Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Pet Cows and Lightning

  The trail, more properly called a route, was sometimes on dirt roads that came and went away. Much of the time I walked cross-country, sharing the range with cows. I moved slowly and talked to them, trying not to spook them as this route of the CDT was available to hikers at the forbearance of ranchers. Cows were used to cowpunchers usually arriving in trucks, jeeps, and cars, but not walking hikers.

  They considered anything approaching them at ground level to be dangerous. In the springtime, spooked cows run in fear, losing track of their calves. I was told it takes a lot of cowboy time to help them mother up again. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of cows or ranchers.

  Entertainment during the day, besides finding water and talking gently to cows, included flowers I was amazed to see blooming in the supposedly barren desert. The most exciting find, though, was the petroglyphs near Detention Dam. I needed sharp eyes to find them, but they were one of the reasons I’d chosen the Columbus route. The history of New Mexico encompasses the history of native people long predating those of my heritage, and I wanted to see the petroglyphs recording their existence.

  Detouring up to Frying Pan Spring for my water, I loaded up and searched for level ground to camp. Resting in the middle of the day, meant I reached camp as darkness was falling. Two sloppy wet bandanas in a plastic bag made a very refreshing bandana bath as stars began to fill the sky.

  Showy white desert primroses still bloomed in the morning before they wilted in the heat of the day. Passing them, I walked through the remaining stone walls of a station on the Butterfield Stage route and remaining pieces of adobe walls at Fort Cummings and pondered what life had been like with stage coaches making the trek through the desert, defended by soldiers. Human history intertwined with wilderness.

  Leaving Cemetery Hill, I walked by what Wolf (author of the CDT Guide Book) calls a reliable water source and Ley (creator of Jonathon Ley Maps of the CDT) calls icky cow water. I suppose it was both, a thick cake of scum resting on top of the water. I treated all my water with a Steripen (ultraviolet light) or iodine tablets, sometimes both, but I passed that water source for the next.

  Thirty head of cows milled around the stone walls of the boxed spring I wished to access. Sitting down on the hillside of yellow flowers, I ate my lunch talking to cows. They became so used to my presence that when I went down to get my water, they didn't move away. In fact, when I left, they started to follow me. Not needing 30 head of pet cows following me on the trail, I yelled and waved my poles to make them uninterested in me.

  The rest of the day was open desert and cross country. One way to get an idea of the vastness of open spaces in New Mexico deserts is to walk through them. Most CDT hikers whose journals I’d read, traversed this desert with map and compass, but I was glad to have my GPS routes showing as a pink line on its map. I kept checking the pink line, coming back to it when I found I’d gone astray. My rest break was in the shade of a single yucca surrounded by lots of not much of anything else.

  In that open desert, I think I saw a Mexican Grey Wolf as it loped crosswise ahead of me on my line of travel, turning to look at me a few times. I didn’t think it was a coyote or a dog. Maybe the cows had reason to be spooky.

  The sunset was glorious as I camped on flat desert with mountains miles away from me in most directions. I had excellent cell reception. After laying out my cowboy camp, I checked the weather report, which forecast no rain. Taking my Ziploc bath in a little of the precious water I’d carried, I saw lightning flashes in the south and very serious lightning strikes straight to the ground near Cooke's Peak. Very soon, lightning was striking mountains on all sides of me. No matter which direction the weather moved, I was going to get hit by a thunderstorm, regardless of that weather report forecasting no rain.

  Oh Lordy, I was smack in the middle of a very big level expanse of open desert, not even a yucca in sight. If I set up my tent, my tent pole would be the highest point for miles around. I didn’t want to be a lightning attractant, so I quickly made the tent into a bivy, pounding in the side stakes, shoving gear inside and crawling inside my bag in the bivy-tent without using the center pole. When the storm hit, I held down the tent edges over my head while strong winds swept across the desert tearing at the tent. Theoretically, you shouldn’t lie flat in a thunderstorm as ground current can fry more of your flat body if lightning strikes nearby. But I was more afraid of sticking up above the desert surface. I was lucky. I stayed mostly dry, didn’t get hit by lightning or fried by ground current, and the storm passed.

