Day 15 - Gila Cliff Dwellings

Date: Thu May 2

Start Mile: Gila River Alternate Mile 39.7

End Mile: Gila High Route Alternate Mile 7.7

Total (Alt) Trail Mileage: 10.7mi

Highlights: pizza, cliff dwellings, rattlesnake

Yesterday evening, Hot Mess walks up to me  and says, “Let me float a plan” - as if it was  something he thought I would turn down. His thoughts? Sleep in, jacuzzi, coffee and brekkie over at Doc Campbell’s, lazy morning, and hike out after pizza for lunch. Ummm… all this sounds great to me.

So this was basically the plan for the morning. But first… we woke up cold. I mean, I was warm in my sleeping bag, but the night had been COLD. Unexpectedly cold. Later one of our friends from the RVs would tell us his thermometer read 31.8°F. Cold.

Despite wanting to sleep in, a little after 6am, nature called. Since I would need to walk all the way down to the bathroom, I put on my down coat and gathered my toothbrush, toothpaste, and contacts. It was a bit of a haul from our tent site, and I may as well use a sink while we have one.

The building with the bathrooms was toasty warm, heated so nicely. After washing up, I looked at the plastic lawn chair in the bathroom. Maybe I’ll just stay in here for a bit. Is that weird? Naahhhhh. Nothing is weird on a thru hike.

And so, I plopped my butt down and finished writing yesterday’s blog, having been too tired to finish it last night.

After a bit, I figured I’d better go back, Hot Mess would wonder why I was taking so long in the bathroom. And, when I returned, he did wonder. He does know how warm it is in there though. When I got back, most people were up and milling about. Little Spoon was making coffee. Dr. Zoom was eating breakfast.

After a bit, most of those that had camped around us - Salt, McGuyver, SoCrates, Azul, Little Spoon, and even Hot Mess - all decided on a morning jacuzzi session. I went along and sat next to it with all of them, but didn’t feel like going through the rigamaroll of jacuzzi and shower again. Actually the clothes I wore into the jacuzzi last night were frozen stiff as a board on top of the tent this morning. I was now waiting for the sun to thaw them out.

Around 8am, Hot Mess and I went back across the street to Doc Campbell’s for hot coffee and microwaveable breakfast burritos, the breakfast of champions. I spent the next hour or so publishing the blogs I’d written on the trail over the past three days. By the time you read this blog, you will already have read the fruits of this labor. Coffee and slow image uploads on mediocre WiFi. Blogging from the trail has its challenges. Mostly cell service, which we have far less frequently than we did on the PCT.

Back over at our tent, I collected all of my thawing garments and packed my things. It was time to loiter around Doc’s some more. This time I attempted an Instagram post that will either go through four times or zero. Unsure at this point.

A little after 12pm, we scarfed down a pizza as everyone started to head out. Frozen pizza is always delicious on the trail for some reason. Always.

Azul started hiking down the road. Little Spoon, SoCrates, Sweetwater, and Confucius hopped a hitch up the road in a pickup truck - Sweetwater at this point a bit like a mob boss with Confucius, “Get yah stuff, Confucius, wah leavin’”, his thick accent pouring out. Shawn and I were soon hiking up the road as well, Salt, McGuyver, and Dr. Zoom would be on their way in a bit. Everyone was heading to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, which was just a short detour from the trailhead, about four miles up the road.

Only a few minutes after we started hiking, a camper van slowed to a stop along the road, the man asking us if we’d like a hitch. Maybe it was because I was still fresh in step, even with a pack loaded out with seven days of food, but we said we were fine, and the camper disappeared down the road. About 20 seconds later, I regretted this decision. “WAIT COME BACK!!!”

I talked about this back when we hitched into Silver City, but we aren’t doing anymore paved road walks. When we hiked the PCT, you could hike a continuous footpath from Mexico to Canada completely on trail, save a very few little road bits. And so, we kept a continuous footpath. This was something notable and special for us at the time. On the CDT, you cannot do the same thing. Due to private land ownership in several areas, there is no current way to connect certain trail sections without paved road walks. Some of them quite long.

If we can help it, we aren’t walking these stupid highways anymore. Very few people do… mostly because it sucks.

Anyway, we had blown our chance at a hitch today. We put a thumb out for every other vehicle that came by… and nothing. We walked our asses the 4+ miles to those cliff dwellings.

A little over a mile from the cliff dwellings, a van pulled up alongside of us. It was the fishing couple we had met yesterday. The guy rolled down his window. “Hey, we met you guys yesterday!,” he said.

