Southwest New Mexico
Monday, July 31st, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Nabours, Southwest New Mexico.
For the past week, our forecast had predicted the afternoon high to dip below 90, beginning this weekend. So I was looking forward to more hiking options – I wouldn’t be limited to the now-mostly-impassable trails above 9,000 feet.
But the ranges over in Arizona would still be too hot, and as I studied my list, I realized the remaining local trails were either too exposed or spent most of their time at elevations where temps could still exceed 90. I was about to give up when, a half hour before departure time, I remembered the trail I’d tried to reach a few months ago, only to be turned back by a road flooded with snowmelt. Snowmelt! Those were the days.
I’d forgotten to add this trail to my list. It climbs out of a narrow canyon to a ridge that it follows to the 9,000 foot crest, where after five and a half miles it connects with a two-and-a-half mile southbound trail to the 9,800 foot peak I pass on one of my old favorite hikes. Of course, it crosses the burn scar of our 2012 mega-wildfire, but the first three miles had been cleared last fall, and the rest was scheduled to be cleared this fall. So maybe there were enough clues left for me to be able to puzzle out. If I could reach that southern peak – unlikely in this heat – it would be a 16 mile round-trip with 5,700 feet of elevation gain.
Deciding at the last minute, I got a late start. And amazingly, although it was Sunday, a road crew was busy at the halfway point on the highway north, delaying me another fifteen minutes. I had plenty of time to recall how this has long had one of the best road surfaces in our region. But the creek crossing, a raging flood a few months ago, was now bone dry. The trailhead logbook had been removed, but a rocky section of the road requires high clearance so I figured this trail sees few visitors.
Choosing this trail had involved some denial and wishful thinking. The trailhead lies at 5,100 feet, almost a thousand feet lower than my home, so today’s high was likely to reach 95 there. And most of the climb up the long ridge would be exposed, through scrub and open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland. It’s a continuous climb from the trailhead, and at an average 14 percent grade, it would be the steepest trail I know of anywhere. I’ve done steeper bushwhacks, but trails are generally routed with gentler grades. I was surprised, but also pleased – this is the kind of trail I like, and the steeper the ascent, the more rewarding the descent.
The trail begins by climbing two hundred vertical feet out of the narrow canyon to the top of the ridge, which is near the lower edge of a dissected alluvial bench. This bench forms a broad, gently sloping skirt below the western wall of the range. Parallel streams dissect it, either into flat-topped mesas or long, narrow ridges like this one.
The sky was clear, the air was still, I was totally exposed and sweating like a pig as I labored upwards, wondering when I would either get too hot and turn back, or reach the shade of a ponderosa forest above 7,000 feet. The ridgeline consists of a series of little peaks or humps, each of which the trail climbed over at between 20 and 30 percent grades. And from these, the 9,000 foot peaks and ridges above beckoned.
Reading the trail, I soon confirmed no one else had been up this trail besides cattle, probably not since the trail work last September. The cattle sign was really old, but the trail was in great shape, and while suffering in the heat, I looked forward to an easy descent later.
Eventually I left the totally exposed scrub zone behind and began passing between pinyon pines and junipers where I could step off occasionally into some momentary shade. Radiant heat was my nemesis – it felt like the low 90s on the exposed trail, and the mid-70s when I stepped into the shade. Finally I surmounted the steepest grade yet, traversing a prominent hill, and came to a saddle with a big cairn.
Past the saddle was another steep hill, and traversing the north slope of that I encountered my first ponderosa pines. But then the cleared trail ended at a shallow slope covered with bunchgrass and strewn with charred deadfall.
After some scouting, I found some pink ribbons that had been hidden by charred snags falling after last year’s trail work, and eventually picked up a faint trail on the high side of the clearing. The trail crew had continued up the ridge, cutting some brush but leaving the deadfall, and soon I came to oak thickets where the old tread had been completely obliterated by the erosion of post-fire sheet flows.
Miraculously, I was still able to find an occasional pink ribbon that beckoned me forward. Most of these ribbons were in the midst of thickets, so you couldn’t see them until you pushed your way in. Some of them led to impenetrable blowdown that I had to back out and circumvent.
