Sprout CDT Day 4 (March 22, 2018)

We got on the trail a little bit earlier than the other days this week but the heat was still an issue for us. Part of the problem is that we went from intense winter to a hot desert real quick! The heat is really pounding on us around 11:00 to 12:00. It almost feels unbearable! It’s a different heat too, a dry heat, which makes it easy to get dehydrated. You don’t even realize you are losing as much water as you are until it’s a little too late.

Right now we’re at 45.4 miles! That’s a little over 11 miles a day average and I’m totally fine with that!

We got to the water cache early and decided to stay there for the day, drink a lot of water, and get up around 3:30-4:00 a.m. Our plan is to get miles in tomorrow before the heat hits us. It was way too hot to set up the tent right away and even when we did it was way too hot to sit inside the tent.

We ended up opening the doors to the cache box and duct taping our umbrellas to the doors to sit under the shade. We kept rearranging positions and eventually ended up laying in the ground with our legs under the cache box holding our umbrellas haha! I bet we looked like a couple of weirdos, good thing no one was around. It was really cool under the box and so was the little space where we were laying in front of the box.

We saw one day hiker pass us throughout the day, other than that there is only a little bit of traffic on Highway 9 right in front of us.

We hope we get enough rest and can get up really early tomorrow. I don’t want to hike in the heat and the next water is 12.9 miles ahead.

Miles hiked: 6
Total miles hiked: 46

Animals seen:
Cows
Jackrabbits