Heatwave and dirt: CDT Darby to Leadore

Day 24

Dirty days

Everything is sticky with sweat, sticky with dirt. I stare at the roof of my tent. The fine dust from hiking in burn scars seep through the fabric of my trail runners and the thick wool of my socks. I feel gross while I’m laying there, waiting for my breathing to slow down.

Somehow has become the worst part of the day. The end, when I throw down my pack, pull out my tent as quickly as possible to get out of the bugs, throw my things inside and climb into the little mosquito free space. That’s always when I realize how dirty, how tired and how wrecked I am.

Satisfactory kills

They’re everywhere now, all the time. While breaks used to be something to “treat” ourselves to, they’ve become unbearable. Filtering water at streams and lakes is torture. Thick horse shoe flies are circling us all day, waiting for an opportunity to bite us.

“A satisfactory kill” is what Robot and I have called it. Because once they bite, they attach and don’t fly off. You can kill them with an easy smack and watch them fall to the ground: one less.

Around 9 am, the heat starts. Boiling up until it feels unbearable by 1 pm, but where to go? Lay in the shade and be eaten by the mosquitos or hike through? No matter how many litres of water I chug, desperately sucking my water filter, I always feel dehydrated. Dried out. Exhausted. And sticky.

Smack! Another black fat fly falls to the ground. I set my alarm for 05:30, although it should be earlier. I need to night hike to get through this July madness, but I am too tired to keep going in the evenings.

Once my sweat has dried, I’ll feel better, I tell myself. Still laying in my tent staring at the green fabric. I’m having fun, I’m having fun, I’m having fun.

But are we?

Already half asleep, I pull my silk liner over my legs before spreading out my quilt. And by the time my watch will beep, the sun is just rising and the air has cooled down. Each morning, like miracles, my feet have recovered over night. And once my shoes hit the trail, heading to Mexico, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do all summer than walk this trail.

Rinse and repeat.

Day 25

You snooze, you sweat

Beep beep beep beep. My watch is urging me to wake up, but I’m too good at finding the right button without opening my eyes, turning the sound off. I’m tired. How can I go to sleep so early and still be tired?

But the heat doesn’t give me a choice: the earlier I’m hiking, the better. Soon I pass a DCF tent, shining blue metallic between the trees. I decide it’s too early to talk to anyone and just continue.

CDT = thru hiker exclusive

A steep climb leads to higher elevation. The heat is just about bearable here. The skin on my tan legs is dry and flaky. A mosquito is trying to crawl into my ear for the 200th time today. But the CDT is beautiful in this section, there’s water everywhere. Like a miracle, there are no mozzies at one of the lakes, so I go for a swim and rinse out my sweat stained shorts.

For the 25th time on this trail I’m thinking: it seems wrong that this trail is so empty. At the same time it feels like it belongs to us and to us alone. Thru hikers exclusive.

At night I’m organising my bear can and realize I can’t wait for the others to catch up. I don’t have enough food for 4 more days. I growl, not again.

Day 26

Guys with guns. Weird silence in meadows area. Tweedy, nobo female hiker. Ridge camp. Sunset over sunrise?*

*as you can tell this day was VERY exciting 😄

Day 27

“Ey, this dirt is my home”

“Weird” I’m thinking to myself while I leave the CDT and start bushwhacking. It’s 7 pm, my watch shows 32.19 miles. Time to camp, I decide.

A decision I’ve made 26 times on this trail before and it never appeared to me how strange it is to just say at the end of the day “okay, that’s it, where am I gonna camp?”

No destination, just wherever there’s a campsite. Or not. I might have to distinguish when thru hikers speak of a “campsite”, we mean a flat spot big enough to pitch a tent. Nothing more. Our „coming home“ at the end of the day is finding a spot in the dirt.

And while the PCT map was littered with the small brown camping icons. They are sparse on the CDT. Either because there are none, or they aren’t marked and hidden in the comments of other waypoints.

So now I’m bushwhacking east off the CDT because a person I’ve never met and will never meet, a person that is nothing more than a weird username on FarOut has commented that there’s good ridge spots. Because last year or the year before or the year before that, I don’t remember the time stamp of the comment, this stranger has also walked to here and was like “okay, that’s it, where am I gonna camp?”

Life is weird. Thru hiking is fucking weird.

So many more nights to come, just walking off the CDT, finding a place for my tent. That’s my life. Weird too.