After a night of nearly zero sleep it was time to hike the CDT. I woke up early to catch my shuttle to the border and after meeting with a few other hikers, we started the 3 hour journey to the Mexican Border.
The first stop was the Hachita store. This is about 45 minutes outside Lordsburg and makes for almost the entirety of the “town.” They’re very hiker friendly and stock things like stove fuel since there’s no where in Lordsburg that sells it.
After that we hit a rough dirt road and the real fun began. The border isn’t actually that far away but this road is so bad it takes a really long time. On the way there we passed a few hikers heading back north and we took a look at a few of the water caches.
The southern terminus monument is about 100 feet away from the Mexican border. There’s no wall at the border, just a loosely tied barbed wire fence. There is even an unlocked gate right next to the start. I can’t confirm or deny if I saw anyone make an “illegal border crossing.”
Since the drive was so long, we missed most of the prime early hiking. It wasn’t too hot to start, but it quickly became hotter than normal. After a short break to reapply sunscreen I decided to try out my umbrella.
The shoulder pouches were perfect for holding the umbrella in place while I walked and it actually let me hike pretty quickly through the heat of the day.
I tried to take breaks often, but there wasn’t many good places. It’s very apparent that this land isn’t for humans.
After pulling away from my shuttle group, I met up with two hikers from a different shuttle who had a bit of a head start on the day. They were under one of the only shade trees for miles with two guys from Florida. The Florida men had been out there for about 3 days, kinda wandering from water source to water source. They seemed a little out of their element with huge backpacks and little to no water. One of the guys I had just met actually helped them out with some extra water.
I left the shade tree with them and we hiked for awhile longer. One was from Seattle and the other had just finished up a season working at a ski resort in Colorado.
Together we pushed on for a 20 mile day, something I didn’t really expect when we started at 10 am.
