#2. June 2022 Continental Divide – New Mexico

Night 2, 16 June

As we moved north on the CDT, the biggest problem day 2 would be avoiding the fire areas. We’ve had huge thunderstorms all over the state which we believe are finally giving the firefighters a break, but the National Forests and all campgrounds have been closed. We’ve found alternate routes and made it work.

I’m obviously a couple of days behind posting. Over the past 3 days we’ve seen the terrain change considerably.

There’s our new friend Will again! The trail is popular with bikers and hikers. We REALLY admire their ambition.

We met Will at our campsite the first night and had him over to dinner. 😁 He just graduated college and wanted to accomplish the CDT on a bicycle. He sent me the link to his SPOT drops so we can follow his progress. We’ll probably see him again.

New Mexico is just beautiful!

In the middle of nowhere, there’s a little old town that still has a few inhabitants. We just had to ask why anyone ever wanted to settle here. It’s miles from anything and obviously floods often. People still live here!! Why!!???!

We had a hard time finding a camping spot for night #2 in this lava flow area. In a designated wilderness area it’s illegal to get off of the trail to camp, so we camped right on the road in a wide spot. Not one vehicle ever came by. It was interesting, but hard on the feet!

Note for you off-roaders trying to compare my maps to yours:

We originally downloaded the “gpsKevin” maps from the internet. I then changed his multicolored route tracks to simplify at a glance. I alternated the colors of primary sections gray and black, then changed the designated “easy” sections to pink and the “hard” sections to red.

Our ACTUAL TRIP tracks are laying down as we go as the heavy red line.

In the next post and going forward I’ll include a screenshot of each day’s progress on the maps. I hope this is useful.

The dust at times is almost unbearable.

These roads were horribly rutted out as we meandered through a series of wash outs. The ranchers just keep repairing the damage over and over.

Night 3 June 17

Stay tuned, it’s getting much more difficult to navigate the Continental Divide Trail with the fires and new washouts …..