100 miles down!

Day 8

Date: 01.05.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 108.7

Miles hiked: 18.2 Miles \ 29 km

We said we wanna get up early, set the alarm clock at 5:15am. This stretch out of Lordsburg is one of the hottest on the trail. And we aim to reach a shady spot somewhere for lunch. We hit the trail shortly after 6am. My pack is still super heavy, as I still have about 3.5 liters of water. The next water source is in 8 miles but because my filter doesn't work and I don't know of the quality of this water source, I don't wanna dump this water.

The first few miles are still very flat in the desert sand, easy to hike. Also some clouds cover the sun which is perfect for hiking. A couple of miles and death cows later, the trail slightly gains in elevation. The desert is already at a quite high elevation between 1'500 and 2'000 meters above sea level. Actually crazy, you would think the desert is at a very low elevation. It's that hot and dry and still we are quite high up! We pass by a cattle trough, however it's empty😔 still we imagine the water and sit in there😁 Reaching the next water source my back, neck and knees really hurt. The last 3 miles we hiked on a sandy ground, like a beach, which is really tough. Hard to move on, your food always sinks in and no stable ground. The good thing however is, we only have to hike 2.5 miles to a beautiful big tree with a lot of shade and in between we will reach the first 100 mile marker! We have to celebrate this milestone with a sip of warm Vodka out of my bag🤣

We reach the tree just around lunch time and stop for more than 5 hours, eat (I pack out a hard boiled egg with salt and mayonnaise😋), sleep, talk and relax. And of course I get cold in the desert at lunch time at this shady and little windy spot and have to get my sleeping bag out 😁 it also helps to get the flies off you! And it works as a dress too🤣

After 5pm we start on hiking. We would like to hike 7 more miles, so we are not that far away from the next water source (3 miles). 10 miles is too far for now, but this distance is easy to dry camp too. Then it's something about 12 miles to the Burro Mountain Homestead the next day, which we would like to reach shortly after lunch. We can eat, shower and wash our clothes there👍😁 Thru hiking includes a lot of planning and organizational skills too as you see!

The first 3 miles are uphill, sometimes little sections are quite steep and we reach around 2'200 meters above sea level. Then we hike into a desert forest downhill. The views are amazing and so is the trail. Like a little rollercoaster it runs down the hill on a beautiful trail between pine trees! And the smell, I love the pine trees! We hike on till it's dark and we find a suitable camp spot at 8.30pm. Quickly cook dinner, set up camp and off to bed!