Gila R- Middle Fork Day 2

We were up before sunrise to get a jump on the day. Breakfast in our hammocks and packed up early, we were on the trail before the sun. As we moved along the trail by headlamp, the blackness seemed blacker, the canyon walls seem higher, and we seemed smaller. But when the sunlight finally graced the upper walls of the canyon our spirits rose.

Today we would walk the 4 miles up to the Meadows and then head into the canyon wilderness of the less traveled sections of the Middle Fork. Territory neither of us had ever been on. There were rumors of no trail, lots of blow downs, and chest deep river crossings in that section of the canyon. Not a recipe for quick transit.

Squallow was a CDT southbound thru-hiker we encountered as we approached the Meadows. Having just come through the unknown part of the canyon, we quizzed him about conditions. He reassured us that it wasn’t too bad. A short time later Fink, another thru-hiker, told us the same thing, so we were feeling pretty good. That is until we met the third thru-hiker. We never got his name, but he had nothing good to say about the route ahead of us. Confirming my fears of no trail, deep fords, and blow downs, he just wanted to get out of the canyon. It was the worst piece of trail on the entire 3,000 miles of the CDT according to him. He was fed up with the trail and everything. So with that bit of bad news we arrived at the Meadows.

The Meadows is a wide place in the Middle Fork canyon and a trail junction area, with a switchback trail that eventually leads back to the trailhead we started from. A trail that the majority of backpackers take out of the canyon here. But there is another “trail” from here that continues in the canyon up the river. And that is the trail Cappuccino and I have chosen to take. Shaken by the news from the last thru-hiker, we stopped for lunch and discussed whether we wanted to attempt it or not. We finally decided that we would give it a go and if it was too hard we could always turn around and head back to the meadows.

So after lunch we followed a faint trail upstream through the canyon. That trail disappeared at the first river crossing, but a look at my GPS showed the way and we moved ahead finding another piece of trail on the other side. That too faded way, but GPS led us to the next piece of tread. And so it continued as we made our way up the canyon, mostly on trail with short segments of bushwhacking and frequent GPS consults. It was slow going, but not hard. There were one or two blow downs, but no deep crossings. In fact, it was pretty nice. The canyon narrowed to a hundred feet across in a few places and the 800 foot walls on both sides made it even more impressive.

But by 5PM we had only come 9 miles from our camp of last night and we were bushed. We found an old horse camp area to set up our hammocks and called it a day. Or, I called it a day. Cappuccino wanted to keep going. We had gotten to the junction with the Prior Cabin Trail that could take us up and out of the Middle Fork canyon and take us over to the West Fork canyon. My original plan had been to continue up the Middle Fork canyon for another 10 miles then cross over to the West Fork, but our rate of travel in these sketchy canyons will make that impossible in the time we have left. Plus the rain is supposed to move in tomorrow, possibly make the river more dangerous.

We have decided to shorten our loop and take the Prior Cabin trail out of the canyon tomorrow morning.

Until tomorrow, safe travels and happy trails…