Finally I reached the last ribbon. Beyond it was what looked like the ghost of the old trail, but it was completely blocked by low shrubs and deadfall for as far as I could see.
I turned back, descending a hundred yards or so through the maze of scrub oak. It was still early, storm clouds were forming over the crest and providing occasional shade, along with breezes, that cooled me off. I still had plenty of energy and wanted to keep going, but the slopes above were getting steeper and rockier, and without a route, I would soon be lost and blocked by a rock wall or boulder pile.
I kept checking the topo maps I’d brought, but the landscape I could see from this thicket seemed nothing like the topography shown on the maps. I began to suspect the trail workers had deviated from the original route.
There was an opening in the maze that led south over the ridge. I explored that for a couple hundred yards, but was no wiser for it. I turned back and hiked back up to the last ribbon. I’d pushed through thickets before, so I chastised myself and began forcing my way up the trace that I thought might be the old trail. After climbing over a bunch of deadfall, I reached a point where the “trail” became a deeply eroded drainage, ending in a wall of shrubs that was just too dense for me.
So I gave up and, with difficulty, found my way back down through the maze. But I wasn’t happy, and when I reached the point at the lower edge of the oak thicket where the trail crew had stopped clearing brush, I stopped again and started feeling guilty about not trying harder.
So for a second time, I turned back, re-climbing the two hundred vertical feet and fighting my way back through that quarter mile of maze. Along the way, I picked up bits of pink ribbon I found lying on the ground, so I could add my own ribbons past the last ones tied by the trail crew, to guide my return.
I’d seen quite a few birds, but nothing unusual. Flocks of ravens were circling, vultures rocked on thermals, and finally I saw a big raptor hunting among the peaks far above. When a hawk appeared to give the bigger bird scale, I realized it had to be an eagle. It hunted up there for quite a while but was too far for a picture.
This time, I climbed a deeply eroded slope crisscrossed by deadfall, above the thicket that blocked the gully where I’d stopped before. I climbed to the base of the steep slope above. I saw two peaks above me, where my map showed a level ridge. They looked to be at least a thousand feet higher, and I assumed one was the named peak on the map. The slope ahead of me looked impassable, and I had no idea where the old route went, or if I was even close to it. This was as far as I would get.
On the way down, I untied my ribbons so as not to mislead anyone. I became convinced the trail crew had deviated and was hacking a new route up this ridge, one which was likely doomed. I’d captured some GPS waypoints with my messaging device and at home, would compare them with the trail shown on the maps to see how far off they’d gone. I planned to notify USFS as well as the equestrian trail crew.
But in the meantime, the clouds were dispersing and a fierce heat was radiating off the trail onto my face. I figured the ground, which was gravel and hard-packed dirt, had stored and accumulated heat throughout this record heat wave. It was like walking across the crust of an active lava flow, so I descended the steep, treacherous surface as fast as was safe. My only consolation was the broad vista ahead, from the valley 3,000 feet below me to the series of blue mountain ranges on the far side, ending on the horizon at the barely visible Mogollon Rim.
Finally I reached a point where I could turn around and get a view of the crest I’d been climbing toward. Now I saw that the landmark peak and most of the crest had been hidden from me when I was in that oak maze. And when I got home and checked my GPS waypoints, I learned I’d covered much less ground than expected – 7 miles in 6-1/2 hours. I’d been on the right trail until that last pink ribbon – from there, the trail turns 90 degrees left and begins winding its way up toward the hidden peak, far north of where I’d gone. I’d gotten stuck below slopes that hid the upper landscape, so there was no way I could’ve found a route on my own, let alone reconnecting with the old trail.
In the canyon bottom, even though I’d parked it facing west with the reflective sunshade over the windshield, my vehicle was like a pizza oven. I opened all the doors and left the AC on high for a while, but even so the sweat was pouring off me as I drove out to the highway.
It was after 5 on a Sunday, but the road crew was still at work, resurfacing a highway that didn’t need it. The national bureaucracy and infrastructure most of us believe we need is actually a juggernaut of habitat destruction and waste. But people cling to the evil they know, imagining the only alternative is chaos and suffering.
