Mount Taylor Alternate 3.7 to 563.9 (22.8 miles)

Windy is the best overall description of today. Very windy. That includes last night as well. That also led to less sleep than normal. Morning activities and packing up are not fun in high winds, but I got done more quickly than anticipated. Normally I will put away my fleece and wind jacket before hiking but not this morning. My thermometer said 40 degrees and the wind was gusting to approximately 40 miles per hour. I needed them.

It was just a little over a mile to the summit. What a breathtaking view! (Literally and figuratively with the wind.) I could see south over a week of hiking. It was very windy and cold on top. I took a couple of pictures, signed the trail registry and continued on. No one else was there as they had wisely moved on right at sunrise.

There were some little patches of snow but no problem on the top on the north side. The vegetation was different also, including intermittent groves of aspen trees. This started a long more gradual descent rather than the steep slope on the south/southwest side climb. Some trail, some dirt road/track.

Overall slower pace for me today including the descent, but I don’t know why. It was harder getting up from breaks etc.

There was a mix of trail and dirt roads until the last last eight miles, which was all dirt road.

Lots of variety today; mountain alpine to ponderosa forest to piñon to open plain. I rejoined the CDT from the alternate just past lunchtime. Getting water at the next source was a real chore for two reasons. First, it was from a trough with the pipe not flowing. Though it appeared mostly clear, on closer inspection there was a lot of little particles and even some nearly microscopic swimmers. Though my filter can handle this, it also slows the flow a lot. It took a while to filter a couple of liters . Then there was the gusty wind. I nearly was blown over several times.

Still windy setting up camp. Sigh...

Side note: I had an awesome supper of spicy Mac n cheese with banana coconut pudding for desert. It was the last items of food I had obtained from the hiker box in Pie Town. And the winds finally died down after the sun went down.