[Day 25] Rio Chama Basin

I was alert by 6:30am and packed by 7am. I’ve figured I’m going to get up when I get up (with some exceptions). Sometimes I am tented in a hole in the woods. Sometimes I am atop a crest cowboy camping. My sleep seems to follow the movement of natural light, but that is heavily dictated by the landscape and quality of rest.

My tent was iced over this morning — every square inch. It was a mix of internal and external condensation. I stuffed it into a sack, contrary to good practice of folding it.

The San Pedro had it in for me today: ten miles of snow walking with iced-over stream crossings and a slushy snow-to-trail transition region littered with blowdowns. I cut my shins in a couple spots from plunges through frozen creeks and scraped my knees with gymnastics over downed trees. It’s part of the game.

After the snow section, there was a view with a faint glimpse of the Southern San Juan’s ahead. Snow, and much of it, is in my future miles. I took a rest at a gushing spring. This was a real mountain spring; water gushed and oozed from a hole in the ground, making for the best source yet.

The miles rolled downhill through ponderosa pines and meadows, getting to a more arid forest floor at 6,000 feet. Walking along, I kicked a rock. My toe didn’t feel right. I knew immediately — my big toenail snapped off. I saw this coming since the toenails wet and weary days in the Gila River. The nail was hanging by hinges on the right and left side of the toe, with a cracked seam about 75% of the width at the base. The cold, wet day with some trail obstacles finally did it. Time for some surgery. I clipped away all the insensitive toenail, doused the region with rubbing alcohol, and taped it up — ready to rock and roll.

I cruised along painlessly without my toenail. Majestic cliffs started to appear. I was in Georgia O’Keeffe country. Striated sandstone walls of the desert’s color palette rose above the forest floors. After hiking over Mesa Alta, I dropped into the Chama River Wilderness. I fueled up on some nitroglycerin — Cheezits, Skittles, and Sour Patch Kids — and sent myself galloping down the valley listening to Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers.

Those were some fun and beautiful miles, until I reached my night’s water source: a spring pipe flooding the hoove-rutted ground around an empty steel trough. I attempt to hop scotch dry patches of the five foot mud radius around the pipe, only to sink to the middle of my shin in cow manure and desert silt quick sand. I could have sank much deeper had I not been quick. Following a line of barbed wire posts, I tight roped my way to the pipe, stood in the empty trough, and retrieved five liters of water over 30 minutes.

I started as a gambling man tonight: cowboy camped under a starless, clouded sky. Around 11pm, I decided to methodically setup my tent — no particular trigger. Five minute after entering in my tent, it rained for all of three minutes. I occasionally thank myself for my bizarre instincts.

Signing off,

Zeppelin