Monday, August 21st, 2023: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
My twice-weekly hiking routine had been disrupted since April, and the Southwest heat wave had mostly prevented me from hiking for a month and a half – the last serious hike was during a brief cool-off a month ago.
An old friend had taken her life last week, and no hike was going to overcome the melancholy, but the forecast showed the heat wave fading during the next couple of weeks. I re-checked the online trip reports for my old favorite crest hike on the west side, that had been blocked by a massive blowdown in March, and found one from a lady who’d hiked through there at the end of May, mentioning only a few trees down. So with no expectations, I decided to give it a try. It’s a challenging hike and I knew I’d lost a lot of conditioning, and depending on the weather, solar heating might be intense on the exposed crest. But the day was forecast to be windy – that might help.
As I approached the trailhead, I was glad to see a cloud bank over the mountains – wondering how long it would last?
Unsurprisingly, there were few entries in the trailhead log during the past two hot months, and the farthest anyone had gone was the spring at 4-1/2 miles. But one hiker thanked the Forest Service for trail work, which was encouraging.
And a few yards up the trail there was a new wooden sign, to replace the metal “Warning: Trail Not Maintained” sign that’s been there since the 2012 wildfire. This permanent-looking sign announced the trail is unmaintained past Camp Creek Saddle. That suggested two possibilities: first, that the eight miles to the saddle might actually be cleared now, and second, that the remaining twelve miles to the crest trail have been permanently abandoned.
I was excited about the first possibility. Despite being in poor shape, if the trail was clear I was determined to make it to the saddle, a 16-mile round trip with over 5,000′ of elevation gain. I would do it if even if it meant coming back in the dark.
The second possibility was depressing, since this is the last potentially maintainable link in the vast network that used to enable backpackers to traverse the crest of the range.
Unsurprisingly, again, the creek was dry when I reached the canyon bottom, but vegetation was lush in the old burn scar due to our wet winter. And even without running water, I encountered a painted redstart as soon as I left the burn scar and entered the riparian canopy.
Then, two miles into the hike where the blowdown had started, I found that the dozens of big logs across the trail had indeed been cut, probably in May after I called the ranger station to report it.
The work had been done by the equestrians, and I was grateful, but it still bothered me that they were using this to promote their own agenda, going so far as to brand one of the cut logs with their acronym.
Normally, at this time of year, there would be thunderstorms with rain and hail and lots of wildflowers and fungi. In this drought I found only a few flowers and no fresh fungi. Buy the wildlife seemed to be thriving – in rapid succession I came upon an Arizona/Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake, a whitetail deer buck, a Downy Woodpecker, and a rattlesnake.
Panting with effort as the grade got steeper, I made it to the bottom of the switchbacks and found that the big tree across the trail there had indeed been cut. But that’s where the equestrians’ trail maintenance had ended.
Quite a bit of new blowdown slowed me down on the switchbacks, and the wind increased as I trudged upward, exceeding 40 mph in more exposed sites. But clouds still drifted across the sun, and both the wind and the shade really helped. I even felt a chill when under a particularly dark cloud, but as soon as the sun returned it felt like the mid-80s again. The spring at 9,100 feet was still flowing, and I wondered if I would run out of water trying to reach the distant saddle. Nice to know fresh water was available here.
Finally I rounded the corner of the last long switchback and the crest was in sight. I hadn’t seen human tracks anywhere on this trail, and I figured I might be the only person to make it up here since last fall.
I crossed the 9,500′ saddle on the shoulder of the peak and headed down the trail on the back side, through the burn scar dense with regrowth of aspen and locust. The wind was coming from the south, and when I reached the first small stand of intact forest a big limb snapped off and fell a couple yards to my right. I stopped, then figured I’d be safer in the midst of the forest, so I kept going. But then another limb snapped off and fell a few yards to my left. I was pretty sure the wind here was exceeding 50 mph, so I was paying a lot of attention to the canopy.