  In the morning, everything was wet and the weather cooler. Packing up, I headed out across the desert again. At least it was no longer dusty. The dry White Rock River had a steeply cut bank, but a crumble in the bank wall only required two sit-down butt slides, easily done and a parked flatbed truck with no one present provided some shade for a break.

  Near the edge of the desert, a windmill pumped sparkling clean water into a tank beside an old ramshackle cabin. Drying out tent and sleeping bag, treating water, washing socks and bandanas, snacking and journal writing, I took a long, lovely break by the cabin.

  Chapter 32 Mountains and Cold

  “I refuse to die of hypothermia at 9,000 feet. I’m gonna go to 8,000 feet.”

  Heading into hills polka dotted with junipers, it was still hot as I walked by several ranch houses with “no trespassing” signs. I’d become proficient at rolling under barbed wire, where there were no gates open across the road. But I felt uncomfortable walking past so many “no trespassing” signs.

  I was on a county road, though—from the signs—I wouldn't have known it was a public road. My last water for the day came from a solar well marked on the Ley map. It was close to the road and near a friendly-looking house without “no trespassing signs.” I’d seen no people all day.

  The last hour or two were the best hiking as the day cooled. I finally pulled off the road just as it was getting dark and kicked dry cow pies to the side to make my campsite. (Cows know all the best sites in the shade or out of the wind.) Taking my bandana bath, I sat on my air mattress under a sky filling with stars.

  The next day I saw my first natural running water in New Mexico— Berenda Creek. Much of the time it was dry, but it bubbled up from underground to run for short stretches far up the canyon. Heading up the canyon, I passed a house that had at least 10 dogs, all barking furiously. Two were loose, and one looked like he wanted me for a snack. Fortunately his owner called him off. No one was ever going to sneak by that house.

  Clyde Chandler of the Tierra Blanca Ranch stopped his truck and chatted with me on the way to a corral to move some cows. He was very friendly, saying he’d had no trouble with CDT hikers but thought people should have formally asked him to route the trail through his property. (When I talked to Jim Wolf later, he was surprised, as he thought that had been done. I guess communication can sometimes be misunderstood.)

  A group of 27 hikers in a boys’ group came down the trail, led by a couple of adults. The leader was a young, very fit woman, who looked like she knew what she was doing. She was packing heat, the first hiker I ever saw doing that. One of the boys had a bow and arrows. He’d tried for a wild turkey and missed, but the turkey ran into a tree and broke its neck so they’d had it for dinner the night before I met them.

  Past McMullin Spring, the trail became intertwined cow paths, and I needed the GPS to discern the right one. Climbing steadily uphill, the desert floor long past, I saw bear scat but no bruins and found a slightly sheltered clearing at 7,000 feet. I put up my tent for the first time in New Mexico and properly hung my food bag, also for the first time.

  Going up nearly 2,000 feet the next day, I managed to get off trail following other roads TWICE because I neglected to look at the GPS. Totally discouraging. A GPS only works to keep you found if you look at it.

  The CDT is the only major named trail I have been on where cow paths are more prominent than the trail. I also found low cairns (p
iles of rocks that mark the trail) hard to see for a short person. More seriously, Donohue Spring had no water. I was thirsty all day, rationing what water I still had. After expending my energy on fruitless quests down wrong paths, the trail proceeded to kick my butt. I was tired, thirsty and out of sorts as the trail kept disappearing. I always walked only half the speed of the average thru hiker, but it felt like I was hardly moving at all.

  I once gave a presentation about my travels and someone commented to me in amazement, “Distance doesn’t mean anything to you at all.” That is not correct. Distance does mean something to me, every labored step. And yet I like another hiker quote read somewhere, “Anywhere is walking distance, if you have the time.”

  I traveled through lovely, if dry, forests of pinion, oak and ponderosa, nice pocket views of Cooke's Peak to the south and desert to east and southwest. I saw Mimbres Valley once, though I failed to get pictures that day. I was just trying to make my leaden legs work.

  Reaching Emory Pass a little early, I easily found my bear can with food and a gallon of water tied to a tree by my trail angel, Lynnae. Yay. Thank you. I surely needed that water. I unpacked, added bear can, food, and water to my pack and drank a liter of water on the spot. Reaching my campsite at close to 9,000 feet, the snow on the opposite hill told me it would be a cold night.

