I had a plan. All this driving would be worth it.

The Continental Divide Trail Coalition holds their kickoff weekend in Silver City, New Mexico every year, and 2024 marked their 10 year anniversary as a trail gateway community. That means: PARTY!

You may remember I’ve attended the CDT Kickoff before…I believe this is my fourth, and since I was in the neighborhood for the eclipse, I decided to add it to my spring adventure list.

I had a few days of unscheduled time (swoon) before the festivities would begin, and I wanted to hike. Just north of Silver City, the CDT splits into the Black Range or the Gila River Alternate. In 2015, I took the Gila River route up the Middle Fork (amazing), and Kirk and I packrafted the Middle Fork down in March 2020 (the “You Can’t Plan A Pandemic” trip).

So I immediately thought of hiking the Black Range south into Silver City, it was the unknown! I could get a shuttle up the trail and then walk back to town, but fires and lack of water made that route a challenge.

After talking to my pal Allgood (Mr. Whitney LaRuffa), who was also going to CDT Days, we decided to hike a few days in the Gila instead.

For this trip, we would walk up the West Fork for 10ish miles, and up, over, and back down the Middle Fork for a loop of 45ish miles. Of course, spring floods would have to be factored in…floods took out the trails almost every year, so I had mapped out options, and our options had options. We would figure it out.

And! This would be my first time hiking with Allgood. We have been friends for, oh, about 15 years now. He was the CDT Trail Ambassador for his 2016 thru-hike after I was for my 2015 thru. He then came up to hike the Oregon Desert Trail, but again, we didn’t hike together. Add in the fact that he is my birthday brother (born a few days after me in June 1977) and had helped groundtruth the Blue Mountains Trail at the same time I was out there in 2020 (see: The Intrepid Trio), this hike had to happen. Allgood had been back to Trail Days almost every year and often tacked on a hike into the Gila or Black Range; hiking before CDT Days is tradition for him.

We planned four days of luxurious 15-mile days in two of the most beautiful canyons in the world.

I drove into town after dropping Cindy off at the El Paso Airport and straight to Bob’s. Bob had been Allgood’s boss when he worked for Triple Crown Hats (the very hat company that made our the Oregon Desert Trail hats). I had also designed some national park logos for their line, so it was wonderful to see him again; Bob very graciously hosted us for the night, and after I oogled his beautiful adobe home, we went out for dinner and beers.

We drove up to Santa Clara to Open Space, a new thru-hiker owned brewery. I will probably get my facts wrong, but Highlight and Brew Hiker met on their CDT thru-hike a few years ago, fell in love, and decided to return to Silver City to start a brewery. My people! We enjoyed a frosty one in the courtyard while a band played, and kids ran around and around us in a “the parents aren’t watching” delirium.

Next, we stopped at a wood fired pizza place that probably had the coolest vibes ever. It was another music venue with several stages and an amazing view into the darkening desert sky.

My people!

I love this place.

Silver City is a community of artists and eclectic personalities. My artist friend Erika lives here with her bike-maker partner, and I’d be seeing her this trip too, but first hiking.

On the way out of town, we swung by to see Teresa (the ED of the CDTC) and then drove in the long, windy road into the Gila. We swung by Doc Campbell’s a resupply stop for CDT hikers and perused the store. I had been in touch with Kristy (a new owner since I had hiked through in 15) because I had asked her to participate in a talk I was doing that weekend (more on that later). We were chatting when I spy someone new who had walked in the store.

Nah, it wouldn’t be her.

I look again.

I think it’s her.

“Renee!”

It’s her!

It was Joanna, a coworker from the Oregon Natural Desert Association! She had left ONDA about the same time as I had last year and moved to Albuquerque to work on water conservation in the Colorado River Basin. A hard-hitting bad-ass conservation job if I’ve ever heard of one.

We hugged and caught up. She was a fellow backpacker, too, and had been down for the weekend exploring the Gila Cliff Dwellings and hiking. I love it! My people!

We drove to the West Fork trailhead. The water had spiked a day or so ago but looked doable. I say doable because much of the walking in both canyons would be in the water. Countless river crossings from one bank to the other created a gauntlet of challenges if water was high. When we got to the first crossing, it looked doable.

The highest the crossings got was mid-thigh, and we could almost always see the bottom in the slowly green-blue moving water. After maybe the 5th crossing, we met some backpackers hiking out. We were able to get beta on the trail ahead. Apparently the crossings get increasingly deep and sketch, but we think they were also crossing during the river’s spike, and a cooling trend in the next day would hopefully slow down the snow melt for us…it could be a perfect time to hike this trail.

The canyon walls will have to speak for themselves:

We meandered in about five miles before seeing a camp in a big clearing with an incredible view of rocks that were layered and puzzled into a maze of pillars.

Delight.