Day 026 - Continental Divide Trail - Mount Taylor to Cibola National Forest

Day: 026

Date: Saturday, 01 June 2024

Start:  Mount Taylor

Finish:  Cibola National Forest

Daily Kilometres:  37.9

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

Total Kilometres:  766.9

Weather:  Very warm and sunny

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts 

  Lunch:  Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Noodles & tuna/Rice & chicken

Aches:  Dave - very tired and the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported 

Highlight:  None really.

Lowlight:  The scarcity of water was an issue and we had to carry a lot for the last few hours of the day to cater for camping and tomorrow morning.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We began hiking at 6am and immediately began to encounter some hills, though the early morning forest was beautiful.

Our trail seemed to skirt around Mount Taylor's upper slopes, but this meant negotiating a number of ridges and valleys and the trail was up and down.  We were still at significant altitude (9000’+) and Dave found it hard work.

The forest remained beautiful and we began seeing a lot of silver birch trees and some nice green pastures.

Eventually we descended from Mount Taylor and ended up crossing high plains (~8500’) grazing country for the remainder of the day.  While collecting water from the last cow pond of the day we met a female hiker who told us about the fresh bear prints near where she camped last night and showed us an impressive photo.

Our progress was slower than hoped today, although we made up a bit of time on the 4WD track we followed for the last 10km of the day.

Soon after 6pm we found a spot to camp off the side of the trail and happily called it a day.

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