“Oh hey!” Hot Mess replied. “We’re heading down to the trail. We’re thinking about going to the cliff dwellings, do you know how far they are?… Are they worth going to?”

Hot Mess is angling for a hitch… without directly asking for one. Can this guy read between the lines?

“Oh yeah,” the guy says, “If you get a chance, you should really go see it,” he says… and then drives down the road toward the cliff dwellings. The road literally dead ends in the Gila Cliff Dwellings parking lot.

Nope, can’t read between the lines. Or simply doesn’t want to give us a ride.

Gila Cliff Dwellings.

About five minutes later, the guy comes driving back toward us. This is like a Dumb and Dumber scene. Maybe he’s realized we were hoping for a ride and will pick us up.

He rolls down his window. “You’re almost there, it’s just around the bend!”

Thanks, buddy. Just the encouragement we needed!

It was actually around a few more bends, but we got there. Next time we will be more blunt and just ask for a ride.

We parked our packs behind the small building on site, adding them to several others that were there, got our briefing from the parks service guide, and were soon hiking the one mile loop that would circle around by the cliff dwellings.

The Gila Cliff Dwellings were settlements of the Mogollon peoples and date back to… a very long time ago … around 1200 AD, if I remember right. Feel free to look it up yourself, I don’t have the internet right now.

Hot Mess and I had actually visited some Native American cliff dwellings when we were in Flagstaff last fall, though these were far bigger and more impressive. We walked around through several of the dwelling spaces. Carved into the mountains, they were nice and cool.

Not too far down the trail after the dwellings, we ran right into a rattlesnake in the shade alongside the trail. The tail went up in a deep rattle. The head went up with a hiss. And we immediately went through standard rattle snake encounter protocol - stumbling backwards and away as quickly as possible. Then we had the stare down, from a distance, with the snake, and finally it took its time slithering across the trail and down the mountainside.

A very zoomed in photo of our rattle snake friend, because we backed very far away.

Now that we’ve had our requisite thru hike rattle snake encounter, we’ve met our quota! Just putting that out into the universe.

Back at the visitor center, Sweetwater, Confucius, Little Spoon, Azul, and Socrates all rested in the shade, four of the five of them probably exhausted after their hitch and one mile hike around the cliff dwelling loop. (I kid, we are just jealous).

We all started back down the road to the trailhead together. En route, Azul found some sun gloves along the side of the road. “Did anyone drop these?” She asked. Nope. Not any of ours. She set them on the base of a temporary road sign, hoping this would make them easy to see if someone came back for them.

Hot Mess and I with SoCrates and Azul.

A mile down the road, we were back to the trailhead. Everyone would be starting on the Gila High Route Alternate. Some would likely drop down to the Gila River Alternate at the turn off in a couple miles, though no one had really fully made up their mind. Even us. But we’d have to decide in a couple miles. For now, everyone topped off plenty of water since, if we did stay on the high route, we would be dry camping tonight, the first water source 13 miles down the trail.

I noticed as we were filling water bottles, Confucius suddenly had sun gloves. Weird.

All topped up, we set off, our packs heavy. Too heavy. The first part of the trail was exposed and hot, and though not super strenuous, everything feels strenuous with a heavy pack.

Continuing through more of the Gila Wilderness. The Gila National Forest has the illustrious designation of being the first National Forest in the country and is celebrating 100 years this year. I too feel like I am celebrating 100 years on this trail at only 15 days in.

We all broke apart as we got started up the trail and soon Hot Mess and I were alone again. Some ahead of us. Some behind us. When we got to the junction for our trail decision, we plopped down for a minute. The Middle Fork of the Gila River Alternate was supposed to be beautiful and the river crossings less difficult than the Lower Fork that we had navigated through the last couple days. This said, the route through the Middle Fork was about twice as long as the High Route and those miles would also likely take about twice as long, with the many river crossings. We had already done a lot of river work along the last section. And it would be such a slog with our heavy packs. We decided to stick to the High Route for now. There would be more junctions with the Gila River Alternate coming up, so there is potentially still more Gila River in our future.

We ended up happy with our choice to take the High Route. The trail eventually morphed into shaded forest and eventually contoured us along the mountainside, with beautiful views of the valley and other mountains in the distance. The trail was a mix of hearty trees like pines to desert scrub and cactus, a unique environment. The sections along the mountainside reminded me of the PCT with all the epic views.

After around eight miles, we found a great little tent space to post up for the night. After setting up, we cooked ramens for dinner and watched Survivor, which Shawn had downloaded back at Doc’s.

Watching TV on trail. What a time to be alive.

And now the stars are out, which means it’s goodnight time for me.