Day 10 - Tour of the Gila

Date: Sat April 27

Start Mile: NA

End Mile: NA

Total Mileage: NA

Highlights: errands, Tour de Gila, burritos

Today was a day of errands.

While it would have been nice to sleep after arriving in Silver City last night, we had shit to get done today. And with more pressing timing - this morning, as the post office was only open from ten until noon.

After a quick breakfast at the hotel buffet, we were once again walking the streets of Silver City with our packs. This time they were empty in anticipation of groceries.

The air was cold, just over 40°, and the wind bit through our jackets as we walked the mile to the grocery store.

Once at the Albertsons, we each took our own cart and set to work collecting all of the low weight, high calorie, mostly nutrient deficient foods that make up the resupply of a thru hiker. We try to collect some nutritious foods, getting some protein, decent fats, and other nutrients -  but let’s face it, it’s all packaged stuff, so we’re not winning any healthy eating awards here.

Looking at your five-day stash of breakfast foods and snacks packed in bulk in a paper bag can make you feel pretty terrible about yourself. Also, why is it that all the worst stuff floated to the top - I swear I have protein, fruit, and fig bars in there underneath the candy and Gushers.

Today we were actually shopping not only for our next resupply, but also a resupply to pick up a couple stops down the road, in Pie Town, which apparently has very little other than a restaurant and a post office. And so, everyone mails themselves a resupply box here. Hence, the need to get to the post office before it closed.

Back at the hotel, I spread my loot over the bed, organizing the two separate resupplies into days of “breakfasts” (really many things to eat throughout the morning), lunches, dinners, and afternoon snacks. As well as some toothpaste. The stash of goods for our next section went into the food bag in my pack, while the larger stash for the future resupply went into a brown paper grocery bag.

The exacting work of organizing resupplies.

And this is how we found ourselves walking down North Hudson Street, packs on our bags and arms wrapped around big grocery bags in the front. We had hoped to get a ride from the town Uber driver, Nathaniel, but he was not yet out driving, it seemed. Oh well. And so, we walked the mile and a half downtown to the post office.

Our resupplies packaged and shipped ahead to Pie Town, we set about some other errands. First, a couple of sports shops. The first one catered mostly to cyclists, though also had some items for hikers. It was very busy today with the Tour of the Gila in town.

For the bike racing fans out there, the Tour of the Gila is one of only two UCI-sanctioned  stage races in the U.S., the other being the Tour of California. The stage race includes five days of cycling events including three road races, an individual time trial, and a criterium, with each race covering various routes through the areas steep mountainous topography.

Today’s event was the criterium, and all day various men’s and women’s divisions were being held, culminating with the men’s and women’s pro races in the afternoon. The course formed a large square through downtown Silver City, with one of the corners right outside the bike shop.

For midmorning on a Saturday, the air was festive, with families out watching and cheering on the races, kids riding their bikes, and children proudly manning tables of baked goods and drinks for sale (with parental supervision of course). The sidewalks were a buzz of activity.

Inside the bike shop, we found Monkey Man, whom we hadn’t seen since the day we’d all arrived in Lordsburg. He was hiking a bit faster and also didn’t tend to stay in a town more than 24 hours. Eventually we will work on the same type of schedule, but in these early stages we are taking plenty of rest. Anyway, he was picking up a few last things and heading back to the trail.

Shawn procured the water filter he was after, the one he brought having malfunctioned on day one, so we had been sharing. This was fine, but it’s always more convenient to have your own gear. This said, hiking as a pair has practical advantages, because there is a typically built-in gear backup when one person’s equipment breaks or malfunctions.

We also met Snooze, another thru hiker, outside the shop. Now that is a trail name that would fit me well. He had just arrived this morning.

Next up, we visited the other outfitter in town, not far down the main street - North Bullard Street, stopping at one of those cute little tables of baked goods en route for a little snack - second breakfast, as it were.

Here, I picked up some Nuun tablets - my preferred choice of electrolyte drink on the trail. Everyone keeps raving about Liquid IV, but I haven’t tried it yet, at nearly double the cost of other electrolyte drink options.

Our tour de Silver City continued down the street for a quick coffee stop, on the way to which we ran into Chris, our friend from the brewery last night. He commented on how much more refreshed we looked after a night of sleep and showers. A little soap and some sleep will do the trick every time.

