This section of trail was very remote. We hiked through the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness Areas. We encountered no other thruhikers and only two other people on the trail at all. We saw more bears in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness than people!
Day 13 – Mile 209 – First stream!
In the middle of the night last night it started raining, so we woke up and quickly put up the tarp. So far we have used the tarp only twice and all other nights we have cowboy camped. We walked downhill for more than half of the day and at the bottom we hit a campground and crossed a highway. The excitement came after that. First we entered the Gila Wilderness area — this is the first wilderness area in the USA, and it is beautiful. There aren’t cattle grazing in the wilderness area so the vegetation is different from everywhere else. There is lots of grass! Next, we made it to our first real, cold, beautiful, flowing, creek. It was almost too good to be true. We washed our feet and underwear, ate lunch, and had a coffee to celebrate. Then we filtered a ton of water because we are entering another dry stretch. Lunar cached two gallons for us that we’ll hit tomorrow morning, but other than those we don’t expect water until the end of the day tomorrow. Who knew New Mexico was dry!? Renee made Thai curry for dinner. Yum!! -T
Day 14 – Around Mile 229 – BEARS!!!!
Today we hiked out of the Gila Wilderness. We crossed a gravel road and grabbed the water that Lunar cached for us. Then we headed into Aldo Leopold Wilderness. I felt elevation sick this morning and yesterday morning, even though the elevation wasn’t much over 8,000′ where we camped. We got to a junction and saw a sign labeled “New CDT”. We followed a canyon down and a different canyon up. The canyons were beautiful, rocky, green, and had streams. We crossed the streams 20+ times but managed to keep our feet dry. Our phone maps did not have this new route with water, so we were expecting to have to hike a few miles farther tonight to water. We did not see any thruhikers today, but we did meet Otter during our lunch break at the confluence of the canyons. He was fly fishing for Gila Trout and gave us an apple. He was a local, and it was fun talking to him about the area. After lunch Tim was in the lead. He stopped and started waving for me to hurry. I got there with plenty of time to see two big black bears on the other side of the river run up the hill. This happened two more times for bear #3 and again for bear #4. It was very exciting! We also saw lots of signs of wolves and elk in the canyons.
Day 15 – Mile 248.5 – Diamond Peak
It was very cold this morning. Getting going was frigid, and right after starting we had to filter water which meant cold wet hands from dipping the bottles in the stream. After the sun comes out it is amazing how quickly it swings from very cold to very hot. Before we knew it we were sweating and applying sunscreen like always. The trail wasn’t very well maintained for the first part of the morning, which meant slow movement, but it got better as the day went on. We climbed to the highest point on the trail so far — Diamond Peak at 9850 feet. There were swallows flying all around the top and Renee tried to take a video of them, but their flight patterns weren’t predictable so it didn’t work well. That’s probably what makes them interesting. We spotted a forest fire in the distance that grew through the morning and looked quite large by lunch. We hope it doesn’t interfere with the trail ahead, but it is to the Northwest so it might. In the afternoon we met a backpacker headed South. He wasn’t thruhiking, but he said he’s trying to piece together hikes of the whole “Old CDT”. For dinner we had curry rice. Yum! -T
I’m enjoying your trip vicariously! Hoping to see more amazing pictures! Be safe out there!