Hikes
Sunday, August 15th, 2021: 2021 Trips, Blue Range, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southwest New Mexico.
Short Hike on a Poor Trail
Sunday was departure day, but I didn’t want to just race back home. I didn’t want to leave at all, and I’d considered staying an extra night, but back home, the city was resurfacing the street where my house is located during the coming week, and on Monday morning I had to move my truck off the street into the driveway all the contractors were using, arranging to switch with them. To avoid getting the truck towed, if I stayed here another night, I’d have to leave really early in the morning.
I had a few hours before checking out to study the maps, and I figured if I could attach some padding over the swollen ankle, maybe I could stop along the way for a shorter hike. I identified a few possibilities along the Arizona-New Mexico border.
While packing, I put on all my hiking clothes, applied biomechanical taping to my foot and a felt pad over the swollen ankle, and finally slipped into my boots. I tried to walk across the floor, but there was no way I could walk in those boots with that ankle. Damn!
I took off all the hiking gear, and changed back into my driving shorts and t-shirt. My sneakers were so low cut that they didn’t bother the ankle – I finally realized it wasn’t any kind of a strain or sprain, it was just some kind of pressure- or friction-caused inflammation. And then it occurred to me to try my other pair of boots, which I’d brought as backup in case the primary pair got wet.
My primary boots are designed for maximum ankle support – the shaft or collar of the boot, around the ankle, is reinforced. This is the part that is apparently irritating my ankles on long hikes. The other pair of boots are cut below the swollen area, so when I tried them on, they didn’t even contact it. I realized I could probably stop for a hike after all, so I set aside all my hiking gear for quick access in the vehicle.
As usual, I took the scenic route through the mountains before connecting with the highway home. It seems shorter every time – it’s so beautiful you don’t want it to end.
Back on the highway, the first turnoff I tried was at a pass between Alpine and Luna. It was a forest road I’d always wondered about, that claimed to lead to a fire lookout. It turned out to be one of those actually scary mountain roads – steep, twisty, rocky and deeply eroded, and strictly one-lane, with a deadly dropoff at the edge. The trail I was optimistically looking for was probably impassable – maps showed it crossed a large burn scar, and it hadn’t been maintained since the big wildfire – and the trailhead was almost 6 miles back on this road. The road went up, and down, and around, very slowly, and the first couple of miles took me 10 minutes, so I found a wide spot in a bend and turned around. Then I encountered a big truck coming up, and had to back uphill to the turnaround place to let them pass.
The next possible hikes were off a prominent backcountry road between Reserve and Glenwood, and would be my first exploration of the legendary Blue Range Primitive Area and Wilderness. I’d always wanted to explore this area, but it was simultaneously too close to and too far from home to be convenient.
It was a glorious day, like my first day of hiking. This area was a couple thousand feet lower than the alpine region I’d just left, with parklike pinyon, juniper, and occasional ponderosa over rolling hills at the foot of higher ridges and mountains in the near distance. I had two trails to choose from. The first was represented by an unnamed kiosk and had clear tread that beckoned up a shallow canyon. But from the map it looked too easy and didn’t seem to offer views.
The next trail was listed as “cleared” by a trail crew two years earlier, and appeared to climb a low ridge for a mile or two. There was no real trailhead – I was looking carefully at the roadside as I drove slowly along, and just happened to notice one of those little “hiker” icons on a post at an overgrown turnout. There was no tread leading inward, only the vague, overgrown suggestion of an opening through the parklike forest. But when I took a few steps past the signpost, I glimpsed a faded wilderness sign on a pinyon pine far ahead. So I figured I would gear up and check it out.
It was well past lunchtime, and I decided to not only make a sandwich – utilizing my new cooler as a table – but to drink a beer as well, breaking my usual habit of not drinking until the evening. Nothing says vacation like drinking in midday, and especially before a hike!
This trail turned out to be mostly forgettable. No one besides trespass cattle had used it in ages, and the surface was my most hated local footing – a mix of embedded and loose volcanic cobbles that is maddening and dangerous to walk on. Marked frequently by cairns, the route climbed the ridge at a generally shallow grade, mostly exposed so despite the mild temperature I was sweating pretty bad. But I was determined to get as high as I could, in hope of some kind of view.
The main attraction of that view turned out to be behind me – the peak with the fire lookout at the end of that scary road I’d given up on the way here. It was about 5 miles away to the northwest, and was a pretty mountain with a complex mosaic of rocky slopes, forest, and meadows.
