Day: 003
Date: Thursday, 09 May 2024
Start: Little Hatchet Mountains
Finish: Coyote Hills
Daily Kilometres: 37.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 97.9
Weather: Warm to hot, sunny, gusty winds.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - exhausted again with the usual niggles.
Highlight: Reaching the water cache, and our campsite for the night, at the foot of the Coyote Hills at 7:15pm after a long day with limited water.
Lowlight: Embarrassingly, when we stopped at a bore after 5km this morning to replenish our water supplies, we discovered that our water filter, which we used on the Appalachian Trail last year, was not working. We should have either tested it before departure or replaced it. Rookie mistake. Then, when we resorted to our backup water purification tablets, which we had grabbed from a store shelf en route to the trail, we discovered that they take four hours to work. Not good when it's hot and you're thirsty. In the end, we waited an hour for them to work and hope that we stay healthy. While Julie battled with the water filter, Dave used the meagre mobile signal to order a new filter through Amazon that should be delivered to our planned motel in Lordsburg on Saturday.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Away again shortly after 6:30am on yet another beautiful morning. We made good time to a bore where we intended to get water, only to discover our filter wasn't working (see above).
We wasted about 30 minutes there before giving up and taking a chance on our water purification tablets and set off for a water cache about 10km further on. The morning was warm and windy, but the walking was quite easy on winding single track through the scrubby desert with the occasional cactus.
On arrival at the water cache, we drank our fill and worked out what water we would need to carry to get to the next water cache, 20km distant.
The rest of the day was spent hiking through flat desert or over the Coyote Hills on a mix of single track and 4WD trails. In parts it was sandy or rocky, but generally hard earth. The scenery was straight out of Western movies, with rocky bluffs, endless desert and far distant mountains.
It was the warmest day we have had and during the afternoon it sometimes felt like the heat was being reflected from the earth we were hiking over.
We were very pleased, particularly Dave, to finally descend from the Coyote Hills and quickly find a campsite and water from the cache. There are three other hikers also camped here.
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