Week 2: Oh yeah, bears

Lordsburg to Silver City

78 miles

May 7th – 11th

Our remaining time in Lordsburg was glorious. We resupplied for the next stretch. Shelley is becoming remarkably efficient at a resupply. While I spend a good while being distracted by things I don’t want or need but look nice. I think I might have to wait outside next time.

My strengths lie in opening beers with a spoon.

Day 6: leaving Lordsburg

We made good time leaving the comforts of our motel room at 4:30am on Tuesday. The trail leads you on a delightful 3 mile walk up the road, a road with a surprising amount of activity, including a middle aged man, topless, skateboarding in the middle of the road (I remind you it’s 4:30am).

The trail then sends you off into a vast expanse of wild nothing, where you head back largely in the same direction from which you came. Fun.

Gross.

There was a pretty special sunrise to almost make up for all the pointless walking.

The first 13ish miles are spent meandering loosely in a vague northern-ish direction, seemingly heading for green mountains. The thought of green, shady mountains is almost more than I can handle, excitement wise.

For a long, long time Lordsburg looks no further away and the Mountains look no closer. This is deeply joyful. Luckily we have cactus’ to keep us entertained.

We bump into our pal ‘Flip Flop’ (Knock Off) who kindly let’s us know we are all off the trail and heading the wrong way. This is splendid news.

Back on track now and by 15 miles we are seeing bountiful trees. Not just shrubby singleton bushes, actual elephant sized shade trees. We made it to the 100 mile marker. Hazzah!

I’ve had “One man went to mow” in my head for the last week, I have no idea if there are any other lines than the two I know, but it’s becoming pretty annoying.

The trail now breaks out of the desert and starts climbing. My legs would rather it didn’t, but I suppose what they want is irrelevant.

We now follow and exciting single track surrounded by plants taller than us creating ample, beautiful shade. Simple shade becomes the greatest of pleasures.

We hiked to a water cache at a trail head where a sign reminded us of black bears, which we’d entirely forgotten about. Tired and unable to do much else, we set up camp and placed our two food bags in a tree. Black bears don’t make me fear for my life but they do make me fear for my food.

I’m pretty sure bears can’t climb and would have no chance untying the reef knot I expertly tied in my plastic shopping bag.

Needless to say we had a broken night’s sleep.

23.5 miles on the day.

Day 7: Burro Peak

We woke at 4 and decided this was a stupid time for anyone to get up. I reset the alarm for 5. When 5 came we decided this too was a ridiculous hour.

We were hiking by 6am, with our food uneaten by bears.

It was cold this morning. So much so that Shelley had gloves on. Actually she’d probably wear gloves in a sauna. Bad example. It was cold.

8 miles of flat before our first actual climb over Burro Peak. We topped up with fresh water left by the god of helpfulness.

The wind kept us cool, but started to pick up aggressively. Shelley noticed we had signal at our lunch spot so I ordered 2 Ursacks which are bulletproof bear bags. These are a lot lighter than the bear cans we had to use (legally) on the PCT but still heavy for a food bag.

We weren’t going to pick these up until grizzly Country (Northern Wyoming, ages away), but seeing as black bears can be unpredictable if they smell your food, this will give us piece of mind at night. It’s also conveniently rodent proof, which is possibly more of a realistic issue.

Along with the bear proof bags we bought some odour proof sacks to go inside them. So, the bear shouldn’t be able to smell the food, but if it does, it can’t get to it…. It can however trash the contents of the bag beyond all recognition rendering it impossible to eat, but….

We pick these up in a few days time. The solid reef knot in our tree hung plastic bags will have to do until then.

A little up the trail we came across our first ‘trail magic’ this is not a genie granting wishes or a well you throw coins into, this is ACTUAL MAGIC. It comes in many guises which I’ll share along the way, but this particular display was left by a ranch owner. A cool box full of treats in the middle of absolute nowhere and miles from anything! God bless you all.

Perked up now after the non event summit of Burro Peak, we trundled downhill, on a beautiful single track, winding through the forest to warmer temperatures.

We pushed on and set up camp around 6 as RAIN started to fall. Which I don’t think is particularly fair, in May, in New Mexico; but, there we are.

Luckily we’d already decided to set up the tent as word travelled down the trail that a storm was due. This was our first night on the trail in a tent. Which was cosy, though I prefer cowboy camping.

I stuck the shopping bags of scented items in a tree again. It’ll be 32 hungry miles to town if a bear sniffs them out. But, luckily they have a really bad sense of smell. Thank goodness.

21.8 miles on the day.

Day 8: To the highway

Hiking by 6:00am again, today was pretty stunning. The weather’s mood returned to what was expected of it and we hiked in the heat.

Wishing it was windy.

