Doc Campbells to Pie Town

This is a section that I was looking forward to. The middle fork of the Gila is an amazing place and I always wanted to hike the entire length to the headwaters. It was also going to be one of the longest hitches at 7 days before we reached the next town. That means I was leaving Doc's with about 16 pounds of food, Greg with more.
The middle for didn't let me down. We headed up Little Bear Canyon which is nice and narrow to join in with the Middle Fork. For lunch we stopped at Jordan hot springs, which is my favorite natural spring. The pool is about 15 feet across and 3.5 feet deep. It's only about 93, so not really hot, but perfect for a day soak. We showed up, and there was a guy laying in a hammock in the spring. It looked perfect. It seemed he had just finished the Marines recently and was now trying to live off the land. He told us how good the bullfrogs were and the best fishing holes and how good his rattlesnake stew was. He was a really good guy, and we left him with some of the food that we realized we didn't need. The Gila Middle Fork is still one of my favorite hikes I've been on. We finished the middle fork at Snow Lake and were dissapointed to find the water at the campsite hadn't been turned on for the season. That night it froze and our wet shoes were to stiff to put on. It delayed us leaving camp a little bit. The next four days were back in the desert and along roads. Dirt roads, gravel roads, paved roads, lots of roads. Walking on roads is really annoying because they are not meant for walking. They are firm and hard on the body and feet. After a few days I was really feeling it. The last day I pushed for a 31 mile day to get into town and get off my feet. The blisters had started to take over my feet.
View CDT Check in in a larger map

Silver City to Doc Campbells

I arranged a ride out of Silver City to Emory pass outside the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. I worked a summer in the Gila wilderness and always wanted to see it's neighbor, named for an often overlooked person in the wilderness movement, Aldo Leopold.
I headed up to the fire lookout which had great views. The lookout had just started there and had his dog Grace. It's always nice to stop by and say hi. From there I followed a route that I had planned on my GPS, but it turned into an unmaintained trail and I ended up getting lost on a ridgetop. After a lot of effort, I found myself back on a trail and on the map. The Aldo was great, the mountains are a lot steeper. I stopped by the high elevation Mimbres Lake, then followed the river south. I had to hitch around to Doc Campbells to get my resupply of food and meet back up with Greg to hike the middle fork of the Gila.
View CDT Check in in a larger map

U.S. Border to Silver City

April 15th I headed to the U.S./Mexico border to begin my summer of hiking. I began a long the Continental Divide Trail, heading north. To be clear I'm not officially thru hiking the trail from end to end, but using it as a source of inspiration for a summer of hiking. I posted on a web forum my plans for hiking and heard back from a guy, Greg, looking for a ride to the border. My Dad had already agreed to take me, so it was easy to take another. Little did we know how much we'd have in common. We'll be hiking together for awhile.
We took pictures at the border and got a helicopter fly over from Border Patrol and then headed off into the desert. We followed roads and stopped by the first water source which looked a little green. Thankfully there was water in the cache box a mile away. Spring was beginning in those parts of the world and different cactus were almost blooming. The trail follows old roads across the mountains, and occasionally goes cross country with a sign every 1/4 mile or so. Without an established track, the walking is tough and occasionally you miss a sign and end up off course. Out of the first 8 days, there was only 1 we didn't need our GPS to find the trail, and that was the last day all on well developed roads. It's true no two people hike the same CDT, we all get lost in different places. It was also hot out. A little warmer then I was expecting. Every afternoon we took a siesta in what shade we could find, often the shadow of an information board. One of these stops was near a road with a car every 15 minutes. We had one Border Patrol person stop to chat who knew what we were up to. Then an hour later another BP truck pulls up more aggressively asking our country of origin and to see our IDs. Apparently a rancher driving by saw us and thought we were illegals that had given up. After 5 days we reached Lordsburg and I-10. We stayed in a motel and cleaned up. The next morning we were on the road out of town over another mountain range. I led us up the wrong draw, but we managed to connect it into the trail without backtracking. It wasn't till our seventh day that we saw our first real single track hiking trail, it was unique. Our 8th day was walking on roads 17 miles into Silver City. I describe it as a Western Mining Border Hippie Town. It's an amalgamation of people. We took a day off in town to rest and recover, as well as get mail drops ready for supplies for the next two weeks. Here is the map of where I checked in with my SPOT.
View CDT Check in in a larger map