Adventures on the CDT

Pounce and I woke up to the sun warming our campsite and headed out.  After a few miles the trail exited the canyon and we had a road walk along highway 117.  The scenery was becoming increasingly more dramatic with towering cliffs, interesting rock formations and the edge of the El Malpais "badlands".  

We got to the Narrows picnic area right at lunch.  It was so exciting for us to have a picnic table, toilets, and trash cans.  And then things got a little exciting.  Our maps had a note that said the rim trail was not to be missed.  It was 3.5 miles in the right direction and would avoid some road walking, plus it would give us a view of Ventana Arch.  It's an out and back trail but our maps had a route down marked out.  It was as advertised, with great views of the Malpais and the cliffs.  

We got to the end, checked out the arch, took a break and then looked for the way out.  Initially there was a little path marked with cairns, but that ended and we had to pick our way around looking for the route down.  Fortunately I spotted the cairn marking the start of the descent because it was the only way down.  It was steep and around and over boulders, no path, just a scramble down.  It reminded me of some of the canyoneering and climbing approaches I've done.  We let out a yell when we made it down.  

Unfortunately the whole experience took up a lot of our afternoon and we didn't get as far as we wanted.  The trail angels in Grants maintain a water cache at the Zuni Acoma trailhead.  This route takes us across the Malpais lava flow for 8 miles.  Since there's no place to camp out there we had to stop for the night at 6.  It's warmed up quite a bit so we had our umbrellas out all afternoon.  The plan is to get up an hour earlier to get the most out of the cooler morning.