Part Eighty

     December 8th – 11th                San Isidro Valley                           (Go to Pt 1)

The next morning I was in no rush to wake-up and after I did wake-up, I continued to be in no rush.  I was still tired from yesterday’s backpacker’ sprint across the reservation and with Llaves only 12 miles to the south, I was already planning for an easy day.

Too bad, planning on an ‘easy’ day only guaranteed the hours would drag like a 150lb anvil tied around my neck, and sure enough, it took me all day to do a four hour hike.  It was a recurring pattern on this trip where ‘easy’ would inevitably morph into lazy, and then my lazy-ass wouldn’t want to do a damn thing, especially hike with a pack.  Naturally, lazy-ass didn’t go anywhere without procrastinating first, so by the time I got into camp it was late in the day and I felt like I’d put in 25 miles.

Llaves consisted of a gas station and possibly one or two other buildings.  The garage, which at one time was white plaster, was a yellowed, dirt-blasted beige, and the foul restroom where I filled my bottles with rusty water made me wonder what it was I was about to drink.
​
I set up my tent in the woods behind the garage and the next morning I wasn’t feeling a lot of enthusiasm for continuing down the valley but there wasn’t much to do in Llaves, so without urgency, but without delay, I got my stuff packed and, last thing, filled my containers with the rust colored water from the gas station.

My hike continued along the gravel road and varied little over the course of the day with the exception of a long, razor-backed ridge of rock shooting straight up out of the center of the valley for almost a mile, which was pretty cool.  But then, later in the afternoon, when I finally arrived at Hatch Lake where I planned to camp, I was left staring dumbfoundedly at a dry lakebed, which was decidedly not cool.

When I’d filled my bottles in Llaves, I was counting on there being water in Hatch Lake, in fact, it never even occurred to me that there wouldn’t be water in the lake.  I had only brought with me enough water to get through the day, plus a little, and now I was going to have to make do with what was left, which wasn’t that much.

Click on the map for a larger image

As I looked around, I could hardly believe how desolate the place was.  The shoreline of the dried-up lake was landscaped with haggard sagebrush growing out of parched gravel, and wind sweeping across the dry lakebed kept blowing grit into my eyes.  I finally retreated to the tent to get out of the blowing dirt, only to sit cramped inside wondering, what now?

I had decided to save the water I had for drinking, not cooking, so with that highlight of the day cancelled I had to resort to a granola bar and cheese for dinner.  Radio had good reception but not in English, and I wasn’t much in the mood for the Hobbit story, either. For the most part, I just sat in the tent and worried about the rest of New Mexico and what this dried-up lake indicated.

All in all, Hatch Lake turned out to be a pretty crappy camp and one that I was more than happy to leave behind in the morning.  From the ‘lake’, I continued south along the hammered, gravel road until I eventually came up to a small, farm house set back from the road with a yard pump.  Mmm… water.

I dropped my pack, pulled out a couple of my empty water bottles and started for the house when a jovial looking fellow came out the front door to greet me. I held up my empty bottles and he understood saying “Si, si…” pointing to the yard pump.   By the time I had my bottles filled, Grandma and two small children were on the porch, watching intently.

​The rest of the day got me down to the tiny town of Cuba where I was again planning to camp behind whatever was there until I discovered Cuba had an Inn, The Cuba Inn. Well, hell yeah, sign me up!  The past number of days had been unusually dirty and by now a fine grit had sifted into almost everything, so the motel stop gave me a chance to shake out the dirt, wash the cook pots, rinse sand off the cheese, and take a shower.

Click on the map for a larger image

The Cuba Inn was the perfect re-set, but my ending up in Cuba was going to be costly.  While I had been following water sources southward, the Continental Divide had been angling away to the west, such that the Divide was now practically 30 miles west of where I was, out in some wasteland.  I was going to have to figure out how to get back out there but water, damnit, where was the water?

When Craig and I had planned this trip to start in Canada and finish in Mexico, we did so thinking it would be best to save the easiest state, New Mexico, for last, and that we would be better off in New Mexico in December as opposed to northern Montana.  Fact is, we didn’t give the state all that much thought, figuring that if we ever did get to New Mexico, the rest would be a cake walk.  Yeah, well, not so fast Paco.

What we had failed to properly consider was that December in New Mexico would be dryer than a popcorn fart and nearly all of the natural water sources would be dry.  Hell, even the lakes were gone by now, forget about the streams.  For a foreigner like myself, the only water I was likely to find out in the San Isidro Valley this time of year would be from the people who lived out there.

Besides the water issue, I was also a long ways off of the detailed maps I had, and that left me navigating off of the Albuquerque, 250,000 series map.  In the mountains, navigating off of 250 maps scared me to death, but out in the emptiness where I was going, it was possible this 250 map would have the information I needed, namely roads crossing no man’s land.

As I sat with my map trying to link together camps and water sources, I saw a spot out in the middle of absolutely nowhere marked as the Johnson Trading Post.  The trading post looked to be about a day’s walk south and west of Cuba, and southwest from there, another trading post called Torreon looked to be another day’s walk.  The distances were about right and I figured these trading posts would have water and someplace for me to camp.

In the morning, I filled all of my water containers at the Inn then started the lonely walk out to the San Isidro Valley.  A couple of miles beyond Cuba, I stood looking at countryside so vast and barren as to make the thought of walking it seem ludicrous.  To cross the emptiness I was looking at would have been tedious by car; it was going to be interminable by foot.

As the day toiled on, hours, miles, and distances elongated, and the solitary confinement of my mind could not stop feeding on impatience.  It was “How much longer to that rock?”  “How much longer to those bushes?”  “How much longer to that curve?”  All day long.

The road I was following was the main access into and out of the San Isidro Valley and the occasional, rag-tag vehicle coming from or going to the valley did add at least some sense of security, knowing there were other people out there.  I was a little surprised, though, by the number of unidentified, dirt roads branching off into the emptiness, many of which were not shown on my map.
​
At 4:30 in the afternoon I was coming up to a bend in the road where I was expecting to find this Johnson Trading Post shown on my map when I began to sense something wasn’t right.  Like, where was the trading post?  As I rounded the curve, all I saw was a boarded-up and abandoned building with junk cars around back.  What the fuck?

For 17 miles I had been imagining this ‘trading post’ as an oasis of amenities, you know, with not just cold water on hand but possibly some tacos, and beer, in a beer garden, with palm trees and a waterfall, and maybe a mariachi band – and this was it?  Had I strayed off onto the wrong road?  The abandoned building had nothing to offer and I didn’t know if I was lost… or what.

I still had water enough to get down to Torreon, another 12 miles away, but then I thought, what if there’s nothing there, as well?  If Torreon was abandoned like this place then I was going to run out of water. I felt a twang of panic and my impatience went into overdrive.

I spent two minutes looking at the abandoned building before turning up the road to resume hiking with a stepped-up and anxious pace.  I hated not knowing where my next water supply was coming from and I really wanted to find water before stopping to camp until an hour later when I ultimately concluded, that wasn’t going to happen.
​
By then, a couple of pickups had driven by to indicate I was still on the main road, not lost, and I had enough water to get me through another day.  I was tired, my feet were sore, and after vigorous debate I was able to convince myself that I wasn’t going to die of thirst, at least not right away, so I wandered from the road to make camp back up in the brush.

---

Go to Part 81

---

The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

---