Day 71 – 75 The basin

Day 71

Cowboy camped for the first time on the CDT last night. On the PCT, it was the norm for the first 700 miles or so. Cowboy camping is just sleeping under the stars (or, in this case, a bridge) without setting up a tent.

First full day in the basin. Ran into a former thru hiker, Seth, car camping by one of the water sources and hung out and chatted for a bit under his sun tarp. A small but fairly intense storm rolled thru so I waited for it to blow over.

Also saw a water cache, though I ended up not using it. By the time I knew what it was I had already planned around other sources. I hiked the PCT without using them. I’m curious if that’ll be possible here; though the New Mexico boot heel is *really* dry. And the caches there are part of the border shuttle fee, anyhow.

Aside from that, hiking thru the basin is on the monotonous side. It’s not hard, though I’m not hiking as fast as I had expected. Not sure if it’s from holding the umbrella or walking in fairly soft sand but I’m going slower than anticipated.

Day 72

Today was a mixture of a slog along dirt roads and looking up to see cool wildlife.

The wildlife for the day are some, I think, whitetail deer that I originally thought were pronghorn antelope because of how fast they were. Also saw a number of wild horses.

And cows. They’ve been few and far between except at for a handful at some water sources. Except for the last water source for the day. A beautiful piped spring where I had dinner while being stared at by a large herd of cows.

Saw two people today. A northbound hiker, Happy Ending, and Tangent, who caught me while doing a 24 hour challenge. He’s trying to hike 80 miles or so in a day.

One more full day of the basin.

Day 73

Windy day. The actual hiking was the same as the past few days, but with strong, sustained wind and gusts. This made the sun umbrella impractical. It also made me look like I was walking drunk as the wind gusted and stopped.

At the last water for the day, I completely submerged my shoes in mud. Nearly lost one of my shoes.

I was sitting around and considering what I could do when Quickdraw and 3 other hikers showed up. After seeing 1-2 people all day for a few days it seemed like a crowd.

Town tomorrow!

Day 74

Harder walk into Rawlins than I anticipated.  The trail was hard to follow.  It was easy ish bushwhacking though I kicked a couple cacti. Eventually gave up and walked along the road for an extra few miles before town.  Though I got into town by early afternoon. 

On the walk in someone stopped (apparently Beekeeper’s dad) with trail magic.  He mentioned he had Gatorade and other stuff (I kinda stopped listening at Gatorade) in the back.  Gatorade plus a donut made the walk into town much better.  Less positively, later on the walk in some dingbat tried to coal roll me but was too far away.

Ended up with a room at the (very new) great’ful goat hostel.  Quickdraw, Tropical, and Extra showed up later and we had a bit of a slow town day with some drinking and playing pool.

Day 75

Short post.   Decided to zero in town and also to skip the next town, Encampment.  It’s one less hitch.  And I feel like I’m running low on time to get thru Colorado.  Also later realized that it’s labor day and I wouldn’t have been able to get my shoes from the PO Monday.  That would’ve been *really* frustrating.