Sleeping - at an elevation of 8,000 feet - below the summit of Merritt Mountain was the most pleasant night of sleep we've had in a long time, even nicer than the previous night, perched on the canyon edge, overlooking the South Fork Owyhee River. And, like the previous night, I'd set my alarm for a time of day no one should be awake, ensuring that - at the very least - I'd capture the Earth's shadow as the sun climbed into the sky behind us. It was fabulous to watch the Belt of Venus fade across the horizon, the…
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Stage 4 of the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route - Reserve to Fence Lake. I don't know if it was entirely due to our disappointment at lunch, but at least partially due to our disappointment in how our visit to Reserve turned out, we decided to forego purchasing fuel in town since we still had half a tank plus 11 gallons in the Military Scepter Jerry Cans. That was plenty to get us the 132 miles too Fence Lake - the end of the next stage - and really, it didn't matter since there was fuel some 75 miles away…
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It was four years ago when we ran our first Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) - or at least, we attempted to run a stage of the Oregon BDR and failed miserably. Later that same year, we successfully conquered the route, and since then we've tackled one BDR every summer - Washington, Idaho, and Nevada now under our belts. This year, we decided that New Mexico would be a good state to tackle on what has become a fun tradition. Starting in Dell City, Texas - finishing some 1,200 miles later in southeastern Colorado - the NMBDR is unlike any route…
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April 25, 2019. It'd been several weeks since my last trip and as usual that meant I had a bad case of the shakes. Spring is such a frustrating time from an adventure perspective - the weather seems so nice, and yet everywhere interesting is still covered in snow. And, the winter staple - the desert - is getting hot. You can imagine my delight when a check of the weather showed that the Alvord Desert - a place we'd visited for the first time last October - was going to have weather in the mid-70's. From my perspective, we hadn't…
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