Trees?

June 5th 2015

We made it out of Cuba! Yesterday Viper and I decided to take a zero and wait for Squral and Holly. We also wanted to spend an extra day in town to instigate the wounded warrior water cache debacle. It was a well made decision. We left Cuba today after stops at McDonald's, the gas station and Subway. I got something important at each stop. A few miles out of town Squral and Holly stopped for a nature break. Viper and I didn't end up stopping until 1:00pm. We were climbing out of Cuba up to 10,000, it was quite the climb. The reward was, rain, aspens and pine trees. The snow must have recently melted because we hiked through several bogs. My feet are so wet and cold it reminds me of the Gila river. I just took off my shoes to get in my tent and they were steaming like corn on the cob fresh out of the pot. My socks, gaiters and feet were steaming too.

After the climb out of town we really got to enjoy the cold and rainy weather. It reminded me of hiking in the Northern Cascades. The rain was never too bad but it did force us to put on our rain jackets and pack covers. Everything else just got soaked, not like my feet were dry at this point anyway...

Around 8:00 pm it started raining again.  We continued hiking looking for a place to camp and didn't find a suitable spot until 9:00 pm.  I was beat and Viper was ready to make a fire to cook his hot dogs.  We quickly put up camp and gathered firewood.  The rain subsided for a while and we had a feast, hot dogs and Louisiana red beans and rice.  We also enjoyed the 2 beers we carried 28 miles.  At least we only have 24 miles to hike tomorrow to Ghost Ranch.

Leaving Cuba

The dog we named Jonathan Ley, followed us for a while out of town.

Trees!

Viper in the aspens

Trail Subway for lunch.

Deer, not a bad zoom on the camera

The snow is a little too soft, I just bough snowshoes.

And some blow downs

Cuba New Mexico!

June 3rd and 4th, 2005

Today I walked and walked and walked in the blazing heat. I tried my best to wake up early and make a stone wall around Viper's tent but it was difficult to get up early.  I caught him around 7 am leaving his campsite, a few minutes later we were hiking together.  We ended up taking a side route and missed the water, turns out it was another 25 mile day with no water... We split up midday and met again in Cuba over pizza, beer, hamburgers and air conditioning.  Our buddy Reststop was already in town and met up with us.

The scenery was pretty amazing today regardless of the heat.  The trail follows the edge of these epic mesas and sometimes even climbs them.  At that point it's more like mountaineering than hiking.  Other than the mesas it's just huge expanses of nothingness, hot and dry nothingness.

The town is okay, a little run down and very heavily populated by Native Americans from the nearby reservation. We decided to stay an extra day, Viper has me in the mindset that if we just hike more 30s then we can stay in towns longer.  Then there is the whole snow ordeal in southern Colorado, we are still getting reports and pictures of massive snow fields from the recent snow in the San Juans.  Maybe if we goof off enough it will all melt.  

On a side note Amazon said they would refund my crappy Mizuno shoes.  I got verbal confirmation from them on the phone and an email that said the complete opposite.  I have a feeling I'm in for a fight when they get them back.  I ordered a pair of Brooks Cascadia trail shoes from REI, word on the street is that they are pretty good shoes.

I'm currently using the computer in the library and still can't manage to upload my photos.  I'll work on taking more with my phone.  I'm going to keep it on all the time and use it for my GPS.  The GPS is going home, I think that will save me about 10oz.  With the phone always on I can take double pictures and upload more. Words just don't describe some of the things we see out here, especially my inadequate cell phone based writing.

Back to the trail tomorrow morning.

Middle of nowhere

June, 2 2015

Not much to say about today. I stayed on the trail and Viper took a road. It seems the drop onto the mesa floor and was difficult for both of us. He got to lunch about an hour before me with no breaks. I like to break....

The water here, los ojos frios is pure garbage. It is some kind of spring that gives off a nice cow crap aroma, it tastes about the same. Luckily there is another spring that is supposed to be very nice 15 miles away.  I got 3 liters here and stayed for lunch. Viper is going to ration his last liter or so. Can't say I blame him.

The landscape we're about to enter are these huge water carved mesas that stretch as far as you can see. It's going to get really hot really quick. I'll finish today's entry from the comfort of my tent, something I forgot to do last night.

Part twoooooo.

