Southwest New Mexico
Wilderness Access, but at What Price?
Monday, May 22nd, 2023: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Again I had trouble choosing a Sunday hike – my first choice, on the east side, turned out to still be inaccessible due to road closure. Then I drove west planning to try an alternate route to another trail that had been inaccessible since last fall, but at the last minute decided that was too risky, too. So I continued to the turnoff for a trail that had been wiped out last September by a big flood, because I’d seen some notes online that indicated someone had been using it recently – maybe they’d cleared a path through the damage.
This is one of those few trails leading to the crest of the range that are precious to me. So imagine my delight when I found that someone had cleared a path and laid down good tread through last year’s flood damage!
It had rained yesterday, the temperature was in the low 70s, and as soon as I reached the canyon bottom a rich cocktail of plant perfumes hit my nostrils. Spring flowers were out, and my boots and pants were soon soaked with dew.
But after I reached the abandoned cabin, the trail work ended. Distances on this trail are confounding. The cabin doesn’t show up on any maps – I’ve always assumed it’s two miles in from the trailhead. I’ve hiked this trail often enough that I was easily able to find my route through flood debris, blowdown, and overgrowth beyond the cabin, but two things soon became obvious: big floods like this renew habitat, and the equestrian trail crew had been here, because the trail was now lined with invasive dandelions.
Despite the online notes, and invasives spread by horses, I found no tracks anywhere. It looked like I was on virgin trail, especially as I began climbing the traverse to the first saddle. Birdsong surrounded me everywhere, and the traverse was more choked than ever by scrub oak, manzanita, and the thorny shrub I have yet to identify. I literally had to force my way through dense thickets in addition to climbing over occasional blowdown, all the way up to the saddle. Most hikers would’ve simply turned back, assuming the trail no longer exists, but I’ve gotten used to conditions like this and can follow even the most subtle indicators of a route.
Storm clouds had started peeking over the crest even before I left the canyon bottom, and now towered over the ridge to the east.
It took me over three hours from the trailhead to reach the saddle, which is shown on maps as a distance of less than four miles. This never fails to amaze me, because I’m good at estimating distances, and this part of the trail always feels closer to six miles. And I hadn’t been moving slow – the trail in the canyon had felt easier than usual to follow.
Past the saddle, the trail climbs steeply in a series of switchbacks, which are not shown on any maps. A hiker who had left a recent note online said the trail simply stops here, but of course I know the route well and had no problem continuing. But the shrubby overgrowth was so bad on this next ascent that I fell once, tripping over a low branch that had been hidden by the plants I was pushing through.
Beyond the switchback, there’s a traverse that rounds the base of a white comglomerate cliff and enters the head of the main drainage, revealing the arc formed above by the crest. As before, there were no human tracks anywhere, but elk love this area and are the only thing maintaining tread at this point. I suddenly realized that I so seldom find footprints on these wilderness trails because backpackers are the only people who penetrate as deeply as I do, and backpackers in this part of the range are few and far between.
The trail traverses toward a second set of switchbacks that lead to a second saddle. But these switchbacks are faint and easily confused with numerous game trails left by elk, so I usually end up finding different routes going up vs. coming back down. At the saddle, the little cairn I’d made a couple of years ago was still waiting for me.
Past the second saddle, there are only faint, occasional traces of a trail, but again, I know the route well. After entering intact forest, it climbs in several switchbacks – also omitted from the maps – and passes an old junction before beginning another long traverse toward the crest.
This traverse looks exactly like a game trail. If you can follow it, it leads across a series of narrow talus falls, through thickets of thorny locust, to more switchbacks that climb the back side of a sharp rock outcrop. The air was muggy and I’d been getting pretty hot climbing thousands of feet, but as I continued up this traverse the clouds had been spreading, it had been getting darker, and a cold wind had dropped the temperature to the 50s.
Stopping before a switchback that’s blocked by deadfall, I noticed a tick on my sleeve, and after brushing that one off, saw one climbing my pant leg.
