Gila Days 3-4

Day 3 – 20.6 miles, 1,500 feet of elevation gain, 62 river crossings

What an awesome day! We finally made it to the Gila River this morning! We started walking at 7:30am and everything was frozen. When we got to the river about an hour later, it was still freezing, and we were nervous about having to cross it 50+ times today. We took off our trail running shoes. We put waterproof socks on over our wool hiking socks and put on some hiking sandals. The first crossing wasn’t cold at all with the waterproof socks for insulation. We walked in our hiking sandals for the rest of the day. We followed the river upstream and counted 62 times that we crossed it! The river was gorgeous, and the waterproof socks and hiking sandals kept our feet happy. It was a sunny day and the temperature eventually got into the 50s. In the afternoon we spotted 5+ white-nosed coatis. This was our first time seeing them, so that was super neat! They ran up/down some trees and up some rocks, while looking back at us and hissing/barking. At 3pm we made it to a hot spring! We soaked for 30+ minutes, which felt great! It was warm-hot but not hot-hot (99 deg F according to my watch). In the evening we made it to “town” (a general store and RV park in the middle of nowhere with zero cell service), picked up our resupply package from Doc Campbells Post, and set up our tent at the RV park. Can’t wait to head back into the wilderness tomorrow for more Gila River! -R

Day 4 – 18 miles, 2,000 feet of elevation gain, 34 river crossings

It’s cold cold cold out here. We got out of camp at 7am and headed to the Gila cliff dwellings. Aside from the frigid air, they were really neat! On the floor of the dwellings there was 750 year-old corn cobs. After a 1-mile detour and 1-mile loop through the dwellings we headed back towards the Gila.

The trail took us high above the river and then we descended down to it. The descent was through a canyon and sandy creek bed with the canyon walls towering above us. When we got down to the Gila it was really cold and lots of the ground was covered in frost that didn’t melt all day. It seems like the cold air settles down here and with the high cliff walls the winter sun isn’t making it to all of the valley floor. At 2pm it felt like sunset and we could feel the temperature dropping. We called it a day at 4:30, before it got too cold, and had a fire at camp. Hopefully we don’t freeze too bad overnight. For dinner we had creamy pasta around the campfire. Yum! -T