Ring
Monday, October 9th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Ring, Southwest New Mexico.
I’d come up with a theory that the pain in the outside of my foot was due to a combination of weak toes and a long-term shift of weight from the ball of my foot to the outside. Both were habits adopted to protect the ball of my foot from chronic inflammation – along with wearing stiff-soled hiking boots. So for this Sunday’s hike I wanted a fairly easy trail to practice correcting my gait.
All the trails on the fringes of our wilderness are either in bad shape or involve steep climbs, so I decided to drive up to the heart of the mountains and take a ridge trail that runs westward 14 miles, ultimately connecting with the major west-side creek I hiked eastward to a couple weeks ago. Below this east-west ridge lies a narrow canyon in which a creek drains eastward, and the map shows a connector trail from the ridge down to the creek, that I could use to make a loop hike of about 14 miles round-trip.
I knew from a previous partial hike on this trail that the grades are gentle, and the ridge is only 400 feet above the canyon, so it shouldn’t be too hard on my foot. Even better, the trail had been reported cleared last year, and I didn’t remember it being very rocky.
The morning was chilly, but the sky only showed a few distant filaments of cloud and the high was forecast to be in the low 70s. Trails in this area are popular with tourists, and there were couple of horse trailers, a pickup, and a school bus from Colorado parked around the trailhead. I found it fairly easy to concentrate on my gait, and the climb to the ridgetop warmed me up. It’s 3-1/2 miles to the first junction, where I’d turned south on my past visit. This ridge offers long views to the north and east, but nothing particularly spectacular. It’s just nice being on a ridge, having views to both sides, and despite the “mindful walking”, I made good time.
Past the junction I entered unfamiliar ground. Despite being an easy trail, it maintained interest by crossing a series of knife-edge saddles with yawning views, then traversing mostly bare slopes consisting of white conglomerate terraces. Most of the canyons in this area are lined with bluffs of white conglomerate, sometimes containing caves where prehistoric people built modest cliff dwellings.
The habitat alternated between scrub, pinyon-juniper-oak woodland, and open ponderosa pine forest. But the ridgetop trail was mostly exposed, and the air was mostly still. Solar radiation made it feel like the 80s.
I was still moving at a good pace, and based on the time it took me to reach the first junction, I started watching for the connector trail that drops into the canyon on my left. But I kept going, half hour by half hour segment, and never saw any sign of another trail.
From the lower part of the ridge, the view to the northeast had been the main attraction. But now, a series of peaks to the southwest formed my horizon, getting closer and closer across the canyon of the creek below. Whereas most of the ridgetop is burn scar, the canyon and slopes on my left were darkly forested with ponderosa pine.
Trudging onward, focusing relentlessly on my gait, I began to realize I’d somehow missed the connector trail. No problem – I’d just turn back when half my time was gone. But my foot was getting tired and I wanted to stop somewhere where there was a nice shady spot to rest. Those were few and far between on this exposed ridgetop.
Eventually I came to a small clearing with a spreading juniper, took off my boots and relaxed for a while in the shade. I figured I’d gone between 7 and 8 miles.
On the way back, I looked more closely for the connector trail, and never saw the slightest sign of it. In fact, it doesn’t exist on Forest Service maps – it probably ended up on my mapping platform because some dude bushwhacked down there once, capturing his route on GPS.
Cumulus clouds had been building on the northwest horizon, forming a dark mass that gradually loomed over me. Thunder was booming almost continuously up in the clouds, but I couldn’t see any lightning yet. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking this exposed ridge in a storm.
First I felt a few drops, and then it began to fall in earnest, so I pulled on my poncho and speeded up. Both feet were hurting, and I had a cramp in my left hip that was making my whole leg numb.
I walked in rain for a half hour, thunder rolling overhead, as the storm spread to cover the entire visible landscape. When the rain moved off, I could see lightning far in the east, but thunder still boomed overhead. The trail becomes even more exposed at the east end of the ridge, where I began to feel really vulnerable. I couldn’t remember ever hurting this much at the end of a hike. But my theory had worked – there was no more pain on the outside of my foot. And on the final descent to the trailhead, the sun came out and the colors were glorious.
It’s a long, difficult drive home through the mountains, where I faced sporadic rain and switched into 4wd to keep from sliding off a precipice. Town was dry, but within a block of home the heavens opened up and we got a brief but heavy downpour.