Marked only by its cairns, my route drifted in and out of a cleared corridor through the open scrub forest, suggesting that in some distant past there might’ve been a wagon trail. The path completely ended in dense chaparral at the top of the ridge, after only a couple of miles of hiking.
When trail workers reported this trail “cleared” two years ago, it was obvious that all they meant was that they’d checked it to the chaparral on top – there’d been no clearing required. And it seemed that nobody but me even cared.
On the way down I lost the trail at one point, where a false cairn beckoned me onto a game trail down a side drainage. After wasting 5 minutes on that sidetrack, I dismantled the fraudulent cairn and found the right track to continue back to my vehicle. By my standards it hadn’t been much of a hike, but at least I’d set foot in a new wilderness area and seen some new mountains.
I had a pleasant drive home as usual – apart from the minivan driver who wanted to race down the twistiest part of the highway, tailgating me dangerously, finally passing only to slow down in front of me on the straight part of the road as he drifted back and forth across the center line, probably texting on his smart phone. By that point I was relaxed enough not to care.
My home is always first and foremost a studio, an office, a workspace, so the only way I can take a break from work is to get away from home. This trip had been my first getaway – my first vacation – in almost two years. And it had been over two years since I’d visited those mountains. So on the drive home I was re-evaluating my relationship with that place, and my attitude toward it.
One problem I can see is that it has kind of an awkward combination of extreme beauty and overwhelming recreational culture. It’s kind of like a huge national park in which the visitors are widely dispersed instead of concentrated like they are in, for example, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.
Despite its huge size, the area has historically far fewer hiking trails than the national forest in my backyard, and after the 2011 wildfire, only the half dozen most popular and easily accessed of those trails have been maintained. So all the hikers are concentrated on those few trails, none of which is particularly challenging. The trails in the large, rugged wilderness area at the south of the range have been abandoned and are essentially impassable, because that was the origin of the wildfire.
So for me, as a hiker looking for challenges and new discoveries, the area actually doesn’t seem to offer much.
But since the northern half of the range consists of those vast grassy meadows divided by hills and ridges with relatively open mixed-conifer forest, it suddenly occurred to me that off-trail hiking might be the solution. Maybe in the future I should just ignore the limited trail network and set off across country. I’m not sure how feasible that would really be, but it’s worth trying…
Monday, August 23rd, 2021: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Insomnia Saturday night…only 3 or 4 hours of sleep. When my alarm went off at 6 am, I had no faith in my ability to get back to sleep, so I got up and prepared for my Sunday hike. I felt half dead, and figured I’d just go as far as I could, and stop for a nap along the trail if I ran out of steam.
I’d already decided to take the trail I’d hiked most frequently and used to consider my favorite. How things have changed in only two years! When I first hiked this trail, the 10 miles to the crest and back was two miles too far. Now, 15 miles doesn’t seem far enough.
Last time I’d been over here, I’d discovered a trail crew had cut a path through the many deadfall and blowdown logs that’d accumulated since the last trail work in 2019. I wondered if they’d continued up on the ridge, where the trail snakes along the crest into the heart of the range, and where I’d been exploring farther and farther over the past year, bushwhacking over deadfall and through thickets of thorny locust. If they’d cleared that part of the trail, I might be able to make it all the way to the junction saddle. That would be pretty cool.
I wore my new “upland hunting” pants, in case of rain. The day started out cool, but the lining in the damn pants ensured that I immediately overheated down in the humid jungle of the canyon bottom. And the flies – gnats, really – swarmed me from the beginning, so I quickly got tired of swatting and donned my head net.
Two and a half miles in, not far from where I’d encountered a rattler on my last visit, I was forcing my way through the jungle when I spotted a rattlesnake tail receding across the trail right in front of me. It disappeared under the dense vegetation on my left, rattling weakly. I started pushing through the equally dense vegetation on my right, but that triggered a second rattle. There were two snakes, one on each side!
I retreated out of the thicket and found a broken limb that made a good walking staff. I returned to the snake spot and began probing ahead through the vegetation on both sides of the trail. No response. I crossed the jungly patch and passed a small tree. More rattling on my left. After peering into the vegetation below the tree, I finally spotted the snake, coiled in the shadows. Interesting. I wondered if this was the snake I’d encountered nearby, weeks earlier. And now it had a mate.
