Day 32: Bonita Canyon/Zuni Canyon

This day was another relentless scorcher with little shade to be had along the way, but I didn’t have to be too bothered by the heat because I was trying not to get anywhere fast.

I walked out of camp at 7, turned off the CDT at Encerrito Junction, and was at the highway trailhead a few minutes and a mile and a half later. Even after I blew most of an hour on the toilet there, I still could have made it to Grants by sunset without even trying too hard. It was just an easy 23 mile road walk away.

By road, I don’t mean the CDT. Where I turned off it, it continues across the lava field for several more miles before heading north down the side of the highway for several miles. Not fun. Instead, I opted for a nice untrafficked dirt road up Bonita Canyon for 11 miles, followed by a gravel road east through Zuni Canyon to Grants.

The first goal of the morning was to grab some water from the windmill at the south end of Bonita Canyon. I was there in under two hours and the windmill was going at it. If a good gust got it up to speed for at least 30 seconds, it would pull clean, cold well water out of the ground and down a pipe into a tank… unless I was there to catch it in my water bag. I took a nice hour here in the shade of a small tree enjoying the breeze and then hiked on at 10:30.

I made a deal with myself that I would walk until I had walked 8 miles total or until 12:30, whichever came first, and then stop for lunch at the first good shade I could find. I went a little more than 8 miles, and the shade I found wasn’t great, but I was already down for the count by 12:15. Aside from lunch, I just wanted to skip hiking in the hottest part of the day. So I hid there under the tree until 2pm when the shade had very nearly completely left me. Banshee walked by about 1:30. Though he didn’t say much beyond “Hi” and “See ya”, I reckoned he must have already gone into to Grants and arranged a slackpack down the canyon, since he wasn’t carrying a full pack that I could see.

I decided I would hike from there nonstop until I reached the water tank at mile 13.7, more than five miles away. Then, when I got there, have an early supper and relax a while. I arrived around 4:30 and was eating by 5. Banshee was just leaving as I arrived, but too far ahead to notice me. He seemed on track to get back to Grants by sunset. But I stayed right there lying in the shadow of the biggest tank until after 6. Then, water bags full and with expectations that the low sun would give me plenty of shade in the canyon, I hiked on.

The canyon got higher and narrower, and there was a lot more traffic on this road than on Bonita Canyon (there had been absolutely none), none of which was interested in slowing down enough that I didn’t have to breathe their dust. But with the high walls on both sides, it also felt a lot more like a legitimate canyon.

Just before 8, with less than 5 miles to go to Grants, I pulled off the road, crossed a ditch, and climbed up onto an old railroad or road bed. I followed a cow track down it looking for a nice campsite as far from the road as possible. The one I decided one was clearly visible from a tight turn in the road–not at all “stealth”–but reasonably level and not too close to any chollas (which have a habit of dropping their spines on the ground around them). It also appeared to be the epicenter of some strange kind of flying beetle I had never seen before. A few got into my tent while I was setting up and I had to kill or remove them one by one all evening. The ones outside the tent weren’t much better, frequently making this strange sawing sound like I would wake up to find all the straps on my pack severed. Anyway, it was still possible to sleep even with that and the occasional passing truck.

One more short day of hiking in New Mexico to go!

Trail miles: 18.3

Distance to Grants: 6.2 miles

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•