Day: 014
Date: Monday, 20 May 2024
Start: Doc Campbell's Post
Finish: Gila Wilderness
Daily Kilometres: 26.8
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 380.2
Weather: Cold early, then very warm and sunny until the evening when it clouded over and there were a few spots of rain.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Breakfast burritos
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - knee problem wasn't slowing her down today.
Highlight: Our 3km detour to the Gila Cliff Dwellings was absolutely worth it. We were smart enough to hide our packs in the bush before making the detour, so saved some energy. At the Cliff Dwellings there was a 1.5km loop walk that took you up an oasis-like narrow canyon beneath the cliffs, with a stream running through it. Then, we climbed up a series of steps to reach the remains of these Indian dwellings built into a cliff overhang with multiple rooms and passage ways. The dwellings date back 2000 years and were abandoned around 1300. Super impressive.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
While having dinner last night another CDT hiker arrived at the RV park where we were camped, Tim, from Australia. He's an experienced hiker and we had a good chat with him as we packed up camp in the morning and then saw him several other times during the day.
After packing up we walked over to Doc Campbell's Post where they opened up at 8am, just for us and Tim, and we bought some breakfast and they mailed some food on ahead for us. We had over-ordered for what we had sent here and didn't need a lot of it so have mailed it further ahead.
Around 9am we began hiking with a 5km road walk on a very quiet road to the Gila Cliff Dwellings Visitor Center. There we discovered the Cliff Dwellings were still some way away and we continued walking. Along the way, we passed the trailhead where we were later to leave the road on our hike northwards and hid our packs in the bush so we did not have to carry them to the Cliff Dwellings and back. At the Cliff Dwellings we did a fabulous walk (see above), meeting along the way an Australian couple who had lived in the US for 20 years and were likely to stay. He had worked at Los Alamos, so was likely some kind on nuclear physicist.
After our tour we walked back to our packs and had lunch in the trailhead picnic area where there was water. This was needed since reports indicated we were not guaranteed any water for the first 20km of our afternoon hiking. We loaded up with 2.5 liters each then began the long climb up to a ridge with very heavy packs (4 days food plus the water) in very warm sunny conditions.
The trail wasn't too bad and our exertions were rewarded with increasingly fabulous views in all directions. Atop the ridge we could see vast distances to the mountains north and south of us with no signs of civilization apart from the odd vapour trail in the sky.
Julie did manage to find a single puddle in a dried up creek around 5pm and we loaded up with water again and walked another hour to the crest of a hill where we found a fabulous site to camp with stupendous views to the north across the Gila River canyon.
As we were finishing dinner, it clouded over and we had some light rain, the first of our trip, but it did not last long.
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