Quick Update - CDT Grants to Cuba!

Rachel and I finished the Zion traverse which was epic and hitched back to Kanab, Utah.  We then hitched 220 miles from Kanab back down to Flagstaff, stayed in a motel and took a 4:30 am train to Gallup, NM.  Another 60 mile hitch and we were in Grants, at the wonderful Mumms - trail angels who offer rides and a place to mail stuff to as well as water and trail information.  We could even see Mt. Taylor from town, which is a former super volcano just like Mt. Humphrey's near Flagstaff.  Rachel and I called Humphrey's the pointy mountain, while Taylor is the lumpy mountain since it's very wide and gradually slopes to a dull knob at the top.

We also met our first two CDT through hikers - Picker and Greg, hung out with them and stayed in another motel in Grants.  The next morning we set out for the trail and began the first 111 mile section of the CDT to Cuba.  The New Mexican desert seemed very similar to northern Arizona at first, especially coming over Mt. Taylor (11,300 ft) and the 25ish mile long dirt road walk afterwards, but we quickly dropped into beautiful open mesa country.  We also met several more CDT hikers, we're up to over 10 now (more than we met on the entire 800 mile AZT).

Here in Cuba we ran into Carrot Quinn and Spark who I hiked part of the PCT with in 2013 (and the rest of "team dick butt") at the McDonalds before they left a day ahead of us.

So far the trail has been well marked, easy to follow and fairly scenic.  We hear it gets even better going into Ghost Ranch - our next resu
pply 53 miles away.  Unfortunately, our low snow year in southern CO was decimated by a series of storms that dropped several feet of snow.  We're taking our time to give the snow time to melt/consolidate and hoping we won't need snow shoes if we can get there in 10 days or so.

Photo's are here!