CDT: Desert Magic and Tumbleweed Battles – Cuba to Grants

This stretch of the CDT from Cuba to Grants throws lots of tumbleweed and sparse water sources at us. And, we find ourselves immersed in some of the most jaw-dropping desert scenery yet — hoodoos glowing at sunset, vast tablelands, and rocky formations.

CDT Day 117 — A Front-Row Seat to Nature’s Raw Power

We leave Cuba the next day, pack out some burgers from McDonalds as sandwiches are nowhere to be found in this town. As we stroll down the road, Cuba’s quiet streets offer an unexpected spectacle — a truck, nose-first in a sewage-scented river. It veered off the road at 4 am, and now a few people gathered to watch the messy extraction. Thankfully, the driver is fine, though the scene is like something out of a small-town soap opera.

With no need to hitch — since the CDT runs right through town — we head out. The sky above us starts throwing mood swings, and soon we’re ducking under a roof to wait out a sudden downpour. Behind us, thunder rumbles and dark clouds churn like a doomsday painting, but ahead of us, the sky is bright and blue. We march on, sure the storm will catch us, but miraculously, it doesn’t. The mountains soak up all the rain, and I’m relieved we didn’t linger another day in this tumbleweed town.

We meet a local along the way who chuckles about Cuba being a “dead town” — exactly why he moved here after stints in San Diego and Durango. He reminisces about the glory days of Cuba, back when it had a movie theater and more life. Now it’s a mishmash of dollar stores, Mexican restaurants, a laundromat and motels — a sleepy place with just enough charm to remind you of its past.

The road walk out of town is a little scary. The roadside memorials — crosses marking lives lost — are a haunting backdrop, and a school bus races past us far too close for comfort. We didn’t hear it coming, and if one of us had put an arm out, it would be gone now. Relief washes over us when we reach the trail turnoff, a dirt road. Ryan scarfs down both his burgers in one go, stress-eating in his signature style. I’m the opposite, my stomach clenches up when I’m stressed.

The climb begins, and the desert reveals its radiant beauty. Below us, the floor stretches endlessly, framed by colorful cliffs and scattered hoodoos. I’ve always loved the desert, there is so much unexpected variety. After a brief hailstorm, the sun bursts back out, and we descend into a maze of rocks.

And then, the desert sunsets. Today, the cliffs glow molten orange, and the clouds above us blaze red, like the world is on fire. It’s easily one of the best sunsets we’ve seen on this trail.

Not long after, we find a campsite tucked between low trees, taking the hard-earned advice of others: don’t wait until it’s too dark to find a spot and don’t camp in a wash.

As the evening deepens, the sky delivers an encore: a lightning storm over a distant mountain range. There’s no thunder, just intense flashes every few seconds, illuminating the peaks like a natural strobe light. It’s mesmerizing and terrifying all at once, I’ve never seen anything like that. We’d heard horror stories from hikers caught in similar storms — some thinking they wouldn’t make it through alive — and I can see why. Watching from a safe distance, I feel a mix of awe and gratitude. 

CDT Day 118 — Tabletops and Hoodoos: A Feast for the Eyes, Not the Stomach

I managed to finally patch my airpad enough that I’m not waking up on the ground anymore, but sleeping on it still feels like lying on a sloshy waterbed. Seriously, where’s the innovation in sleeping pads? I wish for something sturdy like a foam pad, warm as an airpad, lightweight, and compact. This is the first thru-hike I’m giving airpads a try, and I’m still not convinced. The conditions on the CDT are simply too cold to risk it with a foampad. 

Despite questionable sleep, desert hiking has completely stolen my heart. I already fell in love with the desert on the PCT, in Southern California. This section is a surprise masterpiece — stunning cliffs, whimsical rock formations, and hoodoos rising like ancient sentinels over the vast valleys that look like dinosaurs could still roam here. Table mountains loom in the distance, growing closer with every step. Even the tiniest details — like oddly shaped cacti — catch my eye. I would love to take more time here to discover all that details. But we have to make choices if we want to get anywhere.

Our first water stop of the day is a spring tucked beneath an overhanging rock wall, trickling slowly but steadily from a pipe. Beside it, the remains of an old stone building whisper of a long-lost era. Shortly after, we run into 9 Lives, Sidequest, and the two Germans, all still cocooned in their tents. The only way Ryan and I manage to make miles and to keep up with other thru-hikers, is getting up fairly early (well, not early enough if you ask Ryan). We like indulging in longer lunch breaks and plenty of photo stops. There is a flabbergasting number of thru-hikers on the CDT that don’t take a lunch break. Just hike, hike, hike. We’re certainly more team “the last at the border wins” and I’m glad me and Ryan are on the same page with that.

