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Off Trail days
Date: 20. - 27.05.2022
20.05.2022: So it happened and the US Forest Service has closed all National Parks up north in New Mexico due to Wildfire danger. That makes it impossible for us to hike on in New Mexico as most of the trail goes thru National Parks. Well, we could roadwalk along a highway for 200+ miles to the Colorado Boarder, but our feet would be death by then, it's not very safe and it is not fun at all. We checked on other options such as renting a car and slackpacking it, buying bikes and bike it (however you would have to find a road not crossing any National Parks, smaller roads with little traffic, petrol stations in between for water, etc. etc. etc.!) Or hitch further North and hike southbound (but then we need another hitch again to go back and hike northbound - also further up north the snowconditions are even worse!). The other challenge we face is that there is a heavy snow storm rolling over Colorado currently, snowing our trails and make them dangerous to hike them now. It's a dilemma! Finally, after one more day in Grants discussing all the options, we ended up renting an Airbnb for 5 nights in Alberquerque (us is Dogbite, Plusone, Patches, Longstride and the K2). We are not the only hikers doing the same thing. Seems like everybody is waiting out the snowstorms, some are quittihu and a couple of brave (or silly?) hikers still hike it and give feedback. Others have rented a car for a weekly road rip or we heard that Chama, the town where we start our hike in Colorado from, is full of hikers waiting out the snowstorm. No one knows waht's best and safe to do, we are all in the same boat. However, it will be a massive bubble of hikers starting around the same time again in Colorado, because trail south from us are closed, so everybody has to skip the northern part of New Mexico and wait to start hiking Colorado soon. We will try to get back on trail by Saturday, 28.05.2022 and cross our fingers we 1. are belong of the first hiker's to start in Colorado again and 2. can hike the trail with these snow conditions. For sure it's gonna take us much longer and we plan for a, on normal condition's, 4 days hike, six days of food.
21.05.2022: We do have booked a very nice airbnb in Alberquerque with 3 bedrooms, which we share on turns. 3 of us have to sleep on the floor while 4 can sleep in a bed😁 and a huge kitchen and two bathrooms. On the first day we arrive in the very late evening. We took a Greyhound from Grants to Alberquerque, which is an about 1.5 hrs drive. The Bus was supposed to be in Grants around 7.30pm, but ended up being in Grants shortly after 9pm! It was full of strange and some homeless people. The smell in the bus was incredible! And there were too little seats left, so I had to sit on the floor (what turned out to be better than some seats next to strangers!). So Dogbite had a seat on the last row next to Daniel. Daniel asked Dogbite where he keeps his money, was eating peanut butter with is bare fingers out if the jar🤮, smoked on the bus toilet and asked the bus driver several times when we stop at a grocery store (for which Dogbite and me always had to get up to let him pass, and we did stop at the grocery store when we got on the bus!). We were more than relieved when we all arrived safely in Albuquerque! We took an Uber to the Hotel, as for the first night Dogbite booked a room at Marriott's, where he has rewards point from staying there so many times before and got a room for free. But the heavy windy storm knocked out the electricity for the whole town. The uber driver had a good sense of humor and stopped in the dark, saying 'well guys, we are right in front of your hotel. Even I have never seen it that dark!'🤣 equipped with our headlamps we found the way to our roomu and smuggled in all 5 of us😁
22.05.2022: The next day we enjoyed the hotel breakfast and left the hotel after lunch when we could check in at our airbnb. We went grocery shopping and filled the back of the Uber car with all our groceries. I think he has never experienced something like this and didn't seem too amused😁 I cooked a yummy and healthy meal for all of us.
23.05.2022: We walked to REI, the american outdoor store as Transa is for us in Switzerland, and geared up with new shoes, ice are, a warmer base layer of merino wool and some other stuff. The walk there is 5 miles and sucked! Walking in and around american cities is not much fun. American cities are designed for cars. Everything is very spread out, there are often no sidewalks and no street crossings and public transportation is very bad. Just to go to REI, get lunch afterwards and get back (this time we called an Uber) takes more than half a day!
24.05.2022: To not loose our hiker legs we planned on doing some hikes. But we face the same problem again, that all national parks are closed. We did find a national monument park which was still open and had a loop trail of about 3 miles🙈 but it led along some ancient petroglyhps, which had to be well spotted between the volcanic rocks. At least we were outside moving! And on the way back we shortly visited the old town of Albuquerque, with the oldest church in New Mexico. For the evening we invited Monster Cheese, who is currently also staying in Albuquerque. I cooked a Red Thai curry and Plusone made brownies for desert. Let me tell more about Monster Cheese's story at the end.
25.05.2022: We took the train to Santa The. Santa He is supposed to be a nice town, is known for its pueblo-style buildings and is considered a stronghold for creative arts. We did go to RED again and then enjoyed the old town. That pretty much filled our day.
26.05.2022: This is our last day in Alberquerque. The next day we will leave with the red eye train to Santa Fe and then take a couple of buses to Chama. It's gonna be a long journey, which by car takes less than 3 hrs but with public transportation something between 6 and 11 hrs! We did our resupply for the next stretch from Chama to Pagosa Springs, which took again a couple of hours walking there and back and doing the resupply. Then I also had to bounce a box from the post office and the day is gone!
I'm looking forward to be back on trail, feelng a little nervous but also a little strange being off trail so many days. Like I've lost the connection to the trail and have to start all over again. Colorado is gonna be though, steep uphill hikes, on very high elevation, with heavy thunder storms and with all the snow. A real adventure for sure! I hope I am not gonna freeze and we all stay safe!
Monster Cheese: is a german hiker in his early 60 probably, and nearly 2 Meter long (198 cm to be exact). He hiked the Appalachian Trail and some other european trails. He is a very friendly and gentle person, hiking on his own but he is being plagued with very bad luck. We met him our 3rd or 4th day in the desert before Lordsburg, where he got lost wandering through the cow pastures of the Chiuauan desert during the heat of the day, like we did too! Next do that he had the worst blisters ever, due to too small shoes. But still he wouldn't give up his hike and made it all the way to Lordsburg, we don't know really how! After a short one or two day recovery in Lordsburg, he then, on his second day out of Lordsburg into the Burro Mountains, had no cellar power because his phone died and he had no way of finding the water source's anymore (remember that we have our trail app on the phone for all these belongings. The phone is one of the most precious devices on trail, and the power banks of course, which he didn't charge up in Lordsburg). Despite this, he climbed Burro Mountain and made it all the way to Burro Mountain Homestead with only 2 liters of water for the whole day. During that time he fell and scraped his forehead, adding to his list of unfortunate incidents! He was found by a car driver in the very last stretch to the Homestead who offered him a hitch, where we met up with him again. The next day he hiked out with us to Silvercity but hitched the road together with Patches. His blisters didn't seem much better, so he decided to get new shoes and rest for another day in Silvercity while we kept on hiking. In Doc Campells, in the middle of the Gila River alternate where we took a zero, e caught up with us again. But his blisters still didn't look better. He decided to hitch back to Silvercity and rest for a whole week there, which was for sure a good idea. After his rest he made it back to Doc Campells where he hiked on. On his 3rd or 4th day out of Doc Campells there was a long water stretch, where we were informed by the National Forest about a water catche in ten miles. There is also a natural spring, which Dogbite and Plusone got the water from, less than 0.5 miles before that water cache. Poor Monster Cheese didn't find the natural spring and the water cache must have been gone. So he needed up again with no water and least the CDT trail (or got lost) and hiked up the mountain. He then ended up calling the emergency number for rescue. After all this bad luck he decided to leave the trail.
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