what happened there.
From there I was following dirt road until I came to a point where I needed to take a left turn north. Wouldn’t you know, there was a CDT marker there. HeHo!
I following a canyon north until I reached an area of lava where there was no trail tread. But there were cairns; lots of them. These are stacks of stones that are obviously man made when you see them. They show you where the trail goes. It made navigation easy.
About 6:30 pm I spotted some tents on the trail. Thru-hikers Seth and Jenny were in one and Race was in another. They had taken my same routetoday. I moved a bit further up the hill and found a nice camp spot.
Just before I got in the tent I washed up with a weak solution of bleach. I then put the bottle in my tent without screwing the lid on tight and had to mop it up. Heck!
About 20 miles today. Tomorrow I will get my feet wet in the Gila river.