I left a small stick across the trail to remind me of the location when I returned in the afternoon. And I used the staff to probe for snakes while crossing thickets up ahead.
The thickets, the hot pants, the humidity, and the snake factor were all slowing me down. I had to stop regularly to rinse my sweaty head net and hat in the creek. I knew I wouldn’t get very far in these lined pants. I planned to stop at the base of the switchbacks, about 3-1/2 miles into the hike, and take them off. Beyond that, I’d be climbing out of the canyon bottom, and the trail would be mostly clear until the crest.
The pant legs are cut super wide, and zip up to the knee, so you can, with a certain amount of struggling, get them on and off while wearing boots. So I climbed the mountain in my skivvies, which felt great! Once the pants were rolled up in my pack, I realized I should never start a hike wearing them. I should simply always bring them along, and switch pants when the going gets wet.
Highlights of the ascent were giant, beautiful fungi, and a Montezuma quail – my first! That quail simply refused to fly away – it kept hiding behind clumps of bunch grass only a few feet off the trail, where it kept bobbing its head up briefly to see what I was doing.
Just past the spring below the peak, the steep trail through the forest was blocked by a rope hanging from a ponderosa branch, about 20 feet above. Tied to it were 3 large carabiners, and there was another long rope wrapped separately around the tree trunk. Someone had obviously been camping at the spring, and had constructed this elaborate setup to lift their food out of reach of bears. But they’d walked away without it. This was the second time this summer I’d come upon things left attached to trees in the wilderness – a bad trend of careless forest users. I pulled both ropes down, coiled them up, and stashed them in my pack to carry out.
I was really happy to find that the recent trail crew had cut a path through the dozens of logs blocking the trail along the crest. Despite my slow ascent, I was now determined to head for the distant saddle. I figured if the trail ahead continued to be passable, I had just enough time to reach it.
But what I found was perplexing – and much harder.
Past the saddle at 9,500′, a wide swath had been cleared through the thickets of aspen and locust, continuing down through the stand of fir that’d been blocked by dozens of deadfall aspen. On the other side, an eerie 8-foot-wide swath of trail had been completely cleared, like a firebreak, for a few hundred yards. Then it stopped, and the old path continued through locust thorns. My bare legs were soon bleeding from multiple scratches and I had to stop and pull my hot upland pants back on. Fortunately there was a good breeze blowing across the crest.
That’s when I realized I’d left my snake staff a mile or so behind – and I noticed I’d also lost the splint I wear to keep my trigger thumb at bay. This is only one of several health problems that have accumulated since the house fire, and I haven’t had time to treat properly. It has to be special-ordered and takes up to a week to replace, but over time the fit gets loose, and I wasn’t surprised it’d fallen off. It’s just hard living without it.
Descending the ridge, I discovered the trail crew had indeed cut through all the logs across the trail, but except for that short “firebreak”, they hadn’t done anything about the thorny locust overgrowing the trail and often completely blocking it.
I fought my way down and across to the farthest point I’d reached in the past, and kept going past that. The locust thorns just kept getting worse, to the point where you couldn’t even see a trail ahead.
Then suddenly another “firebreak” appeared – a several hundred yard clear swath, isolated in the middle of nowhere. It was welcome but didn’t make sense. Why would they clear these isolated stretches and do nothing with the rest of the trail?
It was taking much longer than expected and I was running out of time. I kept misreading the landforms ahead, thinking I was almost there, and that’s what drew me forward, despite how difficult it was.
Finally the trail switched to the opposite side of the ridge, and I could see what had to be the junction saddle, much farther ahead and hundreds of feet lower. I’d come too far to stop, so I kept going, through a broad burn scar choked with thorns.
I came to a forested rock outcrop, behind which, but much lower, I could sense the saddle. The vague trail continued down a deeply eroded bowl, then abruptly stopped at a big blowdown which was completely overgrown. Massive trees had fallen every which way across the trail, and locust had grown up between them, forming an impassable wall. The trail crew’s work ended here, only a few hundred yards from the saddle. It was amazing to get so close and be unable to go any farther!
Still, from the rock outcrop, I had a great view across the spectacular, almost inaccessible big canyon I’d fought my way into earlier this year.