It’s interesting to note that it’s not enough to find yourself a partner who loves hiking, and then the rare kind that loves thru-hiking. There is more to it: your hiking styles and paces need to somewhat match. There are the ones that want to hike big miles every day. The ones that don’t like to take zeros and the ones that do. The ones that love to explore the most challenging alternates and the ones that are challenged enough with the trail as it is. Tthe ones that love to rise early and the ones who don’t. The ones that like to hike fast and the ones that like to mosey around. The ones that want to test their limits and the ones that just want to enjoy their time in nature. The ones who love to socialize and the ones who want to get away from it. The ones that love to find the best food in town, and the ones who are on a tight budget. The ultralight hikers with their 24L backpacks and the ones who prefer more comfort.

It can cause a lot of friction if it doesn’t fit. There is a reason why most thru-hikers on the CDT are solo hikers that only pair up for a short bit if they didn’t start as a couple. We are all experienced enough to know what we want and what we don’t want. For most of us, it’s not the first thru-hike. We have a certain way of thru-hiking and most of us are not willing to adjust just to please other people at this point anymore.

Ryan and I are lucky to be on the same page about many things, like savoring the journey instead of racing through it. But there are differences — he’s all about pre-sunrise starts, while I prefer a post-sunrise mosey. He thrives in social situations, and I can’t wait to be alone again. But in general, we agree on the most.

Today, we take our lunch break on the top of a cliff, overlooking the valley. We listened to Stanley Tucci book about the joys of Italian cuisine while staring at our sad, cold-soaked mix of beans, rice, and ramen. It suddenly seems really sad. Four months in, and we’re over it. We vow to shake up our food routine — maybe bring tortilla wraps back into rotation. Or finding new variants. We recently paired our couscous with lentils, which is a refreshing twist, but we couldn’t find Couscous nor lentils in Cuba, so it was back to ramen. Bah. The choices are rather limited on a thru-hike and while we’re going bougie with our own dehydrated dinners (some better than others), lunch and snacks are still the same old things. Blessed are those who consider food simply fuel and can eat the same thing for months on end. Not us. We’re already dreaming of the Chinese buffet in Grants, three days away.

After 17 miles, we reach the next water source. It’s a rare great one as there is a hose and a pump, delivering clear, strong-flowing water. Whoever provided that one: Thank you!! Since Cuba, water sources are getting sparse, but the cooler fall temperatures make the long carries manageable — another perk of hiking southbound.

As the day fades, we find ourselves among a cluster of hoodoos, right in time to see the sun set behind them. Stepping closer, they look like giant elephant legs, with rough, textured surfaces resembling weathered skin. 

We hike on for a little longer until the last daylight vanishes. Colors from purple to pink to peachy are left on the horizon, rocks on one side, the valley with the table mountains on the other. We finally set up camp beside a sheltering tree. Only the ground is kind of rocky, what makes it difficult to get the tent stakes in. Nothing a heavy rock on top of them can’t fix — if it’s not getting windy overnight.

Time for dinner: bean soup with cheese, ramen, and tortilla chip crumbles, topped with green onions and a sprinkle of Tajín. Dessert? Homemade fruit leather. Stanley Tucci wouldn’t approve, but we’re fine with that. Bon appétit!

CDT Day 119 — The Fight with the Tumbleweed

We hit the trail at 7 am — too early for me. The sun didn’t rise yet and it’s cold. I’m like a lizard in the morning, sluggish and irritable until the sun warms me up. Grumpy, I make my way up and down the hills into the sunlight. I’m sure the views are lovely, but at this hour, I just can’t muster much appreciation.

Today, tumbleweed becomes my nemesis. It’s everywhere, clinging to every small depression in the trail and decorating my socks with tiny, painful thorns. My trekking poles become makeshift tumbleweed wranglers as I stab, scoop, and fling the offenders off the path. It’s an oddly satisfying, if slightly maddening, game.

