May 29, 2021
Miles: 28.4 miles
Steps: 57,896
Around 3:30am I’m woken up by headlights on the dirt road coming from near the summit of Mt Taylor. Luckily they drove by and kept going. Pretty sure I saw that same vehicle soon after leaving camp.
Got to hiking around 6:30am and had mostly downhill hiking on the dirt road for 8 miles where it connected back with the CDT. I was suppose to get water before rejoining but I misread the comments about the water source.
Back on the CDT I was back to hiking on a trail but that didn’t last too long before rejoining a dirt road again. This was pretty much the rest of the day.
I got really low on water as not much water options. I ended up getting water from this nasty tire trough but it was wet and cold. Plus the only water for the next 15 miles so I had to take it. There were lot of particles that were clogging up my filter so it took awhile to filter the water, I even pre-filtered. Probably would have gone faster had I had my normal size filter rather than the mini.
Around 1pm and 19 miles for the day I took my long break. Eating lunch and filtering the water I had carried out. I must had smelled pretty bad because the flies would not leave me alone, I took a shower yesterday morning.
The weather kind of cool down but it was relative flat trail all the way to camp so wasn’t too worried about my water, had 1.5 liters to get me those last 9 miles.
With about 3 miles to go I decided to take a short snack break and to pee. I really didn’t think too much of where to pull my pants down, haven’t seen a car or person in 12 hours. Sure enough a car drove by with my pants down. I don’t think they saw me as they probably didn’t expect to see anyone.
Got to the turnoff for the water around 6pm. I thought about grabbing it quickly and hike a little more. The water was a good half mile off trail and was a pretty steep climb down, so took about 10 minutes just to get to the water. It was a nice piped spring but had to go under some bob-wire fence to get to the pipe. Then spent 45 minutes filtering 4 liters of water. My mini filter gets clogged easily. I tried backwashing it to help with the flow which it kind of did. Then hiked the half mile back to camp.
Now it’s a little after 7pm and still thought about hiking but there were some good camping spots at this junction and had no idea knowing where my next good camping spot would be so decided to set up my tent.
While setting up I drank as much water as I could and ate a little. Going to call it an early night and try for a 30+ mile day tomorrow.