I was now way behind schedule. I try to get home by 7 to warm up leftovers for dinner, but it was now looking like, despite getting an early start, I’d be 30 minutes to an hour late. I’d been wondering all day if I’d get any rain to further test the new pants, and working my way back up the ridgeline, I could see rain falling from heavy clouds a few miles to the north. An occasional crash of thunder reached me, but the storm didn’t seem to be moving my way.
It took just as long to fight my way back up that ridge as it had to fight down it – exacerbated by the 1,500′ climb. Fortunately my insomnia hadn’t caught up with me – I still had plenty of energy. And even wearing those hot pants, the ridgetop breeze and sporadic cloud shadows kept me relatively cool.
Finally I crossed the 9,500′ saddle and began my descent. Since walking too fast was regularly causing me pain, I paced myself. Halfway down the switchbacks I stopped at the big boulder pile to fill my water bottle. I happened to glance down, and there was my thumb splint! Out of the dozens of places where I stopped on this hike, I’d lost it here, and by accident, found it here hours later!
When I reached the canyon bottom, the swarms of flies found me. I picked up another branch to probe for rattlesnakes, but when I reached the spot where they’d been in the morning, didn’t find any.
It was only a few hundred yards farther that the familiar rattling started. There was a huge rattlesnake a few yards away, in rocks above the trail on my right. I photographed it and continued, but another rattling started immediately, below the trail on my left. There were two of them – they must be the same pair, on opposite sides of the trail, just as before! I’d never encountered this many rattlesnakes before – as much as I hike, I usually only see two or three a year.
I wasn’t walking slow, but I was really going to be late. I realized I wouldn’t get home until after 8, and I’d be exhausted.
The sun had just set by the time I reached the vehicle, but it was still plenty light out. I offloaded my gear into the right places and dug my iPad out of hiding so I’d have music on the hour-plus drive. Finally I got into the driver’s seat, belted up, and felt my shirt pocket for my sunglasses. They weren’t there!
I checked all around the front seat and in my duffel bag. I got out and looked under the seats. Nothing. I freaked out. I’d paid $150 for those, out of desperation, on my recent trip to Indianapolis. I’d tried cheap sunglasses from the drugstore in Silver City but they hurt my ears. I’d looked at REI in Phoenix, enroute, but they only had a half dozen pairs on display, all over $200. Sunglasses are surprisingly hard to find if you don’t live in an affluent neighborhood in a huge metropolitan area.
I got out of the vehicle, opened the rear door, and scanned the ground all around. Then I trudged up toward the trailhead. I knew I’d been wearing them on the hike back – maybe I’d absentmindedly dropped them near the trailhead. But I’d left the vehicle running – first I’d have to go back, turn it off, and lock up.
It was on the walk back to the vehicle that I spotted my sunglasses sitting on the corner of the rear bumper, behind where the rear door hinges open. That was a place where I never would’ve set them consciously or intentionally. There was simply no reason for them to be there. I guess the insomnia was finally catching up with me – not to mention the lingering PTSD, which often makes me feel like an idiot.
I was treated to a spectacular cloud show, amid occasional sparse showers, on the drive home.
I got back at 8:30. I was too tired to eat, so I just swallowed a shot of protein supplement and took a quick shower. I’d hiked over 16 miles and climbed over 5,000′, but it had taken me 10-1/2 hours.
Monday, August 30th, 2021: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
I was hankering to get back to my favorite trail, the rollercoaster hike that takes me across two rocky canyons and the rolling plateau in between, with spectacular views at almost every point. The weather was forecast to be warm but not hot, with the potential for some afternoon cloud cover, if not a bit of rain.
Descending into the first canyon, the first thing I noticed was the flies. They were everywhere today, not just in the humid canyon bottom. I decided to try ignoring them at first.
Halfway down I came upon one of the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen, lounging right on the trail. I grew up obsessed with snakes, and despite decades of forgetfullness I figured it for a kingsnake or milk snake. Back home I would identify it as an Arizona/Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake – my first.
The creek had been dry on my last visit, three weeks into the monsoon. Now it was roaring, and I had to find a stick to stabilize my crossing over flooded steppingstones. One of my boots got wet, but I figured it would dry out soon. The crossing was precarious enough that as I continued the hike I scouted for a pair of sticks to use on my return, and left them along the trail where I could easily spot them later.
There had been two city vehicles at the trailhead – first time I’d seen anyone else there – and only a mile into the trail I saw two men about my age camping on the bank of the creek. Now I knew I had the rest of the trail to myself.
