Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Miles: 32.31
Elevation gain/loss: 5755’/5387′
I was up at 5am and out of the Airbnb by 5:30am. I walked the highway back to the trail, since no one was willing to stop in the dark. I got back to the trail by 6:15am and started hiking south.
I’d carried a liter out of town, expecting my next water source to be 10 miles in. With the cooler temperatures in the morning, I hadn’t been drinking much, but the weather had turned hot and I was 1/2 cup of water left when I arrived at the side trail for the water source. I walked down the side trail without my phone and couldn’t find the source, so I had to go back, retrieve my phone, and then go back to find the water. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disgusting, green, moldy, and straight-up inaccessible cow pond. I got my foot muddy up to my ankle in thick sludge but I still couldn’t get anywhere near the only water in the pond, located at the pool’s dead center. I knew I’d just have to push on to the next water source, 9 miles away; I ran out of water a while before then, and the 90+ degre heat had kicked in by then. The last few miles were very painful.
Once I got to the next water source (an actual metal tank with lukewarm but mostly clear water), I sat in the shade and drank 2L before heading back out into the heat with water. It was so hot and sunny, my water quickly became hot enough to brew sun tea, and it was hard to drink the hot water. There was more elevation gain today than there had been anywhere north of here, and I was sweating heavily on the uphills. Between my low water and the heat, I didn’t have the stomach to eat much today.
Another water source later in the day was difficult for me to find because I hadn’t gone far enough down the trail to find the use path’s cairn, so I wasted 20 minutes and a lot of aggravation before I found the very green algae water surrounded by wasps and flies. The water filtered clear enough, though my filter didn’t love it. My last water source of the day was green pools in a dry stream bed, filtering after dark, trying to avoid scooping the swimmers in the water.
I kept going after dark, doing one final climb for the day by headlamp. I was glad for cooler temperatures, but I was also ready to not be hiking after dark every single day. I stopped at the top of the climb at 8pm, where there were a number of good campsites in the bushes. I could see the lights from Phoenix in the distance, and that gave me a burst of energy, knowing I was getting closer to the end of my hike.