It’d been a hard climb and I was really beat. And my time was running short, so I stopped at the top of the switchbacks, next to the upper part of the rock outcrop, instead of continuing a couple hundred feet higher to the ghost grove of burned aspens below the crestline, as before. I figured I’d gone almost seven miles and climbed 4,000′, although the map would show less than six miles and 3,600 feet.
On the way down, the leg cramps began, and continued for the next three miles. I always get leg cramps on this descent, and this is the only hike where I get them – despite other hikes being much longer and harder. I drink plenty of water, with added electrolytes, and stretch regularly, but it makes no difference. Something about this hike just triggers cramps.
I’d only felt one tiny raindrop, and now the clouds were moving off and the air was quickly warming. When I reached the first saddle, I stopped to do a complete series of lower-body stretches, and drank a bunch more water.
Despite all the precautions, I still fought cramps all the way to the canyon bottom. And when I reached the bottom and began seeing dandelions again, I slipped and fell a second time, at a debris-choked creek crossing, and thought more about trails, condition and maintenance, and the larger issue of wilderness access.
Although I usually give up when confronted with hundreds of fallen logs per mile, I figured I’d climbed over at least a hundred today, spread out over a distance of six or seven miles. And I’ve long been perfectly content with trails that are faint or overgrown by thickets. But the vast majority of hikers seem to expect trails that are clear and meticulously maintained – probably because most of their hiking occurs in crowded urban parks and popular national parks, where the effort and cost of trail maintenance is justified by the level of traffic.
I only recently had the revelation that trails themselves, as we know them, are a product of wildfire suppression. The trail networks in our national forests and parks would never have been sustainable before, in natural wildfire regimes, which regularly rearrange the landscape.
But very few hikers, even backpackers, will attempt to penetrate wilderness areas without trails. So the whole idea of “wilderness access” ultimately depends, to some degree, on wildfire suppression.
And the demand for wilderness access has led, since COVID, to some troubling trends in my region. Just over the border in Arizona, a coalition of urban mountain bikers has been granted a permit by the Forest Service to do all trail maintenance, and the mountain bikers have accompanied their work by a slick online propaganda campaign, in which they conceal or downplay their agenda as bikers, promoting their selfless work “for the benefit of all trail users”.
Equestrians are doing the same thing in my local forest. They got an exclusive permit to do trail work, and they’ve established a slick, authoritative website on trail conditions which likewise hides their agenda as equestrians, claiming to be selflessly improving trails “for the benefit of all trail users”.
It’s clear to me that both these special-interest groups are working proactively and effectively to assure themselves access to public lands. Equestrians know they’re accused of damaging trails and spreading invasive plants, and afraid of losing access, they’re positioning themselves so nobody can exclude them from wilderness.
Likewise, mountain bikers have been fighting for decades to get access to wilderness, and by making themselves indispensable to all trail users, they may finally succeed.
My question is, does anybody actually deserve good trails, and “access to wilderness”, at the cost of habitat degradation?
Monday, July 3rd, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, McKnight, Southwest New Mexico.
I’d waited six weeks to be able to do a real hike – probably the longest hiatus ever. Sure, I’d walked over 50 miles during that interlude, but mostly on level terrain in the Midwest and the canyons of Utah. For my return to serious hiking, I didn’t want to overdo it at first, but I also wanted something interesting.
Since last winter, I’d been trying to find a way to the crest of the northern part of the long north-south mountain range east of here. I’d avoided that area in past years because the west side of the range consists of dozens of long east-west ridges divided by deep, narrow canyons. It’s anomalous topography; most ranges in the West are block-faulted (tilted), with a steep face on one side and a gentle rise on the other. The west side of this range is elevated and almost level, more like a high tableland cut over time by myriad parallel streams.
The canyons are generally too narrow to support roads, but a few of the east-west ridges are relatively flat on top – finger-like mesas – and dirt forest roads have been graded up these, occasionally all the way to the 10,000 foot crest. Hence most of the west side – the only side accessible to me – was left out of the wilderness area, and is still grazed by cattle.
