Journal June 10 – Desert Wanderers
Our “zero day” in Lordsburg WOULD have been the perfect hiking day, it was completely overcast and very cool, with an occasional raindrop falling. Ahhhhhh, cloudy and cool. Well, we set out today under clear skies, at least cooled somewhat by the passing front.
Our walk through the desert north of Lordsburg was a familiar walk, dry (but more so) with thorny things (perhaps fewer). These desert thorns will, and do, poke through the soles of shoes like a knife through butter. Very annoying.
The route left the road north of town for a ten mile walk across the mountains outwash plain. After two CDT markers, the BLM evidently felt no more were necessary. We walked a mile or two along the theoretical route, with no markers, then simply took a reading on the spot in the mountains where we should hit a canyon and did a straight line for it. About 8 miles later we picked up CDT markers again.
In Lordsburg we had the luxury of a room with a refrigerator/freezer. So today we had the luxury of ice water insulated well inside the pack. We also solved our leaking water bag problem with a gallon container of apple juice. An old “trick” from our Yukon River days, Apple juice containers are the sturdiest of plastic liquid containers and still pretty lightweight.
In the evening, as we were finally in the montains, we met a rancher and his wife driving OHVs checking on their water tanks for their herd of cattle; modern day cowboys trading in their steed for 4 wheelers. These were the first people we’ve seen along the trail. They were very friendly and offered us water from one of the closed tanks but we had more than enough to get us to the next cache at highway 90.
We camped in a high gap in the Langford Mountains, cooled by the eveing beeze and by the near 6,000 foot elevation.
17 miles
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