Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Miles: 30.6 miles
Gain/Loss: 5151’/3652′
I was up at 5:45am and on trail by 6:20am. Very early on, I lost the trail, misjudged a step, and got my first cactus spine to the toe. It was quite unpleasant. I quickly began climbing up out of the desert towards some 8000′-9000′ mountains.
There was a lot of climbing today. I leapfrogged with Trucker (a CDT thruhiker who’s friends with Sparkles) for most of my day. He was pretty laconic at first but we found ourselves talking more as the day went on. I chatted with him twice – first at a water cache and then by my day’s final water source (where I filtered up and carried 4L).
It got really hot really fast today, and the climbing felt rough and endless. The tail end of my Flu A was killing me. I was so glad to have my inhaler, and used it quite a lot. I was coughing a ton today; including to the point that I puked once. All the coughing gave me a frog in my throat and made me sound like a smoker. It was wonderful to see actual trees, with a few surprise cacti here and there. I also saw 2 javalinas, a rabbit, and a really cool, slightly evil-looking tufted-ear squirrel (Abert’s Squirrel).
I had a small blister on the end of my left pinkie that I popped tonight, Aquaphor helped for the first half of the day, so I’ll do that again tomorrow. I felt really tired and unfocused today; maybe some of that can be attributed to underfueling and the other, the altitude. I forced myself to stop at 8:30pm after some night hiking, and I was to bed by 9:45pm.
Transcending Mountains 