The plus side of these roads is that theoretically, they offer access to high-elevation trails. But this range has also been deforested by two successive mega-wildfires, and I’m discovering, hike by hike, that the trails I hoped to follow to the crest have mostly been obliterated by erosion, deadfall, shrubby regrowth, and general disuse. Their remoteness has always made them less popular, hence they’ve been omitted from recent trail work. Like most trails in this new fire regime, they’re listed as “Open” on the Forest Service trail guide, but they’re essentially abandoned and increasingly impassable.
Today’s goal was an area near the high point of the range, where one of these “mesa” roads leads to the junction of two creeks, with trails leading up each of them to the crest trail, so that I could potentially do a loop, ascending one canyon, hiking a little over a mile on the crest trail, then descending the other canyon. It would be a total of 13 miles and 2,700 feet of elevation gain – an easy day hike by the numbers. But I had no idea what condition I would find the road or the trails in, and unusually, there was no recent information online. The last trip report dated from 2011, before the first big wildfire.
I’d tried to take this road in early April, but it starts with a river crossing that had been flooded then from snowmelt. Today I found the channel only about six inches deep, but past the crossing, the road becomes surprisingly rough and rocky as it climbs steeply to the mesa. My 4wd Sidekick needs work so I was driving my little 2wd truck, and I was really worried about how it would do on this unfamiliar road.
About 8 miles up the gently rolling mesa, the road begins traversing steeply down into the narrow canyon on its right, and here’s where the drive became really exciting. It’s a narrow high-clearance section over jagged bedrock – with a virtually sheer drop-off, hundreds of feet to the canyon bottom, at right – and the farther down I went, the more worried I was about my little truck being able to climb back out of it. Finally I reached the fork that led down to the creek, and a hundred feet down that I came to a steep section of white clay with deep erosional ruts I knew the truck couldn’t handle. But when I tried to back up the shallower slope to the landing at the fork, I immediately lost traction – the driving wheels are in the back while most of the weight is in the front.
I’ve been in this situation many times, and after blowing tires repeatedly on rough roads, I recently installed all-terrain tires, so with a little tricky maneuvering I managed to get back to the landing, where I parked, shouldered my backpack, and set out walking down the steep forest road.
I’d awakened this morning with a profound sense of impending doom, something that occurs regularly as part of my anxiety syndrome, and worrying about my truck and the road put me in a pretty black mood, but I expected the hike to cure that. I wasn’t sure of the elevation here – probably in the low 7,000s – but I was surrounded with beautiful, intact alpine mixed-conifer forest. I’d packed for weather in the 90s, but here and now it was in the high 60s and often shaded by drifting, partial cloud cover.
However, I’d been immediately swarmed by little flies when I first got out of the vehicle, and before I’d walked a hundred yards I had to dig out my head net. It was going to be one of those days.
The road wound down through the forest onto the floodplain of an intermittent stream, where it got sandy and passed the ruins of a cabin and corral. Shortly after that, I came to a five-foot-deep sheer washout. Nobody was driving past that anymore.
After scrambling over a long debris field and rejoining another section of the old road, I came to the junction of the two creeks. What was left of the old road continued up the left branch, so I began searching for the trail that led up the right branch. I’d read that there was a trail sign here, but there was nothing remaining of it or the trail – apparently victims of catastrophic post-fire flooding.
Exploring along the left creek, I eventually noticed a shallow dip in its bank, with a matching vague dip in the opposite bank. I crossed and headed up the far bank, where I found no trail, but continuing across a meadow, noticed the slightest sign of an old road cresting a rise, overgrown and littered with boulders. This beginning would set the tone for the rest of my hike.
This narrow side canyon had mostly intact forest in its lower part, but it had experienced serious flooding and erosion. Instead of a trail, I found remnants of an old road, most of which had been washed out, so that my hike alternated between stretches of climbing over and around deadfall on a gentle slope, and picking my way across debris flows and logjams in the creekbed. I found signs of cattle but they looked to be about a decade old. The creek was almost completely dry, but flies continued to swarm me.
It was slow going, and I soon gave up any hope of the 13-mile loop. I was looking for the first milestone, where the canyon would veer left and another “trail” would head straight over a low saddle. On the way, the slope at my right became a burn scar. I finally reached the left turn in the canyon, and saw the low saddle ahead, but I was bushwhacking at this point – I could see no trails anywhere. Then, squinting through charred snags in the canyon bottom, I thought I noticed a wooden sign on a dead tree trunk.