As usual, the trail down the back side, leading to a long ridge and eventually Camp Creek Saddle, was an obstacle course of thorny locust and blowdown. Virtually no trail work has been done here for at least five years. The burn was patchy, and small stands of alpine mixed-conifer forest alternate with jungles of regrowth. I’d fought my way to the distant saddle almost exactly two years ago, but I knew I wasn’t up for that today. I was just trying to make it to a tiny saddle, the first low point in the ridge, where there was a stand of forest on the south side where I could stop and rest.
But about halfway down I came upon a pile of really fresh bear scat, and started making a lot more noise. Then I saw the first hawk, circling around the little peak above my destination saddle, and heard it screech. Soon it was joined by another, and they poised together in the face of the wind and were joined by a third. The wind was fierce but they kept trying to hold a formation together, right over my head. They stuck around for ten or fifteen minutes before drifting away together.
I had a nice rest in the shade of the forest, while staying vigilant on the wind in the canopy. I was deep enough I felt somewhat protected. I also noticed a pine that wasn’t ponderosa – you have to be really focused to tell the difference, and it’s common to just assume the only conifers in this habitat are ponderosa and doug fir.
Finally I made my back up through the jungle, to the shoulder of the high peak where I climbed to the little rocky overlook. I knew the wind would be at its worst here, but I always love the view, over the heart of the range on the east and the open country to the west.
When I finally reached the long switchbacks down from the crest and got some relief from the wind, I was lucky to encounter a solitary swallowtail butterfly. And I stopped to examine a small pine that had blown down across the trail recently enough that some needles were green. I figured it was the same species as the trees I’d seen on the crest – probably a Southwestern White Pine, which must be fairly common here if you know to look for them.
Steller’s jays had been harrassing me all day, but partway down the trail in the canyon bottom I sensed something rising in the corner of my eye, and noticed a shadowy form settling on a low branch, only 30-40 feet away. It was an owl! A small one, only about 12-14 inches head to tail, but when I got home and looked it up, I found it was almost certainly a rare Mexican Spotted Owl, probably a young one. It just sat there and watched me, obviously curious, until I finally had to go.
Shortly after that, I heard a screech overhead, and the hawks returned, swooping low through the canopy this time. I’ve seen young migrating eagles behaving like this, traveling in flocks and showing off their acrobatic skills. What a day for wildlife! I began to wonder if the heat wave and corresponding absence of humans has allowed wildlife to flourish more in these habitats. Despite the displacement of indigenous peoples, wilderness designation is valuable if only to keep us civilized people under control – we just can’t be trusted not to destroy nature.
Monday, September 4th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
I didn’t feel like driving this Sunday, but the day was forecast to be hot and I wanted to keep working on my conditioning. There was really only one option near town, the eighteen-mile crest hike that utilizes part of the national trail. It’s not wilderness, it’s close enough to town that I often meet casual hikers near the lower and upper trailheads, and cattle occasionally use the upper part, but it allows me to achieve serious mileage and elevation on a reliable trail. And even though it’s not wilderness, it proves how healthy our mountain habitat is in general, compared to public lands near urban areas.
The approach is on a sporadically maintained primitive forest road up a narrow canyon. There were two other vehicles at the trailhead, but the only track I found on the road, and on the upper trail, was from a single mountain bike. The upper trail is so steep and rocky I assumed the biker took the gravel fire road to the crest from the opposite side, and rode down this canyon segment.
The habitat along most of this trail is lush even in a drought, but we’d gotten enough rain recently that wildlife was really thriving. Heading down though dense regrowth past the shoulder of the 9,000 foot summit, I noticed a hummingbird working the flowers ahead and froze where I was. The bird also stopped, to perch on a low branch beside the trail. I waited several minutes, then slowly moved a couple yards closer and froze again. I kept moving closer in stages like this until I was literally only a yard away, and the hummingbird – probably a female broad-tailed – hung in there, staring back at me with what appeared to be curiosity.
That experience was so cool that I kept stopping in flower-dense areas during the rest of the hike, hoping pollinators would ignore me and approach. It generally worked, but I was paying so much attention to what was happening above the trail that I slipped on a rock and tweaked my ankle at one point. My reinforced boots allowed me to keep hiking, but it was swollen and sore the next day.