Despite the mild temperature and the steep north slope being in shade, it was humid enough that I was drenched with sweat on the long climb out of the canyon, and the flies gave me no peace. After one had flown up my nose and another down my throat, I finally gave up and pulled on my head net. It was hard wearing it while sweating so much, and I still hoped the flies would fade away at higher elevations, but no such luck – they stayed with me all day.
I was trying to maintain a steady, relentless pace, because I wanted to go farther than before, to the bottom of the third canyon. The only place where it’s possible to go fast is the middle rise of the plateau between first and second canyons. I hadn’t seen any human tracks on the climb up, but suddenly on that middle rise I found a recently trampled annual plant. After that I looked closely for tracks but could only spot animal sign, until I finally neared the far edge of the plateau, climbing out of the last deep hollow toward the saddle above the West Fork. There I found a track that at first looked like a boot print, but which I eventually realized was from a big bear.
I started down into the deep canyon of the West Fork, with the long, talus-striped wall of Lookout Mountain towering above on the opposite side. It was slower going than before due to additional deadfall, and the steep, rocky trail was as treacherous as ever.
One of the points you most look forward to on this hike is after that brutal descent, entering the parklike ponderosa pine forest at the bottom of the trail, above the west bank of the West Fork. I’d been a little worried about crossing the West Fork, but easily found two sticks and adequate steppingstones. As before, I left the sticks where I could find them on my return.
After all our recent rain, the less-maintained trail beyond the creek turned out to be densely overgrown. Clearly nobody but me was using this trail. Most people only walked the first mile, to the first creek, and no one except me had climbed to the plateau this summer, let alone penetrated all the way to the West Fork.
As I fought my way up the steep traverse across the base of Lookout Mountain, it was starting to dawn on me that despite this being my favorite trail, it was damn hard, and damn slow going. I’d been imagining the extension to the third creek just in terms of miles and elevation, but what with the steep and rocky trail, the humidity, the flies, and the chance of rain, it became an excessively long, slow ordeal.
Eventually I reached the farthest point I’d hiked to in the past – the saddle where the traverse begins descending into the third canyon. I was pretty much spent, but I just had to go a little farther, to make this day’s hike worthwhile.
In the end, I descended far enough to see into the third canyon. There was a storm building over it, and the canyon itself turned out to be rockier and a little prettier than I’d expected. I got to a point where the trail skirted a cliff edge that gave a good view both upstream and down. It was time to turn back, but I was glad I’d achieved that new view.
The rain caught me on the way back, just as I reached the saddle below Lookout Mountain. It came down pretty hard, but huddling under a small juniper, it took me 15 minutes to change into my new rain pants, by which time the rain had ended. Such is our weather. However, I was glad I had those pants on while pushing through the wet vegetation that overgrew the trail.
As I returned toward and across the West Fork, the storm spread north and west over the second canyon. I always want to stop and hang out in the parklike forest on the west bank, but I’d had to make so many stops I was now behind schedule.
It started to rain again just as I was starting to climb that brutal slope out of the canyon. So I switched hats and prepared to don my poncho, only for the rain to stop again. But the flies were relentless.
I was so worn out, and sweating so bad, it seemed to take forever to climb that slope. I was literally stopping about every hundred feet to catch my breath. What an incredible relief to reach the saddle and start back across the plateau!
The storm dispersed as I headed west. I was now moving as fast as I could, and continuing to work up a sweat even when going downhill. The long switchbacks into the first canyon seemed interminable, and I had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes, through the head net, which drove the flies nuts.
Nearing the first creek, I grabbed the two sticks I’d left in the morning. But after the day’s rain over the head of the canyon, the creek had risen over all the stepping stones. I tried to add more but the creek was just too wide and deep now. I’d simply have to try crossing barefoot – something really dangerous for my foot condition.
Using the sticks to stabilize myself, I stepped across very slowly through the rushing flood waters, across the rocky creek bottom, feeling carefully with each step for footing that wouldn’t put weight on the ball of my left foot. I finally made it across and immediately sat down on the rough rocks of the bank to dry my feet and pull my boots back on. The whole process had taken another 15 minutes – I calculated that over an hour of my hike had been used up in stops like this. It was turning into a 9-1/2 hour hike, almost as long as my “longest hike”, despite only being 14 miles total.