  A cold day followed that cold night. Though my campsite had been sheltered, all night I could hear the wind roaring through the trees around me. The trail from Emory Pass to Hillsboro was good, well-graded trail, but the wind was rising. My face was so cold I masked it with my bright-orange bandana—bandito style.

  New Mexico is not just flat desert; Hillsboro Peak is 10,016 feet. It was cold, but the biggest problem was high winds. One of the two buildings on top of Hillsboro was an unlocked cabin used by hikers, a very appreciated shelter, where hikers could eat lunch out of the wind. Leaving the top of Hillsboro in strong wind and a temperature of 31 degrees, I practically ran down the trail, going as fast as an old lady with a titanium knee can go, though I can no longer really run.

  When I was 1,000 feet lower the temperature had dropped to 26 degrees. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Evidently a very cold snap had hit the area.

  I wore my Dri Ducks raingear for a windbreak, tops and bottoms, and bandanas over my face. Much of that high-country vegetation was scrub oak and gooseberry bushes. Even though I stepped as carefully as I could over thorny branches, my Dri Ducks tore twice. They are known to be fragile as well as light weight, but I don't think anything could have stood up to those thorns. My Dry Ducks were soon to match the duct-tape repairs on my Marmot Precip Pants I’d worn on previous hikes.

  It began to snow, a fine light powder accumulating less than 1/4 inch, but at 23 degrees it wasn't going anywhere. Those were pretty extreme conditions. I’d been expecting to spend a night or two in the 20s in New Mexico. But I didn’t expect to be hiking in the daytime at 23 degrees. My water bladder hose froze, no surprise at that temperature. As long as I kept walking I was warm enough, and I was very glad I’d brought heavy gloves even if they weighed 6 oz. They were worth their weight.

  I must have a pretty warped sense of humor, because the thought going through my mind in those conditions was, “I refuse to die of hypothermia at 9,000 feet. I’m gonna go to 8,000 feet.” Note I didn’t say I wouldn’t die at 8,000 feet, just that I was going there. I laughed at my statement and kept repeating it to myself all afternoon. It was too soon to know if I would die at 8,000 feet.

  The trail stayed at 9,000 feet until almost dark when I reached the spring that was my goal. The ground wasn't perfectly level, but with darkness setting in, this was it. The temperature was 26, and I was sure it would be colder in the night.

  I set the tent low to try to keep in heat and climbed inside. I wore everything I had to bed, including rain gear. The exertion of getting all available clothes on warmed the tent to a comparatively balmy 30 degrees. Eating was important, but so was preserving heat. I needed calories inside me to make calories of heat, but I also needed to preserve that heat as quickly as possible. Already partly in my sleeping bag, I quickly made a very large flat wrap roll up of meat chunks and cheese, ate it as fast as I could, drank some slushy Cytomax, tossed water bottles in the foot of my bag so they wouldn’t be frozen in the morning, and snuggled into my bag, pulling the drawstring tight around a tiny hole to allow fresh air for my nose.

  My Western Mountaineering Versalite was rated to 10 degrees. I draped my down jacket over my hips in the bag as I always do and was comfortable after my feet warmed up. In that potentially dangerous weather, my decisions and gear seemed to be adequate. I went to sleep, hoping I would wake up in the morning, and I did.

  Morning was cold, in the 20s. Packing up was the hardest part, gloves interfering with packing. I had to stuff my hands in my pockets to thaw between packing chores. But the cold front moved on, and as I lost elevation, the day warmed up, and so did I.

  I chatted with a turkey hunter in the morning, and after lunch I walked a lot of miles on a dirt/gravel road on the edge of a mesa, views to mountains in the north and west. An interesting sign informed me that the lovely juniper trees encroaching on the mesas were being removed to encourage wildlife habitat. Good for the wildlife, but I liked them for shade.

  My trail angels on McNight Road had been recruited by Lynnae, as I needed cat-free lodging. Jan and George were wonderful. They immediately showed me the shower and the laundry. They fed me, too, which I wasn’t expecting. George was an excellent cook, and that plate of spaghetti with big chunks of tomato and mushrooms was perfect. Treated like a visiting relative in a cozy warm house, it was hard to believe I’d been in dangerous weather the night before.

