Buck30 - Mogollon Rim Trail Journal - 2019

Mongollon Rim Trail Day 29

Oh man, the MRT took its pound of flesh from us on our last day. The 20
miles we captured today were the hardest of the trail for us. So slow but
so amazing. Really it was probably also the best day on the entire trail.
So many random thing I think I'll just bullet point the day:

--Started off walking down Auger canyon which was cool. Some slickrock
canyon with some pools here and there that I was able to easily climb
around.

--Exiting the canyon we climbed out and pretty quickly lost our way. The
track seemed mapped a bit strange taking us across a deep drainage. We
veered off on our own after one bad drainage where I actually took a fall
and skinned my hand a bit. After that we did better and made our way XC
eventually picking up some old cairns and trail.

--Dropped down into Dutch Blue Creek and then the Little Blue Box which was
a really awesome slot canyon. Super narrow and scenic. Exiting the slots we
walked miles of rocks. Many many rocks in the creek bed! At this point it
had been about 9 miles of great walking but very slow.

--Arrived back at the Blue River which we were at a few days ago although
this time we were going downstream and not upstream. From the hikers in
front of us we knew we would have a struggle to find the trail that climbed
from the river. With the benefit of that knowledge we decided to just get
up to where we felt the trail would be for sure and started climbing from
the Baseline Trail sign, losing all evidence of a trail immediately but
pretty easily making our way up to a rocky point a couple hundred feet up.
From there we dropped down 20' or so to a saddle and old fence gate and
picked up OK trail.

--And now the day got very tiring. We had a 2,500' climb up a ridge and the
trail was just so rugged that it exhausted us after what we had already
done so far today. We generally stayed on the trail the whole way but it
had this feeling that if you messed up it would be a good place to never be
found. Just super remote and rugged terrain. But ultimately we were just
following a ridge with little highpoints so the navigation was actually
pretty straightforward.

--We topped out at 7,000' having had amazing views for hours now and had 2
more miles of contouring around some drainages on slightly better trail and
were really waiting for the moment our feet would touch dirt road. Heather
was going to kiss it but the trail basically just turned from trail to
super old dirt rocky road. We wanted good road! But it turned out fine, it
got better and better and the walking was easy.

--We decided to push on and just make the NM state line tonight. It was
about 5 miles of the dirt roads and went by pretty quick. I drank from one
last dirt cattle pond that had a lot of water but wasn't quite as clear and
then we hit a fence that was the state line. No sign :( MRT done!

It was rather windy after having had a great day of sunshine. It was almost
hot at one point. We walked around for a while until we could find some
ground that wasn't full of rocks and also had a juniper to block the wind.

I'd end the journal here and not mention the 10 miles of dirt road we had
to walk out to civilization except it was quite exciting. We woke early and
Heather had reception and said the forecast had a 3% chance of rain and the
radar was showing nothing. This surprised me as on 2 sides of us the sky
was incredibly black. We walked a few miles and the sprinkles started to
come. There was just a wall of rain on 2 sides of us coming yet the radar
showed nothing. How is this possible? Isn't Doplar radar just science or
whatever? Like how could it be raining that badly and not show up on radar.
We walked the last 90 minutes in a solid rain with high winds driving it
sideways. We stayed pretty dry with our umbrellas angled though. Of course
the moment we hit the paved road the rain stopped and obviously the only
cafe was closed on a Thursday cause that seems like an obvious day to be
closed plus the MRT seems to hate us. Did this to us in Forest Lakes too.
We got celebratory cans of soda and frozen burritos at the Alma store and
then went out to hitch to Silver City for what we expected would be a very
long time. It was a great hitching spot with a wide turnout and cars
driving pretty slow but traffic was light. It took us a half hour to
realize that the cars coming always in groups must have been held up at a
construction zone. But amazingly after less than an hour a technical guy
for the construction project stopped for us and knew all about the CDT and
GET and always picks up hikers. Great hitch and a great guy.

From Silver City we will make our way around to Lovelock, Nevada and start
a flip flop hike of the Desert Trail after the holiday weekend. For now its
rest and travel. This journal will switch over to that trail soon.

We both really enjoyed the MRT. Thanks Blisterfree and Tree!

Entry 30 of 30
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