The lower part of the trail is mostly shaded, but burn scars and scattered clouds along the crest meant that I was moving between hot sun and chilly shade for most of the day.
The last two-and-a-half miles are very seldom used, running just below the crest through wildfire burn scar and remnant forest on a steep and rocky slope. I heard whooping and hollering behind me, and the grinding of tires on gravel, and was glad the mountain bikers were sticking to the fire road on the north side of the ridge.
There’s always at least one hawk working this slope, and today there were three, along with many other birds closer to ground. But finally, I heard tires behind me, and scrambled to find a place to safely get off the trail on this steep slope.
It was a group of three mountain bikers, the first of a convoy of twelve. The leader, the oldest, stopped to placate me, warning about the others to follow and wishing me “peace and tranquillity”. He said they were riding to honor the race which had been cancelled this year – a downhill race where they get a permit to close off one of our most popular trails, and competitors bomb down in full body armor on $10,000 bikes.
The other riders were spread out over a half mile, and from then on I kept having to quickly find a safe place to step off the trail so they could pass. The last group was a duo, and the young female rider lost her balance on a loose rock so I had to wait patiently while she figured out how to get going again.
Riding high on their machines, they were obliviously disrupting all the wildlife I’d been enjoying in my frequent stops. Our natural habitats were just a colorful backdrop for their adrenaline sport.
When I reached the “park”, the shallow natural basin at the end, I stretched out on pine needles in the shade and rested for a full half hour before heading back. The next day, lying on the sofa with an ice pack, I found myself wondering how much longer I can keep doing these punishing marathons!
Eighteen miles is a long hike, even on a good trail, and I was getting pretty sore by the time I reached the shoulder of the peak. That’s an important milestone because it’s all downhill from there.
And by the time I reached the trail crossing four miles from the end, I was limping. I collected some trash left by hikers or bikers during the day, and I finally took a pain pill to get me through the last two miles on the canyon road.
Monday, September 11th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, McKnight, Southwest New Mexico.
This weekend was forecast to feature what I hoped was the last of our seemingly endless Southwest heat wave. Ironically, Sunday, my hiking day, was forecast to reach 90 in town, while highs in the following week were predicted to drop into the 70s.
I’d already done all the high-elevation hikes in our area, except one – the crest hike that requires a two-hour drive and traverses a moonscape burn scar with hundreds of logs across the trail. I was grimly determined to deal with both the drive and the logs, when at the last minute I remembered another crest route – a route I’d never considered because it’s not wilderness, and most of it consists of a road instead of a trail. At this point, even if I didn’t get much hiking in, it would be worth it just to escape the heat.
This route is approached from the west side of the north-south range east of town. I’ve delayed exploring this area until the past six months, because all the hikes must be accessed via long drives up long ridges – “finger” mesas – on rocky roads. After several tries, I’d given up – none of the trails have been cleared in the wake of two mega-wildfires, one in 2013 and one in 2022, that burned almost the entire crest of the range.
At 10,020 feet elevation in the south half of this range, the second-tallest peak hosts an active fire lookout, and I’ve climbed that many times on what is probably the best-maintained trail in our area. But in the north half of the range, there’s actually a forest road that climbs to a cabin less than two miles from the 10,165 foot summit.
It’s almost 18 miles from the highway at 6,200 feet to the cabin at 9,500 feet. I’d driven the lower 9 miles twice – the last mile of it is over sharp ledges of bedrock with a sheer dropoff and is very nerve-wracking. The upper 9 miles is widely reported to be one of the most brutal roads in existence, completely undriveable without high clearance and low-range 4wd. Since I was looking for more hiking and less driving, my plan was to try to drive within 7 or 8 miles of the summit, but I didn’t even know if that would be possible with my vehicle.
Since the road follows the crest of the range and spends about three miles traversing a burn scar up there, I would be exposed for most of the hike. I wasn’t worried about sun, since there would likely be a breeze across the north-south crest, but we were forecast to get clouds in the afternoon, and although I hoped for rain, lightning would be a real concern.