  My zero day with Jan and George was lovely. Among other things, they took me for a ride to show off the area, driving past the Ponderosa Ranch of TV fame. They fed me delectable barbeque ribs, I sang them Holden Evening Prayer, and we talked church as well as trail.

  Saying good-bye to my wonderful new friends in the morning, I headed down the road to the Allie Canyon trail on a Goldilocks day. Not too cold. Not too hot. No high winds. Just right.

  Allie Canyon had interesting rocks to look at and water in the creek, remarkable, as New Mexico creeks do not always have water. There were half a dozen four-inch fish in Allie Creek, either brave or foolhardy to be fish in a stream that dries up some years. I loaded up with water, as there would be none in the upper canyon. As I began my lunch, a turkey hunter came by, and later in the day I saw two turkeys. The hunter must have seen the hapless turkeys, too, as I heard a shot.

  Seeing my first CDT sign, my route coincided with the official one for about three miles. It was 55 degrees as I camped that night at 8,800 feet elevation, quite different from the freezing cold three nights earlier.

  I hiked up and over Signal Peak, down, up and along Tadpole Ridge. I still struggled slowly with uphills, especially above 8,000 ft. I didn't seem to have manufactured enough red blood cells for the altitude, or maybe I was just old. Tadpole Ridge went up and down the same 200 feet over and over again, the views spectacular, wide open spaces north and west of me showing ranges of mountains, clefts for rivers and broad mesas.

  Walking down Sheep Corral Canyon, I reached my stopping place by the first pool of water in the canyon at 7:00, plenty of time to set up tent, eat and clean up. I took a bandana bath, my feet especially appreciating the removal of layers of dust. Not rinsing the dirty bandanas in the precious canyon water, I just dumped them in a Ziploc to carry out.

  The Gila

  “A better woman than he was man”

  Oh, what a difference a day made. One of the joys of New Mexico was the variety. I experienced blazing desert sun, high-mountain snow, and cold canyons and views. Now I descended to the Gila River, an entirely different and wondrous section of New Mexico.

  Arriving at Sapillo Creek about 1:30, I walked right in to cool off my feet before lunch, knowing I would be fording it and the Gil
a after lunch. I would ford the Gila River more times than I could count over the next several days. Sycamores along the river had not yet leafed out, their white bones of bough and trunk showing brightly against blue sky and reddish rock overhangs. A duck skimmed by around the corner, a big yellow butterfly flitted by me, and Turkey Vultures soared overhead. It was a wonderful spot for lunch. After I ate, watered up, and washed my socks, I set out to see the Gila.

  I forded it a dozen times that first day, knee deep or as deep as my shorts depending on the wideness of the river. Rock formations beside the river were spectacular. How lucky and blessed I was to see such sights. Once again, I was overcome with emotions previously experienced in the Sierra standing by the river at Grouse Rock Meadow with towering granite massives around me, wading in my seemingly private lake in Maine, walking through stunningly colored woods in Virginia and any number of other wondrous sights, a solo purveyor of incredible wilderness beauty. I couldn’t move fast on a trail, but why should I care about speed when confronted with such splendor?

  Not all was bliss. Some of the entries to river crossings were ankle-deep muddy bogs. The trail between fords was sometimes deep dust or sand, quickly coating soaked shoes and socks. I walked even more slowly, but it was all worth it just to be there. On the dusty, sandy tread I saw tracks of cat, bear, turkey, and deer, and I heard coyotes, sharing my trail with wilderness inhabitants.

  Early in the morning three kayaks glided by. The kayakers were complaining about the water level being low. Bad for them, good for me. Day two on the Gila brought at least 50 more fords, though I lost count after 24. The deepest ford was nearly to my waist. Another had very swift water, though not so deep.

  Entries and egresses from the river were either very sandy, (slow going) alluvial plains of river rocks, (slow going) or sticky, gooey mud, which was ankle or calf deep. (slow going and tried to suck my shoes off.) I was very, very careful, slow and deliberate on every river crossing. Then again, I didn't walk that fast anyway.