Gila River

A few days ago we finished the Gila River alternate route on the CDT. It diverges from the official CDT for approximately 100 miles and 56 of those miles are, not parallel to the river, they ARE the river

It is the most unique section of trail I have ever been on. While it was incredibly challenging to follow the trail where it was overgrown with stickers and cacti, completely washed away by floods, or led us through waist deep water, it was the most fun I’ve had so far. It felt like we were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid running through desert brush and wading across water to throw the law off our scent

The trail would have been 100x harder if the water was up to our chins and we had to swim the river. That’s how it was from Truman’s vantage point and he was fearless

Sean also completed about 60 miles of this section with a terrible undiagnosed illness that gave him flu-like symptoms (though it has since been confirmed to not be the flu, strep, or COVID so who knows!)

I had never heard of the Gila before I was walking on it and it’s the most magical place I’ve hiked This proves that there are hidden wonders EVERYWHERE if we look around us. Everyone wants to hike in the National Parks or the famous spots they saw on Instagram but if we just walk into the woods with a sense of adventure we might discover a new magical place, such as this

Chiricahua Apache land