The vertiginous upper road climbs over 2,000 feet in the first six miles, and it turned out to be barely driveable in low-range with my 9 inch ground clearance, as I slowly pushed the little vehicle up a seemingly endless series of sharp bedrock ledges. Including the easy stretches, I averaged about 6 miles per hour.
I did bash the undercarriage pretty good in one spot, but the payoff was the views. Approaching the crest, I was facing the highest points in the range across a wide canyon that had been burned to a moonscape. I was looking for a saddle with a surviving stand of conifers where I could park in the shade, and I finally found one, at the site of a SNOTEL – a snow telemetry site maintained by the National Weather Service.
From the snow telemetry installation, I had about a four-mile walk on the road to the cabin, followed by about two miles on a trail I was sure was unmaintained and overgrown. But first, I was curious about the junction with the northbound crest trail, a trail I’d hiked many times from the south, and tried to reach recently from a canyon that parallels this road, below on my right.
The first thing I noticed was wildflowers – they were probably peaking now at this elevation, helped by the little moisture we’d received in the past two weeks. Then I reached the trail junction. I suddenly realized that although I’d be walking a road, the road here is actually a segment of the crest trail. That made me feel better – I wasn’t choosing to walk the road, it was actually the only route available.
Since the trail junction marks the beginning of the crest, it also marks the crossing to the eastern watershed. This is a huge watershed in which three long creeks cross a broad basin to merge into one at the bottom. The surrounding ridges and slopes are topographically diverse, ranging from cliffs and pinnacles to shallow slopes blanketed by annuals. I’d never seen any of it before so I made slow progress as I stopped to study the landscape opening out below me.
Walking the crest, I hadn’t expected much elevation gain or loss, but this is where I realized it would actually be a rollercoaster. My whole day would be spent ascending and descending hundreds of feet, crossing back and forth between eastern and western watersheds, over and over, up in the sky.
After about two-thirds of a mile with that eastward view, the road crossed to the other side, where I could view that badly burned canyon I’d seen on my way up. The stands of aspen and fir that had been killed in the fire created bands of black and tan on the slopes that alternated with white outcrops of volcanic conglomerate and green regrowth of locust and Gambel oak.
There are always hawks along a crest, and I encountered the first of the day here.
Finally I reached the cabin, and the end of the road, in a small forested basin facing east. I remembered seeing photos of this cabin on InciWeb, wrapped in foil to protect it during both of the big wildfires. Structures like this are where firefighters invest most of their effort.
I could barely discern the trail leaving the cabin for the peak. There was no sign, but there was a vague disturbance in the annual ground cover, heading up in the direction of the ruined outhouse. When I followed that, I noticed a branch veering off into the forest. No one but animals had used this trail in the current growing season – it was almost completely overgrown and blocked repeatedly by deadfall. But it had been used heavily by firefighters last summer, so there was enough tread left under the vegetation that I could read it by going slow.
Before approaching the summit, the trail climbs to a 9,800 foot peak – it’s actually hard to identify the summit from a distance because it’s surrounded by peaks that are only slightly lower. The almost invisible trail first crossed to the eastern slope, then at the top of the lower peak, crossed again into a new watershed that was tributary to the big canyon I’d seen on the drive up. I was crossing so many watersheds it was hard to keep track!
Past the lower peak, the trail traversed a steep slope that had been badly eroded and colonized by thorny locust. Here, I flushed a small hawk, not much more than a foot long, probably a Cooper’s or sharp-shinned. This was the slowest part of my hike, and the hardest to follow. But again, the trail crossed watersheds, and I was facing east again on an even steeper slope, where the trail seemed to be maintained by deer and elk. I’d seen no evidence of humans on this trail, probably not since the summer 2002 wildfire.
The last stretch crossed back to the west, and climbing through dense ferns, entered a young stand of aspens, fir, and spruce. A wide corridor had been cut through these, and a few small peaks rose on my right, but I had no idea if any were the actual summit, so I just kept following the open corridor.