Like the abandoned cabins I occasionally find, this trail sign with no trails was a poignant reminder of how temporary our so-called “Anthropocene” really is. Everything we build is a future ruin.
A little more scouting revealed the scattered remains of a sign for the trail up the canyon. But before proceeding, I wanted to climb to the low saddle, hoping for a view into the next watershed. So I started bushwhacking up the drainage. It was a short climb, and in the saddle I found an actual trail and a cairn on the edge of the burn scar. This trail descends about five miles to a valley filled with spectacular white rock pinnacles I hiked to a few years ago.
Returning from the saddle, I found the remains of the old trail leading back down to within a hundred feet of the junction sign in the canyon bottom. It was so overgrown I hadn’t noticed it from below. Now I needed to find a way up the canyon.
The left slope was very steep and eroded, so I started bushwhacking up the right slope, where I soon found what appeared to be an old cattle trail, blocked often by deadfall. This trail, deeply pockmarked in loose dirt, climbed high above the creekbed, which was now flowing intermittently. In places, it even looked like the remains of a human trail, but I hadn’t seen human footprints anywhere all day, not even on the road.
The cattle trail descended to the creek, which was flowing over bedrock, and the intact forest ended. From here on it was all burn scar and dense regrowth, much of it thorny locust.
Rain clouds were massing over the head of the canyon as I picked my way up the creekbed, looking for more old cattle trails I could use to bypass debris piles and logjams. I often found one that would then disappear in a thicket of thorns or a mass of blowdown, but the deeply eroded creekbed had become impassable with flood debris and the right bank was too steep, so I had to keep fighting my way up the slightly more accessible left bank.
Eventually, after pushing through an especially nasty thicket of locust, I came upon what appeared to be a remnant of the old hiking trail. Now it was getting really dark, I heard thunder to the north, and before long it began raining. The old trail was often interrupted by erosion, deadfall, or blowdown, but it was still much better than fighting through thorns, and although thunder continued, the rain slackened by the time I reached a big level area at the head of the canyon.
Here, the map showed the trail veering left toward another low saddle. But the remnant of trail ended, so I simply headed off in what I thought was the right direction through low undergrowth and a maze of charred, fallen tree trunks. The level area continued for hundreds of yards. I finally saw the low saddle off to the left. The map showed the trail making a sharp right just below the saddle, then traversing the slope of the ridge that had been on my right while crossing the level area. This ridge would’ve been my route to the crest of the range, if I’d been able to make good time on an actual trail instead of routefinding and bushwhacking all day.
But at several points on this hike I’d thought to myself, this is just my kind of trail! My favorite kind of hiking is without a trail at all, but it’s hard to do that in densely vegetated habitat. A trail on the map suggests that there is a way to reach some interesting destination. And an abandoned trail makes finding that route a challenge – and potentially an adventure.
I could find no trace of the old trail anywhere below the saddle or on the slopes below the ridge. The ridge itself bore stands of intact forest but the forested slopes consisted of the earthen mounds and pits left by the roots of fallen trees, so traversing them was like walking across moguls on a ski run. I kept studying the topo map I’d brought, trying to guess where I was, but it was fairly low resolution – I was never sure exactly where I was on the slope.
Finally I reached the top of the ridge, where I faced a seemingly endless thicket of locust and ferns. It’d continued raining lightly on and off, and just as I started through the thicket the temperature dropped and thunder crashed nearby. I was on an exposed ridge in a thunderstorm, just inviting a lightning strike, but there was nothing to be done about it.
It was almost time for me to be turning back. I estimated I’d covered less than a third of the planned loop, and I hadn’t reached anything of interest that I could consider a satisfactory destination. But as the thicket got thicker, I found myself approaching some white rock outcrops, and behind them I sensed the saddle where my route would cross into the next watershed and begin its ascent to the crest.