We’ve been looking ahead at the trail one day at a time, so it was only last night I realised the last 13 miles of this stretch was along a highway. Bugger.

The plan was to reach the highway today and do as much of it as we could, to reduce the hike tomorrow.

We came out of the trees into a large wash which was pretty pretty, and possibly my favourite bit of trail so far.

This evolved into a dirt road which we followed through ranches to a cow tank. This cowy flavoured juice was the last water for about 20 miles. A long water carry at the end of the day is my favourite thing.

We hiked on to find a cache of fresh water had been left by some kind soul so ‘cammeled’ up with some here so as not to carry as much.

Then we followed the dirt road to the highway and prepared our feet for the up coming torture of tarmac.

We were at 18 miles on the day and the plan was to knock off as many miles from tomorrow’s road walk into town as possible, (13 miles total) and find somewhere to camp, on a highway.

Mentally preparing for the next horrible miles on tarmac.

Soon after, we hit the 150 mile marker which means Shelley is now officially a long distance hiker. There is an association and stuff so she can pretty much add LDH to her name and CV now.

With the incredible help of music, we made it another 3.8 miles before ducking off the road into a culvert which ran under the highway. Rain was looking likely and we prefer not to sleep in a tent so the plus side of this was shelter, the downside of course was potentially getting washed away in a flash flood. But the best thing to do in situations like this is carry on and hope nothing bad happens.

Day 9: Into Silver City

Today is a town day, which always makes for speedy walking. We were out of the culvert by 4:20 having not died (though a massive tumble weed did blow onto me in the night). The highway was quiet and walking was fast.

We made it the 9.5 miles into Silver City by 8:00am. Though it was one further ‘off-trail’ mile into downtown. We had a REALLY NICE breakfast in a proper classic Mexican diner. Our pals Knock Off (Flip Flop) and Shrop (Juke Box) joined us which was most agreeable. After sharing the story about the Snake slithering over Shelley’s legs, she seems to be adopting the Trail name ‘Snake Legs’ – which is is warming to… Mainly because Flip Flop calls her ‘Snakes’ for short, which she likes.

Everyone in New Mexico is incredibly nice.

First stop: food. Second stop, Morning Star hiker store. Here I could change my Darn Tough socks for new ones, completely free. These socks come with a lifetime warranty and even if nothing is wrong with them, they will switch then for new ones. This doesn’t sounds like good business to me. But, I don’t have a business so what do I know?

There was a hiker box here too, with a snack bar with my name on it, and I took the opportunity to purchase a waterproof phone case, seeing as apparently it does rain in New Mexico and we’re about to hike through a river for days and days..

Third stop beer: because Silver City has a brewery.

We were first in, but this place was packed at 11:30am

We’d made plans for a lady called Catherine (who lived in our village back in the UK 5 years ago, but now conveniently lives somewhere near Silver City in a wild wild west rancher ‘town’ called Buckhorn, as she met and married a Cowboy there) to come and save us from crippling ourselves further.

We’d not met but emailed a few times and everyone back in Nunney had assured me that she was a good egg, a very central cog in the Nunney wheel for the 19 years she lived there.

Tomorrow was to be a Zero day (zero miles) and our first day off. These are the very best days, and pretty much the reason we do this.

Catherine, who will now be known as Wonder Woman, and her husband Gail, who is John Wayne, picked us up at lunchtime and took us 40 miles to get lunch at Tammy’s which was beyond delicious.

As if we needed additional reasons to be staying with the warmth and safety of friends, Wonder Woman has 18 cats. That’s right 18. And a dog. And a chicken. And 6 horses/ mules. It’s pretty much an Astrid rehabilitation petting zoo.

Their house is a beautiful cowboy house full of wonder. We exchanged the wisdom of ranch life for the gossip of Nunney life and drank New Mexican wine, which was delicious.

After a tour of the lovely garden, which included a bed of cactus’ (Which Catherine agreed was like the British having a bed of dandelion) we enjoyed a killer risotto before a late night – 9:30pm).

Day 10: Zero 1

After the very best breakfast ever, and some map work, we went for a walk with Murphy the dog. Yes, walking on our day off. Mental.

Then of course there was some really important ranch work to do, or, we wanted to ride a horse, I can’t remember which.

Then Gail (John Wayne) exclaimed “it’s 5 o’clock in Texas” (which means we must drink beer. So we did.

Back to Tammy’s for some live music and expertly prepared burritos. I’m really begining to love Mexican food.

We stopped off at Gail’s old ranch where his step daughter and her husband lives to the way home for a drink. Words cannot describe how fabulous this all was. A zero day(s) that will be very hard to beat. Wonder Woman and John Wayne you are truly wonderful.

Back to the trail tomorrow….