Finally I emerged from the trees, and could see another peak about a quarter mile away across a low saddle. My trail seemed to continue downwards to the east, looking more like an old road. I checked my map, but still wasn’t sure, so I started up the opposing peak, and soon found myself stopped by regrowth and deadfall with no easy way forward. Checking the map again, I became convinced I’d passed the actual summit – it was probably one of those little bumps I’d passed in the forest.
I returned into the corridor through the forest, and eyeballed an easy way up. Sure enough, I soon emerged on a little rocky bump, where a rusty can covered a jar with a record of ascents. I had no interest in that, but just below the bump, a grassy ledge offered a 360 degree view, a view I’d only dreamed about.
Clouds had been forming for the past hour or so, looking like a storm in the north, with wind rising and temperature falling. Now I could see curtains of rain to the north and east. I tried to absorb these views, but was most captivated by the view of the big eastern basin. I became more and more convinced that this was the most beautiful landscape I’d ever found in this area. It was worth walking that long road, just to reach this view!
Returning, I could see rain ahead in the west, and as I emerged from the corridor in the forest, there at 10,000 feet, I was hit by showers blown by a strong wind, and had to dig out my rain poncho.
From the next couple of hours it would rain on and off, with temps in the 60s, occasionally clearing here and there. I’d definitely escaped the heat wave!
After leaving the cabin and rejoining the crest road through the burn scar, I came upon two hawks, soaring together and apart, hovering, diving and briefly grappling mid-air. My views of the landscape were an ever-changing pageant of monsoon weather.
As I left the western watershed and re-entered the eastern for the final segment before the trail junction, it was great to be able to see the southern peak that I’d climbed so many times, from this angle. When descending the back side of that peak I’d been facing this road, but at nine miles it’s just too far to pick out with the naked eye.
It hadn’t been a long hike, nor entailed as much elevation gain as I prefer, but I couldn’t have gone much faster – the unmaintained peak trail made it challenging and slow. The drive up the road had taken two hours, and the hike, with many stops, had taken six-and-a-half. With the two hour drive back home, it turned into a ten-and-a-half hour day.
And the agonizing drive down that road, where I bashed my undercarriage on rocks twice, convinced me that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore. Comparing the way my vehicle drives on rocky roads vs paved highways, I finally realized that the MacPherson struts that make it handle well on pavement, are definitely not designed for off-road use. They have little give, producing a stiff ride, which is just miserable on rocky roads, where I have to drive extra-slow.
This is more pronounced when I see others driving the same roads in more capable vehicles. On this Sunday evening, I was surprised to encounter a young guy driving a pickup with camper shell up the upper part of the road, obviously intending to camp out at the cabin. We met in a rare level clearing with plenty of room to pass, but as he continued, it suddenly dawned on me that if I’d met him at most places on this road I wouldn’t have been able to back up for him without destroying my vehicle. My road clearance is so marginal I need to scope out a precise line to get over these rock ledges, which I wouldn’t be able do in reverse. In some situations I’d be obligated to back up for the other driver, and there are plenty of rednecks around here who would sooner shoot me than give way.
Monday, September 25th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It’d been almost exactly a year since a catastrophic flash flood washed out the road to one of my favorite nearby trails. At least I remembered it as one of my faves. The main road up the mesa leads to two trails, and I’d checked this one several times during the past year. As of April 30, the road was still impassable, and since July, the weather had been too hot to even consider this lower-elevation trail.
This Sunday was forecast to be clear and warm – in the low 80s in town. I headed out, and lo and behold, when I reached the turnoff, the “Road Not Passable” sign had been removed.
In fact, this far into a drought, the big creek was completely dry at the crossing.
This trail starts at 5,300 feet and winds up a shallow, rolling basin to the foot of a 7,700 foot mountain, where it switchbacks up over a 6,500 foot saddle and enters a big new watershed lined with white rock pinnacles. Back there, it traverses the forested upper slope of the mountain to a narrow ridge that trends northward like a bridge for a little over a mile, with a spectacular view north across a deep canyon to the crest of the range many miles away.
Then the trail drops into the wild, upstream canyon of the big creek that was dry where I crossed it on the way in, in long traverses and switchbacks, descending over 800 feet to where the creek flows perennially. Thus the attraction of this trail is crossing multiple watersheds, gaining spectacular views, getting way back in the wilderness to a place where you feel really remote, isolated, and fully immersed in wild nature.
