We left the community center in Hachita and walked up the dusty highway with the sun rising behind us, passed the shuddered diner and the closed-down bar the locals unlock to play pool in the evening, and entered the only store in town. We spent most of the last morning and afternoon drinking coffee and eating burritos here, seated by the front window at the only table in the place. Radar was already inside and coffee was already brewed. With hot drinks and breakfast in hand we climbed into Radar’s SUV and headed back for the trailhead as the first light spread across the vast, open desert.
Last night was windy as hell! It was the first night we had to pitch the tarp and we had to use seven guylines on the windward side to keep it stable. We were exhausted and riding the struggle bus. For a first tired and bickery night, it didn’t go too badly. We’re working on our hike communication–expressing what we need, asking for a moment when we need it, and making sure we each know that our frustrations are not with one another (except when they are, LOL).
We slept all night on the ground with the wolf spiders, sun spiders, fire ants, and God knows who else, but if there were any visitors they didn’t wake us up. The only thing that did was the wind against the tarp and are sweaty bodies from staying tightly wrapped in our quilts to protect against the other ground dwelling desert life.
Prior to day one, we dropped a food box in Hachita to force ourselves into a town to reevaluate how we are doing. Radar, an AT through hiker many times over, maintains water caches for the CDT and picked us up at highway 9. We rode to the general store where our resupply was waiting and decided to take the opportunity to stay in the community center overnight. Our legs could use some light healing time. This is against our nature, hence the forethought of forcing ourselves into an air conditioned building with burritos to make the decision.
Holy Shit! That’s a real-ass tree! Holy shit!! And of course there’s another hiker under it. That’s Blue in the second pic, a ’21 AT SOBO thru-hiker we met this morning.
We caught the shuttle at 6:00 a.m., and hit the trail by 9:00. The first day has been teaching us a lot about water conservation, the scarcity of other hikers, acclimating to a dry climate, and the unforgiving fireball in the sky. As is our custom, we pushed a little bit hard from water source to water source and from day to night since we missed good shade for the warmest part of the day. Shade here is made of pure gold! We didn’t have enough water for a siesta once we found shade near lunch time, but I think we have a good grasp of timing food, water, shade, naps, and the hottest part of the day.
We made it all the way past the big hatchet range and almost to little hatchet by 9:30 in the evening, hiking by moonlight and starlight for a chunk of the evening. I almost forgot how well one can see in the desert just by night light! However, the trail became difficult to find by the moon as it started crossing a sandy playa, so we backtracked, threw our beds on the ground, ate a much needed dinner, and cowboy camped in the dusty wind and starlight (a.k.a. on the open ground). It was absolutely beautiful and we slept wonderfully all through the night. Since we didn’t make it to the water cache before camp, we started the day with too little water for breakfast. So, we finished the last 1.8 mi to the cache and met several of the other hikers in our tiny group, drank coffee, ate breakfast, socialized, and moved on.