Thunder crashing behind me, I pushed through the last of the thicket and found myself on a pretty little forested ledge surrounded by boulders, with a view of the crest in the east. I knew I was finally above 8,000 feet, but would later learn it was closer to 9,000. I’d found my destination, at the most dramatic moment of the day!
The storm was moving away by the time I left my little ledge and began retracing my route. After I traversed the level area below the ridge and rejoined the old trail, I found it easier to follow it and cattle trails all the way down the overgrown burn scar of the upper canyon. Easier to follow, but painful – an entire day of sidehilling in loose dirt in my more flexible dry-weather boots had been really hard on my problem foot, and I vowed yet again to add foot exercises to my weekly regimen.
The sky was clearing and the whole landscape was now so vivid I felt like I was tripping on acid.
The lower canyon was a different story. Although it was wider and often had an actual floodplain, it had been so torn up by flooding that I seemed to spend most of my time climbing through debris. Finally in the worst pile of logs and boulders I lost my balance and fell, bashing my elbow on a hidden rock. It was a pretty minor cut but surprisingly produced the most blood I’ve shed in these past five years of serious hiking. Especially considering that everyone warns me not to hike alone, and a friend fell off a cliff and died while hiking solo.
My anxiety returned and increased the closer I got to my vehicle. I mentally ran through the scenarios. If the truck wouldn’t make it, could I back it down to a wide spot? Walking up the ridge looking for a signal for my phone, or walking the nine miles to the nearest cabin, some of it in the dark, to call for rescue. Doubting whether AAA would send a tow truck out that marginal road. Spending the night in the truck – since I’d recently switched vehicles, I wasn’t carrying a sleeping bag.
But thanks to the new tires, the truck made it up the road – with a lot of hard bouncing.
Monday, July 10th, 2023: Animals, Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Nature, Southwest New Mexico.
We’re having the kind of weather we have if the monsoon doesn’t start on time – highs in the mid-90s in town. In the past, it would drop into the 60s overnight, I’d run the swamp cooler to fill the house with that cool air, and the interior would never get above the mid-70s.
Now, it’s only dropping to the low 70s overnight. It’s too humid inside for the swamp cooler to work. The interior of my house gets up to 90 in the evening and never drops below 80. On today’s hike, I was really looking forward to getting above 8,000 feet.
But first, I had to chase these deer out of my backyard, where they threaten my apple and pear trees.
When I reached the pass at 8,200 feet, it was clear, sunny, still, and hot. The Rio Grande Valley to the east lay under heat haze. This is the old familiar trail that follows the crest to a 10,000 foot peak in 5-1/2 miles; I sweated during the long traverses and relished a light breeze when crossing saddles. Finally, after about three miles, I reached the relief of the shaded mixed-conifer forest.
I’d been missing birds on recent hikes. Sure, I’d always see jays, ravens, and vultures. But this has always been the best place to see birds, and today there were a lot of different kinds active on the crest, from flocks of bushtits in the understory to woodpeckers squabbling over tree trunks in the canopy.
After I crossed over the peak and started down through the alpine meadows of the back side, through the burn scar of last year’s mega-wildfire, I began encountering the pollinators. They seemed to be loving this hot, still weather, they were swarming tiny, dull-looking flowers we’d normally ignore, and in the windless quiet the buzzing of the bees could be heard from far away.
No one had been down the crest trail past the peak since my last hike here in October of last year. The trail, which had been cleared last year, was now almost completely obliterated, from post-fire erosion, blowdown, and overgrowth. I was only able to follow it because I know it so well.
As usual, I was hoping to continue the full nine miles to the junction saddle, but I was stopped at seven miles by blowdown in a spot where I knew the overgrowth would keep getting worse.
I was okay with turning back at this point; even truncated, this would be my most challenging hike since the first week of May, with 14 miles round-trip and over 3,200 feet of elevation gain. And I was mesmerized by the swarm of bees on a shrubby, dull-green annual that surrounded me on this hillside stopping point.
So I started paying more attention to flowers and pollinators, and all the way back up to the peak, I kept stopping to watch them at work. I literally had to tear myself away from each little patch of flowers along the trail.
