Holy gila
Today we did it. Started the River walking and holy tamole it’s something else! We’ve heard what a low flow year it is for the Gila, and I’ll be honest, not entirely sure how people get through this during a high year, or even a normal year! We’ve been well above our knees in a few places. And we’ve had plenty of opportunities to check depths as the “trail” crosses the River 57 times in the 15 miles to Doc Campbell’s resupply point. Yikes.
The day started off quite well, albeit chilly. We were up and attum by 7, which is 15 mins earlier than a usually morning. It was good though, as we needed to fill up our water bladders before really starting the days hike, which was about a quarter mile down the trail from us since we back tracked a little to find a nice view for camp.
From that point, the trail got wildly difficult to find, and pretty much nonexistent in some places. Compound that with a big chunk of incline, and descent, and the first four miles went by in just over two hours. Our typically speed on good trail is approaching 3 mph, so on any trail prior to this day, we would have come close to 6-7 miles in the same time.
Unfortunately, from that point on we had a long, long descent. Which was great as Bens knee began to bother him, which slowed him down a bit. But we both made it to the start of the Gila around 2 and began our slog through the water.
At one point in the day I chuckled to myself thinking that last night I had contemplated the possibility of pushing 28 miles to get to Docs tonight. Haaaa. Definitely not happening. We’re still 10 miles away, and that was with almost a 12 hour day (probably about 10.5 hours worth of hiking).
Essentially, we’re in a canyon with a River running through it. There are banks on either side, but as it twists and turns through the canyon banks disappear on one side, and then you cross to the other. And this continues all the way up the River.
Even though we technically did 18 trail miles, we did a little over 19 worth of hiking. The descent down to the River had a billion unmarked switch backs. I suppose it made it safer and easier to go down, but it definitely screwed up the mileage and added at least a full unplanned mile to the day.
We’ve gotta hit 20 miles per day for the next week to ensure we get to Pie Town on time to bathe ourselves and make sure we don’t scare off our ladies once they arrive in Albuquerque. It’s definitely going to be a push, but we’re confident it will all be fine. The only bummer part about it is we will hit Docs mid day, have to do a quick resupply, shovel down some food (and home made ice cream from what I hear!) and head out. It would have been nice to spend the night there, but that’ll jump our daily average up to 22/day to get to Pie Town, and that makes us a little nervous. That said, it’s not ALL river walking miles to Pie Town, and there’s a few chunks of road in between, and at the end. So maybe we will rest our already pruned and raw feet before continuing on.
For better or worse, we decided to go sockless to make the dry stretches of trail a little more tolerable. The down fall to that, is that every little piece of sand or pebble or whatever washes into our feet (including tiny little crustaceans looking creatures) begins to rub at our wet feet. So far we’re in the clear, but a few more days of that and we could have blisters in very odd places on our feet. So maybe we wear socks tomorrow. Wet is wet, I suppose.
We saw a few hikers today, which is a very interesting feeling as we literally feel like we’re in the middle of nowhere. And who in their right mind would ever walk up a river for miles and miles and miles? That’s insanity. Oh. Wait. Guess we’re insane as well.
With ramen filled bellies, we head to bed. Looking forward to a bit of reprieve already, after 8.8 more miles of river walking. Let’s see what the day holds in store for us tomorrow.