Hello, my friends.

Leaving the coffee shop, we also met Brent, who worked for the area search and rescue. Our packs are great conversation starters in this way… it’s very clear who the thru hikers walking about town are. Seeing our packs, Brent asked how our hike was going and we chatted for a bit about the water level of the Gila River, which we will be hitting soon. While it’s not part of the “official” CDT, nearly everyone hiking the trail takes the Gila River Alternate, both for the beauty of the area and the ready availability of water. River heights now were about waist deep at their deepest and falling. All very manageable, he noted. We thanked him for the information and then continued on to our next most important stop of the day: the laundromat.

When you aren’t carrying many clothes, you have limited options for what you can wear at the laundromat, since you often need to wash most of what you have. I carry a second set of shorts just so I don’t need to worry about this. And then wear my down coat. The rest goes into the wash.

While we were doing laundry, another guy there struck up conversation with us about our hike. The magic of the pack. I suppose if you didn’t want to talk to anyone then you wouldn’t want to carry your pack around.

Doing laundry is doing laundry, so nothing to report there, however there was a brief timeframe when the power went out - this didn’t affect the washers and dryers - however it did render the automatic door useless, locking us in. For a short time, we questioned if we would be able to leave the laundromat, until someone located a side emergency door. In the end, the power was back on before we left anyway.

With laundry done, we’d finished all of our major town chores: resupply, mailing, gear procurement, and we were now featuring - clean clothes!

Along the Silva Creek, which runs through downtown Silver City.

With this, we went to the hotel we’d booked to see if we could check in. Originally, we hadn’t planned to get in to Silver City until today. Estimating this before we left Lordsburg, we booked a hotel downtown for Saturday and Sunday nights. This hotel was all booked up on Friday night, so coming in a day early, we’d had to find another hotel for last night.

Too early to check in, we made our way down the street to Jalisco’s Cafe for Mexican food. With the race route only a block away, the restaurant was slammed. It took quite awhile to get a table, but once we did, it was not long before we had giant plates of smothered burritos in front of us. Too much food, actually.

When the food arrives and you realize you could have shared one plate. We’ve made an error.

We finished just in time to watch some of the early laps of the men’s pro criterium and likely would have watched more if the wind wasn’t so dang cold. And so, we walked down the block to check into our hotel.

And this is where I stayed the rest of the day, cleaning gear and relaxing. Having had a late lunch, we didn’t even need to go out for dinner.

Hot Mess did make one additional trip out though, this time to go to a running store a bit further from downtown. He was in the market for different hiking shorts, not loving the ones he’d been hiking in.

Lucky for him, he was able to get ahold of Nathaniel (the local Uber driver) to get a ride up to the shop. As the only Uber driver in town, things are pretty loose, and sometimes rides are combined if people are going in the same direction. Especially when those people are thru hikers, who are typically all more than happy to share rides and get people where they need to be.

This said, Nathaniel asked Hot Mess if it was okay to pick someone up that was heading in the same direction. It turned out that someone was Mogul - from the Pungo and Mogul duo that started on the trail the same day as us. But the most shocking part was that Mogul’s face was a mess - two huge black eyes and a very scraped up nose.

Apparently he had tripped and fell four feet, smacking his face on a boulder. The result looked very painful. He and Pungo had bailed out from the trail at the nearest point possible and gotten a hitch into Silver City, where Mogul went to an Urgent Care, where they immediately told him that he needed to go to the ER.

Downtown Silver City is full of colorful buildings and beautiful murals.

Apparently, despite all this, Mogul was in pretty good spirits. He was going to rest up in Silver City for a few days and then planned to hit the trail again.

(Also, are we buying this Trippy McTripFace story, or do we think he and Pungo had a little scuffle? Investigation ongoing.)

And yes, somewhere in Hot Mess’ outing, he did procure new shorts. I know you were wondering.

Back at the hotel, it seemed that a previous guest had forgotten to log themselves out of their Paramount+ account, so we took advantage of this to watch the first several episodes of A Gentleman in Moscow. Thanks, Herbert!

And that was our day! Tomorrow we can actually sleep in… whether or not that tally happens, we’ll see… but at least it is a possibility.