The blister on my little toe had returned, slowing me down even more. The sun was just setting as I reached the vehicle. I wouldn’t get home until 8:30. Fortunately I had a frozen burrito left, to warm up in the microwave…
Monday, September 6th, 2021: Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Southwest New Mexico.
Stressed out almost to the breaking point by the struggle to get my life back, I’d been pushing myself too hard on recent hikes. I’d been having adventures, and people seemed to enjoy reading about them, but few seemed to realize that I actually hadn’t been having much fun. Au contraire, I’d been suffering and ending up miserable in one way or another after every hike.
This Sunday I wanted to break the pattern and do a hike that was easy but beautiful. Unfortunately that turned out to be much easier said than done. As I’ve mentioned in the past, southwest New Mexico is just not my favorite habitat – I’d rather be in the desert.
Finally I decided to return to the 10,000′ peak with the fire lookout an hour east of home. It was a fairly easy hike – 11 miles round-trip but only 2,000′ of elevation gain – with long views, and there were those grassy meadows just below the peak surrounded by giant old growth firs. If I could restrain myself from continuing down the other side to get more mileage and elevation, maybe I could just hang out in the grass and relax for a change. Listen to the birds and watch the butterflies.
The desire to just hang out in nature is often only wishful thinking. In this case, the grass in the meadows was heavy with dew. So I continued down the back side to the saddle. On the way, I watched a big storm developing and dumping rain a few miles away to the northwest.
By the time I reached the saddle, the storm had spread over me and a few drops were falling. I thought, great, I’ll spread out my poncho as a shelter and hang out here under the big ponderosas. But it turned out my cheap poncho was too small and had no grommets, and anyway, I wasn’t in the habit of carrying cord to anchor it to trees and branches. Without shelter, I couldn’t sit down – I had to keep moving. The only thing I could do was give up on this hike and head back home in the rain.
For the first time this season, I was actually cold. The temperature had dropped into the sixties, and the rain and humidity were sapping my body heat. Ironically, I’d left my emergency sweater at home today, because I’d been too hot on every hike so far this summer. I could see the storm was surrounding the peak now, so I changed into my rain pants and poncho. Hopefully the poncho would act as a thermal barrier and keep me warm.
It occurred to me that this was the first time a storm had noticeably reduced the ambient temperature during this year’s monsoon. In past monsoons, afternoon storms had almost instantly lowered the temperature by as much as 30 degrees. That was one of their best impacts. Our climate had definitely changed, in a way that was likely to be catastrophic. Despite all the rain we were getting, the average temperatures this summer felt much, much higher than in the past.
As I started climbing back up toward the peak, the rain was light at first, and I was feeling fine. Then about halfway up, I was suddenly hit by a barrage of hail, and for the next half hour, I climbed through a deluge of mixed rain and hail. The trail turned into a creek and I had to walk above it through dense, soaking wet grass and brush. When I was only a few hundred yards from the peak, lightning struck it, followed by one of the most violent thunderclaps I’ve ever heard. There was no place to shelter so I just kept hiking, looking forward to getting home early since I hadn’t hiked as far as usual.
By the time I crossed the peak and started my descent, the hail had stopped and the rain had lightened up, but my feet were soaked inside my boots. A mile down the mountain the rain finally stopped and I changed into dry socks. But within another mile the water in my boots had soaked through the new socks. They were “Smartwool”, but they weren’t working – my feet were freezing.
A mile farther down the mountain, a gale force wind rose out of the west, and a new storm began. The trail turned into a creek again and the normally difficult rocky stretch had been eroded and made harder to walk on. It was wonderful that we were having this wet monsoon, but every hike seemed to be turning into an ordeal. Maybe I should just stop hiking until the monsoon ends – but then I would have to work to rebuild my conditioning.
The worst part of the day turned out to be the drive home. I hadn’t brought a dry pair of shoes and socks, and driving barefoot is not an option with my foot condition, so I had to drive home in cold, wet boots. It felt like my feet were encased in sponges soaked with freezing water. I had the heater on, but it took almost the entire drive to warm them up.
Others have probably noticed that I’m strongly achievement oriented. My peace of mind depends on accomplishing stuff I’m passionate about. But for more than a year, since the house fire, I’ve been unable to work on music, art, or my book project. Managing the repairs on my house is like pulling teeth. These hikes are my only chance to achieve something really satisfying.
