CDT section hike - April 28, 2009

I had blogged on my phone from the trail while on a CDT hike a couple of weeks ago but the blog entry wouldn't go through. Now home, I am trouble-shooting why my phone wouldn't send these phone trail blogs. After lots of failed troubleshooting, I just took the battery out of the phone and then put it back in again. I tested sending the blog entry and what do you know!!! - here is what I'd intended to send from the trail.

I will be posting this entry and and maybe one or two more here on my blog as I typed the first few entries on my phone and I don't know how to get the entries off my phone without posting them here. But I intend to post the 5 or 6 trail journal entries on my website under my CDT 2008 Adventure.

Tailwind before we hit the trail inside my jam packed car with all our gear.

Day 1 on the CDT with Tailwinds

Tailwinds graciously offered to backpack the 91 miles from Snow Lake to Pie Town I skipped last year when I was backpacking the state of New Mexico. Once I backpack these miles I will have backpacked all of New Mexico.

Yesterday, all day, was spent dropping off Tailwinds' car at Snow Lake. This was not an easy feat and because it was so time consuming. I hope I remember in the future that I don't want to skip sections on a long backpack again.

We also cached food and water for ourselves. Water is scarce on the trail in NM. Why we cached food rather than carry it for 6 days is simple....because we could.

Tailwinds and I left the Toaster House at 6:40am after having spent the night with Mrs. Gorp, Stumpknocker, Mike and Andy (north bound CDT hikers). Don and Nita, Pie Town residents, keep this second home of theirs for any and all hikers and bikers to stay in while on their adventures. The Toaster house is right on the CDT. Old toasters hang in front ot their home.

Neither Tailwinds and I are trained to do long miles carrying our heavy packs so we were overjoyed that our bodies held up today for the 16.4 miles we hiked. Now at our campsite (by 3:30pm!) we can barely walk without looking like we are terribly injured, but we are proud of the miles we did never-the-less. Our tents went up, dinner prepared even though it was only 4pm, and are now off our poor feet inside our caves for the night. I can tell Tailwind is already asleep. I'll close my eyes once I finish typing this journal entry.

Road walking is hard on the body. That was our trail today, a dirt backcountry road.

The weather was perfect, often overcast and breezy.

A highlight of the day was meeting a thru hiker named John. When I introduced myself by my trail name Gottago, John excitedly told me that my husband had given him a PCT bandana in Wrightwood in 2007. There are only a very few (maybe 30 or 40) CDT hikers who backpack the trail each year compared to the how many hike the AT and the PCT. What a coincidence to have run into John.
It's time for me to crash now.

Gottago

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry