Another perfect day.
By which I mean another day of relentless sun that makes you want to just lie down in the shade and let the breeze wash over you for hours on end.
And though I’m on a very loose timetable, I do have to get some miles in. Not that many, but some.
Thanks to pitching my tent just west of a tree, I was able to sleep in until well after 7. I didn’t hike out until 9. My latest start yet, and that extra hour or two of sleep sure felt nice as a change.
I set off into the Chain of Craters Wilderness Study Area, which is basically a sparse forest of pine and fir dotted with lava rocks and occasional volcanic features, with a small caldera rising over the landscape every mile or so.
When I stopped for morning snack, I ran out of water before I could even get my Nalgene full, and it was nearly 4 miles to the next water source. How could this have happened? Was it because I knocked over my pot the night before and made a second one? That only cost me two cups, though. No, I blame the herd of judgmental cows creeping up on me when I took their water. If they hadn’t been there, I would have filtered an extra two liters before leaving.
I stretched that water until I was within a mile of the road to the water, despite the heat and a good bit of climbing around and even into one of those “craters.”
So I walked, waterless, the dirt road the half mile to a small metal trough with a nearby valve that turned on a spray of cold clear water direct from a buried pipe into my bottle and bag. I didn’t bother to filter it. It had clearly been untouched by anyone or anything. It was like tap water basically.
Then I spent two hours under a tree eating lunch and passing the hottest part of the day, returning to the water several times. Then I soaked my shirt and walked on two more hours before stopping for dinner. Nothing interesting to see but squirrels, chipmunks, and the omnipresent flies.
I’m starting to get used to the flies, I think. A few more days of this and you might see me walking down the trail covered with and swarmed by flies, like a corpse from a movie, totally ignoring them. On the other hand, some of the larger ones are actually really easy to kill, so that’s pretty satisfying.
After an hour for dinner, I finished up the final bit of offroad trail, and rejoined County Road 42, which I parted from not 30 miles before. This time, it was my route into El Malpais National Monument. I was tempted by a side road, Lava Tubes Rd, leading to Big Tubes Area, but it was too late to go caving, and I would be seeing a cave the next day regardless. I made camp on national park property, a random spot in the trees way off the road, though I never saw nor heard a single car in those parts all evening.
All in all, a hot, dry, boring day with no interesting highlights. I promise tomorrow’s post will be somewhat more interesting. And will report more than this meager number of miles, but not many more:
Trail miles: 15.4
Distance to Grants: 40.7 miles
One reply on “Day 30: Chain of Craters”
Awesome