People who function as an integral part of their habitats – subsistence cultures who provide for their own needs instead of shopping in the capitalist consumer economy – are always aware that immersing yourself in nature is hard work – dangerous and often unpleasant. I don’t hunt, fish, or farm, but by hiking all year ’round in all kinds of weather I avoid some of the illusions of the civilized, “recreational” lifestyle. And during a wet monsoon like this, hiking for pleasure is seldom even an option.
Monday, September 13th, 2021: Animals, Hikes, Nature, Pinos Altos Range, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
The Hike
Needing another easy hike close to home, I decided on the 8-1/2-mile-one-way ridge trail a half hour’s drive north. I’d been hiking this trail for more than a decade, following it all the way to the isolated stock pond at the far end of the ridge several times in the past 3 years. Much of the forest burned last year, but the trail had been cleared after the fire and I expected no problems, especially since it’s one of our most popular trails. Today I figured I’d try hiking it all the way to the opposite trailhead at the bottom of the other end of the ridge, for some additional elevation gain on the way back. A fairly easy 17 mile out-and-back hike with about 4,000′ of accumulated elevation.
This trail mostly traverses the very steep north slope, which holds a lot of moisture even in dry years, so between spring and fall I expect pretty wildflowers in shady, moist pockets along the way.
The day started quite cool, but the afternoon high was forecast to reach 90. The climb to the ridge top was uneventful until about a mile in, when I met two younger women on their way down. One was my former massage therapist, someone I’d known ever since moving here. She said the trail ahead was overgrown with shoulder-high wildflowers – she’d tried to take a picture of her friend, and all that was visible was her head, floating on the flowers.
The climb was exposed enough to be hot, and as I began to sweat, the flies began to swarm, requiring my old trusty head net.
Not long after that, I reached the start of the long traverse, and found myself wishing, for the first time in years, that I’d dropped acid before this hike. After 15 years of hiking in our Southwest monsoon, on dozens of hikes in dozens of mountain ranges, I’d never seen anything like this ridge. The wildflowers were mind-boggling, and the pollinators were swarming. The only place I’ve seen more sphinx moths is in my beloved Mojave Desert, where they swarm by the thousands on blooming desert willows.
Most hikers, less driven than me, only follow this trail for the first 2 or 3 miles. Although the flowers were thick and indeed shoulder-high, the path through the flowers was fairly evident for the first two miles. But then it got harder.
Tread – ground that’s been walked on regularly – became scarcer and scarcer. I knew this trail like the palm of my hand, but since it was mostly hidden under the dense wildflowers, post-fire erosion and old postholes from equestrians made it hazardous. I fell again and again, and it became obvious that no one else had gone farther than two miles since the start of the monsoon in late June.
I found this strange, because in the past I’d usually found evidence of at least one intrepid hiker that walked the whole ridgeline. Then I remembered my former hiking buddy pointing out that I was the only local hiker she knew that hiked in “bad” weather – the hot days of summer, the storms of the monsoon, the snows of winter. Apparently everyone else avoids long hikes during monsoon season when they may be caught in a storm.
I chuckled, thinking about all the government and crowdsourced trail guides that list “best times to hike this trail” – usually spring or fall. I find it strange that people actually follow that kind of guidance, missing entire regimes of ecological wonder.
After the two mile point, the trail climbs very steeply to a long, narrow plateau, the high stretch of the ridge, where the forest mostly avoided destruction in last year’s fire. There, the tread is normally sparser, and I found an unbroken mass of wildflowers and no remaining tread. I had to rely on my visual memory, and pushing my way slowly through, with many false starts, I was somehow able to trace the route, finding the occasional cairn completely buried under the flowers. I was careful to trample the flowers as I went, otherwise I might’ve become completely lost on the way back.
But I was finally stumped, near the end of the narrow plateau where the trail becomes vague even without the overgrowth. I suddenly realized that in 2-1/2 hours I’d gone less than 4 miles, burning up 45 minutes just to cover the last half mile. Once again, this wonderful monsoon had ruined my plans. I turned around and laboriously retraced my steps, vowing to treat myself to a restaurant meal and a draft beer on my early return to town. One of the highlights of the descent from the plateau was a stumble over a hidden rock, immediately followed by a tall thorny locust grabbing my head net, so I had to scramble for footing to avoid falling and ripping the net.
The title of this Dispatch is adapted from the lyrics of one of my favorite original songs, “Fish in the River“, which nobody but me seems to like.
The Flowers
The Pollinators