Well the rest of today was pretty uneventful. I thought I was going to die from heat exhaustion. I only took 2 liters of water for 15 miles and mixed in a bunch of propel in the water. That was terrible in the heat, my mouth was sticky and constantly dry.  I managed to do a minor miracle and make a tire in the middle of the desert produce water. Turns out it was just turned off and nobody before me figured that out. There was an old water cache, basically a bunch of empty water jugs, right before the tire. I'm getting pretty sick of seeing 5+ empty water jugs at various intersections along the trail. Someone is filling them up for a group of wounded warriors hiking the trail and just leaving them. Who the hell do they think is going to clean up after them!!!  After some more endless miles up and down these mesas I got to a road with a water cache (for normal hikers and properly maintained). Heck, there was even a bag of apples!

I made a sign that said "Got Beer" and tried to yogi a beer at the road - no luck. It was 8:00 and I had about an hour of light left. I kept walking to see if Viper camped where we talked about. It got dark and the full moon came up. Eventually the trail started doing something weird so I just set my tent up on the trail around 9:30.  The moon is awesome and  surrounded by cliffs with bat and coyote caves.  The coyotes are running a muck all around me yipping and yowling.

Oddly enough and somewhat surprising, this is my first night camping by myself. Cool story... its still hot out.

Shoes

June 1, 2015

Shoes are one of those things most people take for granted. Most of the time I do too. Most of my pain, about 90% this trip was and is caused by my shoes.  I decided to get the new model of Mizzuno trail runners because I though it would be best to stick to a similar shoe. They discontinued the model I've been using for the last few years so I wasn't really left with too many options. The later model quality was declining anyway.

On the hike up Mt. Taylor I realized that my pronation caused the outside edge of my shoes to bend inward and cause my ankle joint, that ball on your ankle, to become extremely agitated and bruised. I put it off until today, not thinking much of it. After an extremely painful hour or two I had to take a knife to the shoe. I also noticed the foam on the inside heel of the shoe is collapsing a little too quickly. So much for new shoes. I think I'll contact Amazon to get my money back and replace them. I'm very interested to see how that goes as I don't want to be out $100.

A group of 4 of us started the day together. Squral, Holly, Viper and myself. Sometime mid morning I stopped for a restroom break and lost contact with everyone. Right after that break there were multiple trail options. I ended up taking one that they obviously didn't, it was the path less traveled. Sometime around 1:00 I met back up with the trail and took lunch. Viper eventually showed up and was surprised I managed to get ahead of him. He said that Squral and Holly stopped a while back. I left them a note to let them know I wasn't behind them and took off with Viper. Viper is from Norway so over the next several hours we spoke about cultural differences and everything else you could imagine. It was a great experience and I learned a ton about Norway and Norwegian culture.

We ended up doing about 30.7 miles, my first 30!!!, to get water. It was enjoyable until my blisters reminded me they weren't quite healed yet. At least the spring, a half mile off trail in the bottom of a Canyon, was pristine. So I guess that would technically be 32? Woot Woot!

Going to take it easy tomorrow, on 27 miles... The lack of water, especially drinkable water, makes you decide between weight and miles. As of now I'm choosing the miles.

Leaping in the lava

It was a little chilly this morning but the noisy windmill woke us up at 0500. I thanked Squirrel for the excellent campsite selection.  We did quite a bit of road walking today but also got a good amount of on trail hiking.
We hiked an upper rim trail to the natural arch. The cliffs and views of El Malpais were great, the rock scramble at the end down a cliff was a little questionable. We took a break at the arch parking area and met back up with Holly. She was flying this morning and missed the turn off for the rim trail. Squirrel flagged down a truck to give her the message, "meet us at the arch".  At the arch, I yogied some water and bananas.

We left and walked a couple miles along the asphalt to the Zuni-Acoma trailhead. There was a water cache there and we found some shade to eat lunch. Moss was already in the shade eating her lunch.

Around 1430 we left for out 8 mile trek across the ancient and heat absorbing lava flow. The first couple miles were amazing and beautiful. After that I wouldn't know because my eyes were focused about 3 inches in front of my feet. I still managed to destroy my shoes and side kick a cactus.

After what felt like an eternity walking on the hottest day of the trip we made it to the other side of the lava flow. We found a picnic table in some trees and set up camp. I hate camping near the road but the picnic table was too hard to pass up. There was a small chance of a water cache but we couldn't find anything - it ended up being across the road. So Squirrel went to the road with his empty water bottle and flagged down some cars for water. We all ended up taking ibuprofen for the foot pain and called it a night.