Woke at mile 7.4 on the Bonita-Zuni Alternate

Again coyotes yelped and howled me to consciousness this morning. I heard Atlas cough from across the valley as he was hiking along the highway. I decided to stay away from the highway as much as I could and cross country along the flat field bordered with bulbous lava rock. I ended up merging onto paths made by non-hikers, antelopes perhaps, fairly quickly.

After merging back onto the highway I made a pit stop at the La Ventana Arch, it was massive, birds flying through and around it really put it to scale. Next up was the 8 mile Zuni-Ancona trail. My shoes tore up from its sharp volcano lava flow walk. New blisters began to form on the ball of my left foot. Despite the difficulty of this section it seemed Mars-esque, and had some fun cairn route finding to it. Boy was I ready to be finished with it my the time I got to highway 53. I was reluctant and grateful to find trail magic from hikers Can-hacker (a Canadian Hacker from Saskatchewan) and Midnight (a writer/photographer from Texas). Can-hacker and I talked of the basics of software exploitation and how he helped in the taking down of terrorist propaganda websites under his own power.

Once I was magic'd out I continued up to the last water until Town with hiker named Silver, who spent most of his winter months in the Bahamas sailing and fishing. We talked a bit about his previous 2 times completing the CDT, and life in the Caribbean. The water came from a fully functional windmill driven water pump. It was fascinating watching the water flow rate fluctuate as the wind speed wavered. A water cache placed by Grants, NM trail angels Hugo & Carole Mumm could be found in the shade of a tree for when the wind left the valley.