Day 002 - Continental Divide Trail - Big Hatchet Mountains to Little Hatchet Mountains

Day: 002

Date: Wednesday, 08 May 2024

Start:  CO Road C119

Finish:  Little Hatchet Mountains 

Daily Kilometres:  33.4

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  60.6

Weather:  Mild early, then warm to hot, sunny with gusty winds.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts 

  Lunch:  Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Dave - exhausted, stiff and sore with the usual niggles; Julie - still cruising, nothing to report.

Highlight:  The variety of desert vegetation, some of it in bloom, and nearly all of it prickly.

Lowlight:  The wind has been an irritating constant during the day and howled through last night, buffeting the tent.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

After a very windy night, we woke at 5:30am and were hiking by soon after 6:30am, not bad for our first packup of the trip.  We have seamlessly resumed our camping roles from the Appalachian Trail which makes us quite efficient.

Much of the planning for our 4.5 days hike to Lordsburg from the border revolves around the availability of water, which is scarce.  The CDT umbrella organisation has put out some water caches and they are our first preference, with bores and cattle troughs running a distant second.

Today we had 16km to a cache, much of it along a 4WD road paralleling the Big Hatchet Mountains to our left.  It was a good way to start, with Dave still feeling yesterday’s effort, and pleasant watching the morning light illuminate the mountains.

After filling up on water (Dave literally drank two litres) we spent the afternoon gradually climbing onto the lower slopes of the Little Hatchet Mountains carrying extra water.

At first it was “choose your own trail” as we navigated our way through the prickly scrub trying to identify the best route to get to the next trail marker usually visible, but not always, in the far distance.  It was slow going, but there was lots of interesting vegetation, some of it in bloom, to offset the winding and sometimes sandy routes we chose.

For the last part of the day we followed a rough 4WD track along the slopes of the mountain range with frequent, and enervating, dry creek crossings which usually involved a sharp rocky descent followed by a similar ascent.  By this time, Dave was really dragging the anchor, with Julie doing plenty of patient waiting.  Finally, soon after 6pm, we found a very welcome spot to raise the tent and quickly had dinner and a wash before going to bed.  Still windy.