Some of these photos are like those puzzle pictures that challenge you to find all the hidden objects. Can you find all the pollinators?
I’d been praying for rain all day, and storm clouds had gradually been gathering, finally producing thunder, breezes, cooler temps, and a few drops here and there. It was perfectly timed to keep me cool on the last three miles of exposed crest.
I drove through some heavy rain on the way home, and my house cooled down a few degrees more overnight. Hopefully we’ll get more monsoon weather this week!
Monday, July 17th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, McKnight, Southwest New Mexico.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, everyone with their face glued to a screen knows the Southwest is experiencing a dangerous heat wave. Unfortunately, my regular high-elevation hot-weather hikes have become impractical due to forest loss, blowdown, regrowth, or flood damage – all except for the one I did last weekend. The temperature in town was forecast to reach 98, and without a storm to cool things off, I could expect temperatures in the mountains to reach the high 80s. I was almost ready to give up on this Sunday’s hike.
But I’ve done serious hikes in the desert in the high 90s – I’d feel like a real wimp if I let this heat wave whip me. I kept thinking about the beautiful, shady mixed-conifer forest at the start of the abandoned-trail hike I’d done two weeks ago. Another equally-abandoned canyon trail started from there, and even if it turned out to be a dud, at least I’d be in nature, and ten degrees less hot than at home.
There was absolutely no information available online – even before the mega-wildfires, this had apparently been an unpopular trail. Like its companion trail, it had been subjected to two wildfires in a decade, and I could expect deadfall, blowdown, deep washouts, boulder-strewn debris flows, logjams, and thickets of thorny locust. But I found the post-fire remediation map from last year’s fire, and it seemed there might be slightly less severe burn in this canyon, and hence more shade during a heat wave. On the map, it reaches the 9,000 foot crest in only five miles – if I was lucky, I might find significantly cooler weather up there.
I was driving my little 4wd this time, so I could make it down the steep, deeply-eroded, incredibly rocky approach road onto the 7,200 foot floodplain to park in the shade of the old-growth. There was a flood warning sign, but the catastrophic post-fire flooding had already occurred last fall, and I figured enough regrowth had occurred in the meantime to forestall anything like that now. A storm would actually be really welcome today, to cool things off.
I’d gotten a late start, and it was already too hot in the sun when I got out of the vehicle. The creek had shrunken to an occasional algae-choked trickle, but my friends the flies were still there, swarming my head net. I climbed across the debris flows, deep washouts, deadfall and blowdown of the old forest road to the junction of two canyons where I’d started the previous hike. Today’s hike would continue up what was left of the road – mostly nice and shady.
The Forest Service map shows this road ending after about another mile, where it climbs the right bank of the creek and the old trail begins, climbing about 200 feet up a slope to bypass a rocky narrows in the canyon. On the ground, the road had mostly been obliterated by catastrophic flooding and regrowth, but I was able to read and follow its traces, finally arriving at an overgrown clearing on the right bank.
Straight ahead was a little erosional gully that might be the remains of the trail, and when I pushed through shrubs on the easier left bank of the gully, I sensed the vaguest indication of an old cleared corridor climbing the slope. I climbed a hundred feet or so up a rounded shoulder, repeatedly checking the topo maps I’d brought. They were the highest resolution I could get, but still omitted most of the actual topography I was seeing on the ground, so I had a really hard time figuring out where I was.
But before the shoulder merged with the higher slope, in a place where there was no other surviving evidence of a trail, I suddenly came upon a big cairn. The map shows the trail making a left turn two hundred feet above the canyon bottom, and a cairn often indicates a turn or crossing point, but when I looked left, a little thicket blocked my way. So I continued up the slope, imagining I was following the ghost of a trail.
Just before the shoulder merged with the main slope, I did come to some kind of trail that approached a steep gully. But I couldn’t see its continuation on the opposite slope, so I kept climbing. It was now impossible to judge how high I was above the canyon bottom, and the map just wasn’t detailed enough. I climbed another fifty feet or so, before giving up and heading down the gully. There was no sign of a trail anywhere, so I just began laboriously sidehilling across the very steep slope in loose dirt.
