Sprout CDT Day 5 (March 23, 2018)

We crushed it today!! We started by getting up at 4:00 a.m. and got on trail by 5:00 a.m. Then we went 20 miles! That puts us at 65.5 miles on the CDT! We wanted to get an early start on the trail to get ahead of the heat. I’m happy to say we got 12 miles in by 10;00 a.m.! Usually our goal is to hike 10 miles by 12:00 p.m., Haha.

The other day the heat was unbearable and we really don’t want to hike in this heat if at all possible. We got to the next water cache around 11:00 a.m. and drank as much water as we could and eventually took off.

The crazy part about hiking in the desert is that there’s really no where to sit to take a break. If you do just sit on the ground the heat is just ridiculous (there’s not much shade).

We were in a somewhat flat desert field for a while today. It was wide open and crazy windy. The wind was blowing so hard we were basically leaning forward into the wind. All we could do was keep pushing ahead. When we got to our 20 mile mark I looked over and saw a tree and we decide to set up camp. It’s rare to find a tree this size in New Mexico so it only seemed right to call it a day.

We packed out enough water for tonight and tomorrow morning. The next water cache is 20 miles from the last one so we really had to make sure we took enough water. We have 12.8 miles to get to the next cache.

We’re planning on getting up early again, somewhere around 3:30 to 4:00 a.m. and getting as far as we can. We have 20 miles until Lordsburg and I can taste the double cheeseburgers already!

When we got to camp the wind was blowing so bad we didn’t think we would be able to get the tent up. I didn’t really want to cowboy camp again so we took a few minutes, gathered our thoughts, and I went looking for big rocks to help hold our tent stakes in the ground.

As the evening went on the wind finally died down a little. I’m hoping for a good night's rest so that we can get another big mile day in tomorrow.

Miles hiked: 20
Total miles hiked: 66

Animals seen:
Cows
Jackrabbits

Sprout CDT Day 4 (March 22, 2018)

We got on the trail a little bit earlier than the other days this week but the heat was still an issue for us. Part of the problem is that we went from intense winter to a hot desert real quick! The heat is really pounding on us around 11:00 to 12:00. It almost feels unbearable! It’s a different heat too, a dry heat, which makes it easy to get dehydrated. You don’t even realize you are losing as much water as you are until it’s a little too late.

Right now we’re at 45.4 miles! That’s a little over 11 miles a day average and I’m totally fine with that!

We got to the water cache early and decided to stay there for the day, drink a lot of water, and get up around 3:30-4:00 a.m. Our plan is to get miles in tomorrow before the heat hits us. It was way too hot to set up the tent right away and even when we did it was way too hot to sit inside the tent.

We ended up opening the doors to the cache box and duct taping our umbrellas to the doors to sit under the shade. We kept rearranging positions and eventually ended up laying in the ground with our legs under the cache box holding our umbrellas haha! I bet we looked like a couple of weirdos, good thing no one was around. It was really cool under the box and so was the little space where we were laying in front of the box.

We saw one day hiker pass us throughout the day, other than that there is only a little bit of traffic on Highway 9 right in front of us.

We hope we get enough rest and can get up really early tomorrow. I don’t want to hike in the heat and the next water is 12.9 miles ahead.

Miles hiked: 6
Total miles hiked: 46

Animals seen:
Cows
Jackrabbits