The first real excitement comes with a muddy river crossing in a wash, likely swollen from recent rain. The water looks like chocolate milk and shallow at ankle depth. Do we wade through with shoes on or take them off? We opt for the latter, wincing as the icy water bites. Unfortunately, the aftermath is worse — thick, clay-like mud that clings to our feet and refuses to let go. We have a hard time getting it off the best we can, of course not without getting plenty of it into our socks anyway. While we’re sitting there and regretting our choices, 9 Lives and Sidequest come up, and we tell them about our experience. They decide to attempt to hop between dry spot and rocks, and they’re fairly successful with that tactic, staying mostly dry. Dang it. We live and we learn.

The day heats up, a stark contrast to the early morning, where I layered up in a downjacket and gloves. I start dreaming of charcuterie boards — anything but ramen and cold-soaked beans. Then, a potential beacon of hope appears: trail magic! Somewhere at the junction to a spring, according to FarOut comments, but I don’t see anything and am utterly disappointed. But then, on the way to the spring, we spot the pink color of the coolers on the side of the road. Inside: ginger ale and apples. So good.

We linger too long, savoring the treats and swapping stories with 9 Lives and Sidequest. They share an unsettling tale of Syrup and Peg Leg, who lost gear and food in a flash flood, still having 59 miles to hike to get to Grants, which they did in one push. What a crazy story. I guess they’re considered lucky to just lose gear and not their lives, but still. I would need quite some time to process this, mentally and physically.

The big climb of the day looms next — 1,600 meters up. A road walk alternative is available, but it’s longer and less appealing. We choose the official route, though the first climb combined with the heat of the day leaves me shaky and light-headed as my blood sugar crashes. Lunch under a shady tree brings me back to life. Our heated-up rice-bean-ramen mix turns out surprisingly delicious, like a trail version of risotto. I’m officially done with cold soaking. What an awful way to live.

While we’re sitting there, another hiker comes by. He belongs to the group that got flooded camping in the wash recently, having to go back to Cuba to dry out. I tell them about Syrups and Peg Legs story we just heard. He definitely got a bit luckier than them, having only to backtrack 15 miles and not losing anything.

Refueled, we tackle the climb in one steady push. It’s sweat inducing but manageable, with switchbacks and pine trees at the top offering sweet relief from the heat. And no spiky tumbleweed anymore! The reward is a flat, grassy plateau — easy hiking, but not much to see beyond the endless trees. We finally crush some miles today. We trudge on while we’re knocking out Stanley Tucci’s audiobook. It was surprisingly good and definitely caused quite some saliva and daydreams about food.

We hit another off-trail spring later in the day. It’s downhill and 0.4 miles out and back. There are some gallon bottles at the junction, but all empty. Ryan sacrifices himself going down to fetch water while I snack and relax — true trail hero behavior.

The trail turns into a dirt road for the next 20 miles. It’s a fast but monotonous stretch, so we focus on knocking out miles into the darkness. When we finally stop, we find a cozy spot among the trees, softly bedded on pine needles. Dinner time, my favorite time. On today’s menu: Pesto Pasta, one of our best dehydrated meals. Food really got me through today, from the trail magic to lunch to dinner.

CDT Day 120 — The Search

The morning greets us with a chill so sharp it feels like waking up in a freezer. Frost coats the grass around our campsite. Being higher up might have something to do with it. We hear footsteps passing by on the dirt road while it’s still dark outside — it must be the group of hikers I’ve dubbed “The Early Birds”, since they like to start 4:30 am. They told us they do this because they enjoy taking long breaks. I get it, but 4:30 am? Dang, that’s a level of discipline I’ll never understand. Not just because it’s so early, also because it’s so cold before the sun rises. 

Even after we start hiking at the less unholy hour of 7 am, it still takes a full hour of walking before the sun finally reaches us and I begin to thaw out. The trail follows a dirt road, and while it’s quick and easy hiking, there’s little to distract us. I barely take any photos — there’s just not much interesting to see. Today, the real story is water. There is one cache, but the natural sources are either dry or unappealing. The so-called American Tank does have water, but it’s murky, brown, and reeks of cow manure. Hard pass.

The Ojo Piedra Spring, 8 miles ahead, become my singular hope. It’s a decent climb to reach it, and I’m painfully aware of how little I’ve been drinking the last few days. There’s an alternate route up Mount Taylor that promises earlier water, but it also adds miles and elevation. 9 Lives and Sidequest opt for it, but we stick to the redline. Ryan and I are laser-focused on town — my airpad desperately needs fixing, I look forward to eating, hydrating and taking a shower. 