Eventually I emerged high above the main canyon again, and came upon a path that was so nice I assumed it had to be the remains of the old hiking trail, now used only by game. The map showed it leading back down to the creek after a quarter mile, but suddenly it ended in a dense thicket of thorny locust. I spent another twenty minutes or so scouting for a route through, above, or below, finally giving up and heading straight down the slope toward the canyon bottom. That’s where I found another cairn, hidden behind a big blowdown log, and looking back saw the old hiking trail leading up the slope far below where I’d been hiking. Talk about trial and error – I’d used up almost an hour routefinding in only a half mile of terrain.
The canyon bottom was fairly narrow here, alternating between surviving sections of floodplain where there were faint game trails, and washed out sections where I had to walk in the creekbed. But within another quarter mile I came to another cairn, pointing to an overgrown corridor up the floodplain. I was really encouraged – I hadn’t found anything like this near the start of that other canyon hike.
It was still hot in the sun, without a whisper of wind, but there was enough surviving forest to offer intermittent shade. What remnants of trail I found were overgrown and only maintained by game, but I continued to find cairns every hundred yards or so – until I came to a badly burned basin where side canyons came in from left and right. This basin was filled with debris, including logjams I had to make long detours around.
The map shows a point where major side canyons come in from left and right, with the trail making a sharp left into one of them. But I didn’t think I’d gone far enough. There was nothing to do but laboriously climb through the long debris field. And once past it, I did see another cairn, all by itself out in the middle of the boulder pile.
From there, I found a route up the left bank, and re-entering forest, soon came to a steep side drainage where I spotted another cairn, high on the slope to my left. And below it, the faint trail I was following ended.
The map shows the trail climbing the left bank of this side canyon, but the cairn beckoned me up the right bank. There was so little evidence of a trail up there I had to imagine it, but the canyon turned out to be so narrow that I figured I couldn’t go wrong.
After the late start and all the routefinding and bushwhacking, I was running out of time. But this climb up a side canyon was the beginning of the ascent to the crest, so I was excited to keep going. And although I seldom had a clear trail to follow, I kept finding cairns – much better than the previous hike in this area.
After about a quarter mile, I came to the convergence of several side drainages, some of which didn’t show up on the map. There were two little cairns in the convergence, but they didn’t indicate which way to go. I guessed that my route should go up a little shoulder and began climbing it, through an open forest where I had to detour around a lot of deadfall. There was no evidence of a trail, but squinting up the slope I finally spotted another big cairn.
A second cairn above this one led me around a rocky narrows in the next drainage. I even found an old, sun-bleached ribbon tied to a burned snag. This whole hike was like successfully solving a puzzle, using familiar clues in an unfamiliar landscape. I’d wasted a lot of time on unsuccessful forays, but if I ever wanted to come back, I now knew enough to avoid those.
I came to another stopping point, where a big gully came down from the right, with a very steep and rocky slope on the opposite side and impassable thicket on my side. I was out of time, but studying the opposite slope closely, I thought I could see a couple of cairns way up there. I zoomed in with the camera so I could confirm them later.
Returning, when I reached sunny stretches in the main canyon I figured it had to be in the high 80s. So I took it easy, drank lots of water and used my electrolyte supplements.
A few big cumulus clouds had formed and drifted over at times, but unfortunately no storms. I’d started the day with two trays worth of ice cubes in my uninsulated water reservoir, and the water was still blissfully cold eight hours later. Even so, I was repeatedly paralyzed by bad leg cramps, and my foot was hurting even in my best hiking boots. A worrying development since last winter.
The county road that leads to this trail may be the rockiest in our entire region. There’s a little signpost along the scary traverse out of the canyon, commemorating a guy who drove off and bounced down hundreds of vertical feet, probably ending in a fireball, in 1980.
It’s not so bad in my pickup truck with its leaf springs, but in the stiffly-sprung little Sidekick it feels and sounds like World War Three. So I had to take much of the 8 miles at less than 10 mph, and it was a huge relief to reach the paved highway.
