Day 006 - Continental Divide Trail - Lordsburg to Hornbrook Mountain

Day: 006

Date: Sunday, 12 May 2024

Start:  Lordsburg 

Finish:  Hornbrook Mountain

Daily Kilometres:  30.2

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

Total Kilometres:  172.5

Weather:  Very warm and sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Motel continental breakfast 

  Lunch:  Trail mix

  Dinner:  Noodles

Aches:  Dave - very tired and a few niggles; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  Around noon, when we were trying to follow the route across open scrubby desert/grazing land, we lost the trail and ended up following a cow pad.  We realized we were off course, but at this stage the trail is ambiguous and you spend your time trying to see the next CDT marker which, if you're lucky, are about every 400 metres or so.  If not lucky, you go off course.  Anyway, we knew we were going in generally the right direction and also knew we would hit a gravel road before too long.

The cow pad led to a cattle trough which was not marked on our map, just as we reached the gravel road.  We still had about 12km to go to the first water of the day, Engineers Windmill bore, and had carried plenty to get there.  We stopped for lunch, leaning against a gate with a groundsheet suspended to provide much needed shade.  While eating we checked our crowd-sourced navigation app and learned that the bore we were aiming at had no water as of yesterday.  Last week it was OK!

Luckily for us, after Julie had scared a couple of cows away from the trough, we loaded up with enough water to see us through to tomorrow morning and the next available water (hopefully).

Lowlight:  The 4km road walk out of Lordsburg this morning was quite depressing.  Flat, arid and dusty, we passed many trailer homes, some in good repair, but many not, dilapidated with derelict cars in their yards.  It made us feel very lucky to have the lives we do and helps us understand why so many American voters feel they have been left behind and are looking for change.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We had a relaxed start to the day after sleeping well and left the motel soon after 8am to walk through the very quiet Sunday morning downtown Lordsburg, cross under the major rail line on the north side, and head out of town.  It is a very busy rail line with, seemingly, a mile-long double-stacked container freight train passing through in either direction about every 20 minutes or so.

It then took about 4km of road walking to reach the trail and we passed some many depressing trailer homes (see above).

We were carrying 2.5 litres of Coke/water to get us to the first water source on the trail, 24km from town.  We knew that by leaving late in the hiker season we risked encountering, in New Mexico, hot weather and scarce water, but have managed so far, though it has meant carrying more water than we would like.

Once we got off the road, the rest of our day was spent gradually climbing towards the arid mountain range we could see in the far distance.  The walking was generally good as we made our way across scrubby desert, passing some nice flowering cacti and other wildflowers.  Occasionally we passed brilliant white bones lying beside the trail, possibly of earlier hikers but, more probably, cattle and other animals.

When we stopped for lunch (see above) we discovered our target water source was dry, but were very fortunate to have an unmapped cattle trough nearby.

After lunch, the trail became steeper, mostly on 4WD tracks, as we climbed into the mountains, but it was never that bad.  There were some sandy sections which slowed us, but also more trees, giving us shade options for our breaks.

Around 5:20pm we found a nice spot to camp, at an elevation of 2170m, with lovely views, and enjoyed an early night.

Passed our first 100 miles today!