We’re sweating our way uphill, and I silently beg the spring to be flowing. When we finally arrive, the sweet sight of water — sweet, clear, and collected in two tubs — is relieving. The Early Bird group is lounging here, I didn’t think we were going to catch up with them. They were obviously right when they told us they like taking long breaks. 

We fill our bottles, and down some electrolyte-enhanced water. That should bring us to Grants, 24 miles away, even if there’s nothing to be found on the way. The temperature plummets while we rest, and patches of snow begin to appear as we hike on. The air is full of bizarre temperature shifts — cold pockets in the valleys, sudden warmth on the climbs. It’s surreal how much a few feet of elevation can make such a big difference.

Three miles later, we reach a trailhead with a pit toilet, famously reviewed in FarOut for its “soft toilet paper.” I’m excited, but it’s all gone by the time we get there. A bit of a letdown, the pit toilet is still nice, though. We decide to camp here for the night, and Ryan’s hangry mood is hitting hard — turns out he ran out of snacks after lunch and didn’t say anything. I urge him to take some of my beloved German sugar drops (I call them my emergency drops, as they act fast) to stabilize him while I pitch the tent. Tomorrow, we’ll reach Grants. Until then, the focus is on getting through the night, warm and fed. Dinner takes the edge off — though no matter how much pesto pasta we eat, the thought of that buffet looms large.

CDT Day 121 — Going into Grants: Guns and Buffets

18 miles left to Grants, mostly downhill — thankfully, the morning’s kinder today. No frost, just brisk air, and the promise of hot showers and buffets teasing us from beyond the horizon.

We pass through different zones of vegetation along the way, as we’ve been on a so-called “Sky Island” — high points, isolated from one another by low-lying desert areas. These unique features have high biodiversity due to the variations in habitat created by sharp elevation profiles. Start in a fir forest at the top, then step down to pines, then pine-oak woodland, chaparral, desert grassland and finally good old desert scrub. We go down through all of them, transitioning from one to the next until hitting the desert floor again.

At a viewpoint, we run into Shovel and Ready — our favorite Canadians — peering down at Grants far below. They have the bus picking them up at 2:15 pm in front of a prison, a couple of miles down the highway. We scarf down lunch with that view of Grants, already fantasizing about hot and sour soup and fried rice. Gunshots echo in the distance, which is less “serene wilderness” and more “Wild West.” When we get to the highway, it turns out there’s a shooting range nearby, plus a random spot where folks blast away at old mattresses and junk like cans, bottles and god knows what else. I picture middle-aged men coming here, shooting out their aggression and shouting “Die, mattress, die!!” The trail: where nature meets redneck therapy.

“Don’t pick up hitchhikers in this area,” a sign warns, courtesy of the nearby men’s prison. We hustle down the highway, but the bus comes 15 minutes earlier than scheduled by Shovel and Ready, and we watch it roll away like a cruel mirage. Shovel calls, agreeing they’re going to wait on the side of the road a bit further, and we break into a sweaty sprint that makes our packs jostle like caffeinated kangaroos. We catch the bus, huffing and puffing, relieved and dripping sweat, heading straight into Grants. 

Down at Motel 6, the air’s scorching, and it reminds me of the heat back in July. We take a shower, do laundry, and blast the AC. Followed by the long anticipated main event: the Chinese buffet with Shovel, Ready, 9 Lives, and Sidequest. We gorge ourselves sensibly — no repeat of that last painful buffet binge. Buffets always seem to whisper “You’ve made it this far. Have another cup of soup.”

Then, we wander Walmart’s fluorescent aisles for resupply. We never make it out of Walmart in under an hour, this time it takes us two. I’m scanning the shelves for snacks. I’m like a panda fussing over bamboo (Fun Fact: Pandas only eat around 30 different species, although there are more than 1,400 known species of bamboo). Of the hundreds of bars available in the USA, I like precisely two, and this Walmart doesn’t carry either of them. That causes a bit of a meltdown and I need to take a break by moving to the next item on the list. We settle on tortillas with cheese and pepperoni for this resupply. I don’t even want to look at couscous and ramen anymore. Get out of my face! 9 Lives and Sidequest have similar struggles. After over four months of hiking and eating more or less the same things every day, we are all just sick of it. Still, in a few days, we’ll be back on trail, gnawing on tortillas and daydreaming about the next town feast. Getting back to the snack aisle and staring at all the options for far too long, I decide to try some new options. It’s only 4 days. I can make it, right?