Day 021 - Continental Divide Trail - Pie Town to Armijo Canyon

Day: 021

Date: Monday, 27 May 2024

Start:  Pie Town

Finish:  Armijo Canyon

Daily Kilometres:  42.6

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

Total Kilometres:  617.1

Weather:  Cold early, then very warm and sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts 

  Lunch:  Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles plus a new blister; Julie - nothing reported 

Highlight:  Around noon, we reached the TLC Ranch where, on the porch of an old ranch building near the road, the owners had provided kegs of cold water, apples, tables and chairs, and a trash bin, something hikers are always on the lookout for.  We had a very welcome break there and enjoyed our cold apple.

Lowlight:  Knowing that we have no water access for the first 23km tomorrow, nor for the last 10km today, we loaded up with three litres each at a solar well in the late afternoon, adding an unwelcome extra 3kg to each of our packs at the end of a long hot day, and trudged that last 10km.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We were hiking by 6am on another cold morning, planning to cover at least 38km of the CDT road walk ahead of us and reach the Cebolla Alternate turnoff which we plan to take.

It turned into a fairly tedious day on a dirt road through ranching country, though we saw few cattle.  The road was undulating, often straight for long periods and the ranch scrubland relatively uninteresting.  There were only two places we could get water, the TLC Ranch (see above) and a solar well feeding a cattle trough.  It was a very warm day with the sun reflecting up at us from the clay road.

The last 10km, with heavy packs (see above) was across a wide treeless basin and we were relieved to reach our Cebolla Turnoff and start gradually climbing towards the Armijo Canyon.

We found a good place to camp at the Canyon trailhead soon after 6pm, very happy that our day's hiking was over.

Water is also very scarce tomorrow again and Julie is researching our options, as she usually does while Dave writes the blog.