Day 17 - Fast Forward to Pie Town

Date: Sat May 4

Start Mile: Gila River Alternate Mile 80.4

End Mile: Gila River Alternate Mile 96.2

Total (Alt) Trail Mileage: 15.8 mi

Hitch Mileage: ~90 miles (2 hitches)

Highlights: saviors with cars

Well, this section has been truncated. It was a day.

The morning dawned very cold, once again. The last two nights we’ve been camped fairly high, over 7000 feet (~2100 m), and the mornings have been very chilly. We don’t have a temperature gauge along, but our half frozen water bottles let us know that temps dropped below freezing over night.

I’ve been pulling my electronics into the sleeping bag with me at night to make sure the batteries don’t die. My water filter also comes in so the interior doesn’t freeze. And my hiking clothes, so they’re warm in the morning. And a set of gloves for the same reason. I use a stuff sack with my down jacket and mitts for a pillow. In fact, there’s scarcely any room left in the bag for me. It’s very homey in there.

When I wake in the morning, I change my clothes and do as many things as I can from inside the sleeping bag to keep warm as long as possible. Like a magician.

Once everything is packed, we tear down the tent, brush our teeth, and pack our last little stuffs. Even wearing my gloves through all of this, my hands have been freezing by the time we start hiking. This morning I broke out my down mitts for the first time, so my fingers warmed up more quickly as we hiked.

Our hike started by following the Middle Fork of the Gila up a small canyon, the Gila a small stream at this point. The trail weaved back and forth across the river, simple rock hops here, before meandering up through some steep hillsides and turning into a grass and gravel road.

We passed our time chatting, playing the ABC game - food may not have been the best category, and eventually listening to podcasts. Somewhere along this section, I started to not feel so great. Like maybe a fever was starting. My stomach was starting to knot up a bit, though I wasn’t nauseous. Just not feeling great.

The trail eventually turned onto a more established dirt road through ponderosa pine. Though the road walking was easy going - mostly flat and downhill - my pace was slowing as I felt worse and worse.

Around 12-13 miles into the day, we pulled up onto the side of the road for a lunch break. I lay out my mat for a nap (as I type this it sounds like kindergarten), while Hot Mess was nice enough to cook me some ramens.

After lunch and a bit of a rest, we continued along the road. I still wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t great since we were basically in the middle of nowhere and had another four days of hiking to get to our next resupply stop. Would I get worse? Hard to say. I wasn’t on my death bed, but if I had an option, I wouldn’t be hiking. I’d be sleeping.

We decided if we were lucky enough to see anyone driving down the road we’d thumb it and see if we could get a hitch down to Apache Junction, which was the intersection of Highways 12 and 32. From here we would have a number of other hitching options.

It just so happened that we were lucky enough. Our savior was Mary, who pulled up in a 4WD SUV with her Siberian Husky Zeke and quickly made room for us in her vehicle for the roughly 25-30 mile ride down the mountain road to Apache Junction.

Mary was fantastic, we couldn’t have asked for a better hitch. As she drove, she told us about the area and a number of wildfires that had caused several of the burn areas that we drove through. The landscape was a patchwork quilt of healthy forest and burn scars. On the way down, we passed some fire crews out doing a prescribed burn. As the least populated county in New Mexico, everyone seemed to know each other. Mary stopped and chatted briefly with the workers, who she knew by name.

Down near Apache Junction, she drove us down the road to fill up our water bottles in case we needed to camp for the night, but then dropped us off at the Apache Creek Store to decide on our next move.

We had a few options, but ultimately our next move was to try our hand at hitching to Pie Town, or at least partway to the town of Quemado. While fifteen or more cars whizzed by, a nice man by the name of Jeff was our next hero. Not only could Jeff take us to Quemado, he could take us all the way to Pie Town. The unlikelihood of anyone heading to Pie Town cannot be overstated. Pie Town has a population of 178ish people and, not to be rude, but almost no reason to go there or even pass through. It is not on the way to anywhere. But Jeff just happened to be heading to a little musical shindig with some stargazing friends at a place just outside of Pie Town. Our lucky day.

Jeff was from Santa Fe and had made a day of driving a loop through this area with plans to head back to Santa Fe later tonight. He was fascinated by the geology of the area, pointing out what he thought was the geological cause or history of some areas, theorizing others. He pointed out the names of some of the mountains that he knew and even stopped for a couple pictures. Like Mary, he was very nice to talk to and asked all kinds of questions about our hike. With good conversation, the hour long drive went by quickly.

I have to say, much of this was a beautiful drive. Honestly far more scenic than most of what we’d seen on the trail the last couple days, which had been a lot of dirt roads. It almost made me angry. Why doesn’t the trail route through any of this?

But I digress. It was a very nice ride and soon we were being dropped off at the famed Toaster House, the fence around the property festooned in, you guessed it: toasters.

The Toaster House has operated as a bit of a hiker hostel for the last 20-30 years, originally operated by the woman who owned it. While she passed away within the last year or so, her children have basically left the house to the hikers, letting those passing through use the house facilities, which include some bunk rooms, a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a nice large patio. The walls were plastered with years of trail/outdoor literature, pictures, postcards and maps. The kitchen shelves were filled with canned goods - some older than others - while the shelves in the living room were overflowing with books and random knick knacks. It was an eclectic place.

Having now jumped ahead a few days on the trail, there was only one hiker that we knew here: Mash. We had met Mash in the Lordsburg McDonalds. He’d hiked into Lordsburg the same morning as we had, though hiked back out the very same day while we had take a zero and not hiked out until two days later. He was now making his very quick-paced miles with a hiker named Cinnabun.

Apparently there had been quite a large group at the house the previous night, but tonight there were only 8 to 10 people. While all of the rooms and beds were claimed, Shawn and I spread out our sleep stuff on the living room floor.

After showering, we made camp dinners (though on an actual stove), and chatted with the other hikers. In addition to the two mentioned, there were two couples in their 50s or 60s, one set was hiking while the other set had previously done the hike and was now doing the trail by bike. I guess they really liked this trail.

Among a few others, we also met Dirty Bird, a hiker whose name we recognized from water updates in our mapping app.

Naturally, much of the chatter went to hikers that we’d met and the upcoming trail. There were two possibilities for the hike to Grants, though there were almost no reliable water sources along the ‘red line’ (the official CDT), which was forcing hikers to take an alternate route (the ‘brown line’). The trail through this area had been quite the rainbow of alternates and options, though lately the best choices conspired to keep us off the red line.

One other piece of chatter was a warning that Mash and Cinnabun had received from a Yosemite-Sam-mustachioed man at Top of the World. “Watch out for a guy coming around there wearing jeans,” the man had said of the Toaster House. Naturally, once it becomes known that there is a house in town with no permanent custodian, doors always open, hikers are not the only ones that find out about it. Almost as if on cue, within the next thirty minutes a man in jeans came in the door. Why does it matter that he’s in jeans? No hikers are wearing jeans. “Is there an open room here?”

“No. No open rooms,” Dirty Bird said, which was the truth. And the man left.

And that was most of the excitement for the night. Exhausted, we finished setting up our stuff in the living room and soon it was lights out. I was feeling slightly better, but happy to finally lie down. Lucky for us, there weren’t any late night party animals and the house was soon dark and quiet.