Day 11 - sick on trail is no fun (20.3 miles)

May 20, 2021

Miles: 20.3 miles

Steps: 44,420

Well had some stomach issues all night but still managed to get on trail at my normal time. I figured I had a lot of road walking to get back to the CDT from Gila Alternate.

Had about a mile of gravel road that turned off onto a kind of trail, was hard to see. Then followed this canyon all the way to a peak of wide open fields which brought me to a dirt road heading into the woods.

Aright around 10am I decided to take a break, that’s when I really started to feel bad. I was running low on water and wanted to get to the next water source as soon as I could as it was starting to get warm. I stood up and felt real nauseas so sat back down for another 10 minutes. I felt a little better but not great so I traveled the 7.7 miles down the gravel road. Luckily I had shade at times.

As I was walking I kept hoping someone would drive by and give me something to drink. I knew that wasn’t likely as I was on a less travel road. To my surprise I hear a car coming up but no luck, they kept driving. This happened 2 more times and each time I thought they would stop.

Around 1pm I finally get to the water source, a cow trough which looked pretty clear. So I sat down for a minute to catch my breath, this is when the nausea came back and just laid there for 30 minutes. Not feeling any better but needed the water I got the strength to filter. Then slowly walked about half a mile to some trees with shade.

By now it’s about 2pm and I hadn’t eat much and had no apatite so tried to get some rest thinking I would feel better after an hour of 2 of sleep. However that was not the case. By 6:30pm I knew I wasn’t going anywhere but it had been so windy, 30-40 mph, that setting up my tent would be hard plus it was a rocky area. At this point I tried to eat something but I ended up throwing it up along with a bunch of water.

After throwing up I felt better so decided to walk down the road for a place to camp. There were no good ones as I ended up walking 1.5 miles from where I had camped all afternoon.

By now I was tired and set up my tent as fast as I could and went straight to bed, glad that day was over.