There was 32 miles to pie town. But only 20 to the highway. My plan was to do the 20 miles to the highway then try hitch to pie town. If I didn't get a hitch I'd camp by the road and walk in in the morning. The issue was water. The water was 10 miles from the road and 22 miles from town. I decided to get up early so I could try make the 5 miles to water while it was cold. Then get as close to the road as I could while it was still cool. That way I'd use less water.
I got moving by 630 and made it to the first water easily. I grabbed 4 liters since I wasn't sure how well the next water source was. It took forever since my filter was clogged.
As I was heading to the next water 1.5 miles away I stopped to grab a snack out of my pack. When I looked back the direction I came and saw this big angry cloud. It was definitely a rain could so I quickly dug my rain jacket out of the bottom of my pack and threw my pack cover on the pack. Just as I'm synching the cover down the first flake came down. Not rain snow. It didn't snow for long but it was coming hard. I was OK with it since it was cool which meant I'd need less water.
The snow let up and I made another 5 miles just in time for it to hail. It was slightly bigger than pea sized but started to come down hard enough to sting. I considered hiding under a tree to wait out the storm but I could see sunny blue skies in just a half mile. I out hiked the storm. It was just channeled through the mountains so once I got out of them the wind was blowing the clouds away from me. The nice part about the weather was how little water I was drinking. The rough part was trying to keep warm without sweating or freezing.
After that the next few miles was hiking through a forest which made keeping a comfortable temperature. When I was in the shade it was freezing, in the sun I was melting, in the wind it was even cooler. I was wearing my windbreakers, long sleeved shirt and shorts. By opening and closing my windbreaker I was able to stay almost comfortable. But not really it was cold.
Upon leaving the forest I was in a wide open plain. There was nothing for 7.5 miles. The wind was intense. About as bad as the hike into lordsburg but colder. Luckily it was mostly at my back.
When I made it to the road it was 3 pm. If I got a lucky hitch I could make it to pie town and still get pie. I sat down and started to hitch. After an hour I couldn't make pie anymore so I started to walk to town. There was also the storm starting to creep toward me so I was going to get snowed on again if I stayed at the road. I walked for an hour making good time but I was tired. 25 miles is about all I'm comfortable with. After another 30 minutes I finally got a hitch.
Pie town was crazy. There were so many hikers here. Almost nobody hiked out due to the weather and a lot of us did extra miles to get out of the weather. It was nice having people around but it was overwhelming after such a tiring day. Even still it was nice there was a big communal dinner of potato salad, spaghetti with elk meat marinara sauce, and some elk steak bites. After that one of the locals brought over her instrument collection and there was an impromptu jam session which sounded half decent.
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