Zero day
A day off in the thru hiker world is known as a zero day. Zero miles. Zero moving. Zero things to do (hopefully). A time to rest and recoup and allow the body and mind to heal itself, even if just a wee bit.
Other than doing laundry, and attempting to wash the stank off our bodies, we lounged around, watched TV and ate food. A good zero day, indeed.
Amongst our activities for the day, we planned out the stretches ahead. The main stops ahead are Silver City (a main hub), Doc Campbells — which is along the Gila River alternate, and Pie Town.
The CDT, historically speaking, has been very much a “hike your own hike” trail. The lack of fully marked trails, and previously planned road walks, allowed people to make their own way. The main goal of hiking the CDT is continuously walking from Mexico to Canada along the divide. As the years have gone by, and outdoor recreation has become more popular, the CDT has become more of a “trail” than any other year. Helping this is the fact that the trail was fully blazed (I.e. trail markers put in place) from end to end just a few years back.
Even though the trail is now more identifiable, there have been common “alternates” that many hikers take, opposed to the USFS official CDT (as a national scenic trail, the US government is the over arching rulers, but far from the day to day support which the CDTC and local trail crews put in).
One of the main alternates is along the Gila River (pronounced heela). More on that in days to come, but point being right now is that we’re planning to skip Silver City, and head straight for Doc Campbell’s along the Gila alternate.
Many thru hikers would question this move. Carrying more food to pass by one of the few towns the trail actually crosses through seems a bit silly. Especially one as popular as Silver City. However, we don’t want to delay ourselves much, and even if the trail is on the outskirts of town, it would be multiple hours to get food even at it’s fastest. And with the potential to get sucked in and be further delayed.
The reason for our quick push to high miles, and interest in saving time by skipping Silver City is we have a mini vacation planned in Santa Fe at the end of the month.
Our initial plan was to get to Grants, NM and hitch along I-40 to Albuquerque. However, a delayed start to the trail gave us an ambitious and slightly unrealistic goal of 25 miles a day for a 17 days. Our plan has now adjusted to a (slightly) more realistic goal of getting to Pie Town. Unfortunately, we now plan to get there a day earlier as the hitch isn’t going to be as simple (multiple roads, further away, etc.). Even though our zero today was much needed and smart, that added over 2 miles per day to catch up. This means we still need to hike about 23 miles per day. While 2 miles a day difference may not sound like a lot, the more miles trekked continuously, the harder they become. We hope to hit a few 25’s to balance things out, but as Ben has (mostly) comfortably done 21 miles, pushing to 23 will be a bit better for us both, rather than 25. Especially as terrain begins to get more intense (it’a been pretty close to flat the entire way so far).
All very much worth it, even if it does sound a bit mad. As is the irony of life, I started seeing someone about two months ago. While not an ideal time, by any means, she’s been awesome enough to stick with me through it, and even come and visit along the way. Bens is also fortunate enough to have an amazing woman in his life, so his girlfriend will be coming out to Santa Fe as well.
Lauren (the lovey lady I’ve been seeing) and Meredith (Bens wonderful girlfriend) is our inspiration to trek more miles and cut down break time. We’re only planning stops one at a time, to give us the flexibility to make changes as things progress, so we don’t intend to have to push ourselves as much for future visits.
Tonight we’ve packed up, rested our sore feet, and prepare for an 11 day push to the most epic of weekends with very special company.