Checking the map at home, I found I’d made it to within a mile and a third of the 9,000 foot crest. Now I’m familiar with the route, if I start the day on time I can probably go all the way. But as I’ve found elsewhere, the route on the ground deviates significantly from routes, including GPS, shown in mapping databases. So there are no guarantees.
I’d gone 7.15 miles out and back, with little over 1,100 feet of elevation gain, in seven hours. A pretty pathetic pace and a far too easy hike by my usual standards. But not bad for a hike in a heat wave when people are probably dropping dead elsewhere in the Southwest.
Monday, July 24th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Our daily high temperature was forecast to drop from 98 to 90 this weekend – a significant cool-down from the past three weeks. But the humidity remained high, and I still needed high elevations and shade for my Sunday hike.
And after last Sunday’s routefinding and bushwhacking, I wanted an easy trail. The mountains in Arizona were still too hot, so there was really no choice – I had to do the crest hike near town that I’d already done only two months ago.
There’d been a brief storm yesterday, the canyon was dripping with dew, and the flies were out in force. I was sweating heavily from the humidity even before the air warmed up. I found lots of tracks from yesterday on the canyon bottom stretch of this popular trail, but as usual they dropped off in the first couple of miles before the climb to the crest. The only tracks that preceded me on the climb were from a mountain bike sometime in the past weeks.
I wound my way up through the mixed-conifer forest on the south side of the 9,000 foot peak, and just below the crest noticed an older couple sitting in the shade fifteen or twenty feet above the trail. We exchanged pleasantries about the cooler weather and the beautiful day, and I pointed out we were lucky the wildfire that cleared forest from the north side had left this side intact.
The woman immediately launched into a lecture about fire suppression and the importance of fire in the ecosystem. I smiled, letting her finish, then I said that for years, my hikes in this and other national forests had been amateur studies in fire ecology. I said one thing I’d learned is that hiking trails like this are unsustainable in wildfire habitat. The man said “Yeah, they’re actually abandoning a lot of trails!”
“Yep, habitat will just have to recover without us,” I added.
“And that’s a good thing!” the woman maintained, sternly and emphatically. “Nature is better without humans!”
I smiled again. Here they were enjoying a day in nature, and she was resenting it.
I asked them where they’d hiked from. Like others I’ve met recently here, they’d driven all the way up the fire lookout road to the crest, and hiked less than a mile to this spot. They’d actually spent the night there on the road, battered by yesterday’s storm, and would drive the twenty miles back to town today.
The man asked me where I was hiking from, and after I’d told him said “That’s a big hike! How far do you go from here?”
I told him about the shallow basin with old-growth conifers and a grassy meadow three miles farther out the crest. “Wow!” he said.
“Yeah, eighteen miles out and back, but on an easy trail, which is what I need at this point.” I told them about the bushwhack I’d done last week, when it took me seven hours to cover seven miles. I recommended hikes over in Arizona where trails were better maintained, but got the impression they were only interested in van camping and short walks near town.
The remaining three miles went smoothly, but I was hot, sweaty, and plagued by flies even on the crest. Such a relief to reach the shallow basin and collapse on a bed of pine needles in the shade.
Flowers were more subdued here than on previous hikes – many had already gone to fruit. But the pollinators were still busy. I was really feeling the heat on the way back, stopping to drink my still-cold water in every patch of shade.
The big milestone on the return is the saddle below the peak. At that point you’ve done twelve miles, and what remains is all downhill. I was wearing my best boots and my feet were doing better than on other recent hikes. And bigger clouds were forming, so I had intervals of darkness and cooler air in addition to the shade of the forest. The flies continued, worse in some parts of the forest than others, seemingly without rhyme or reason. But my head net allows me to ignore them.
On the final descent into the canyon I began seeing tracks of people who’d walked a few miles in while I was hiking on the crest. My left heel was acting up. I stopped to stretch, but was still limping intermittently on the last two miles in the canyon bottom, where I found more footprints and hoofprints of horses.
And when I got home, I discovered my whole lower body was covered with a rash that burned like fire in some places. So ironic that what keeps my heart, lungs, and mind healthy is causing skin problems, at the same time as trails become less accessible.