With the road recently repaired and our heat wave ending, I turned out to be the first non-wild creature to hit this trail in a very long time – probably in the past year. And the drought meant that I was facing a fairly clear trail with very little overgrowth. But what I’d forgotten is that almost all of this trail is lined with rocks – really hard on my problem foot.
And like last week’s hike, although the air temperature was mild, the sun was damn hot, with not a cloud in the sky and not a hint of a breeze on that initial climb.
Past the saddle, I began to get a little cooling breeze. Having resigned myself to a hike where I spent most of my time concentrating on my footing, I made decent time past the saddle and across the seemingly interminable traverse of the mountain’s back side, reaching the next milestone, the small level “park” lined with tall pines – a rare and always welcome source of shade.
From the park there’s a lot of serious up and down as you head north on the narrow ridge. The latter half of this traverses a burn scar which is popular with wildlife. I spooked a whitetail buck there, but after he first ran uphill away from me, I next spotted him running downhill to a vantage point behind me.
Cliffs abound in this landscape, and cliff swallows zipped past so quickly they were almost gone before I’d noticed them. Then I came upon a dove that simply trundled up the trail a short distance ahead of me, reluctant to fly away.
Leaving the ridge, the descent into the remote canyon cooled me off, despite being mostly through burn scar. My foot was hurting already, but this stretch of trail is relatively rock-free, and I had pain pills for the return.
This is a trail which is not shown accurately on any maps I’ve been able to find. My mapping platform omits most of the switchbacks and reports the out-and-back distance at a little over 13 miles and almost 3,000 feet of elevation gain, but with the switchbacks and new routing, I’ve estimated it at 15 miles and almost 3,500 feet.
The creek is hidden beneath a deciduous canopy in a dense corridor of vegetation, so you hear its wonderful sound before you come upon it. I laid down on a gravel bar beside the water and spent fifteen minutes trying to sort out the trees overhead.
The climb back to the ridge would seem daunting if it didn’t unfold in many distinct sections, with increasingly rewarding views. But my foot was getting worse, so I popped a pill, knowing it wouldn’t take effect for another 45 minutes.
Out in the exposed burn scar of the ridge, I suddenly noticed a small hawk trying to catch a tiny bird. The two of them, hunter and prey, spiraled toward me, only a dozen feet above the hillside, until when they were right overhead the hawk noticed me and backed off. I’d accidentally saved the little bird from being eaten.
I also noticed another whitetail – or maybe the same one.
Past the pine park, it’s mostly downhill, and the rocks on the trail get really bad. Constantly focused on where to put the next foot, I became pretty good at it, but I still rolled my already weak ankle a total of three times, and swore to wrap it in the future.
The worst rocks are on the descent from the saddle to the final basin. It was there that I swore never to hike this trail again. It’s just too damn hard on the foot and too dangerous for the ankle. I suppose young people could do this kind of thing without even noticing it, but it always amazes me that a trail would even be built and maintained across such rocky ground.
On the plus side, throughout the final two-mile trudge down the low basin, quail were constantly exploding out of the brush next to me, over and over, every few minutes. It may have been the same coveys, just moving downhill ahead of me. Never seen anything like it.
I was exhausted after the hour-and-a-half drive home, but while unloading the vehicle I suddenly came upon a chicken – a blonde hen – in my back yard. She circled around me, clucking, then approached tentatively.
I hear a rooster from time to time and remembered my neighbor mentioning somebody a block away who has chickens, so I called next door. Meanwhile, the hen fluttered up onto the tall fence between our houses. My neighbor said it might be the people in the next block, so he walked over to check. It was starting to get dark, and the chicken stayed up on the fence.
The guy down the street arrived, along with my neighbor and his wife. “Is it blonde?” he asked, in a strong accent. I beckoned him over and showed him the chicken. “Yes! There she is! I won’t have to tell my wife we lost her!” He reached and grabbed the hen, cradling her in his arms. By that time, another neighbor had showed up in my driveway, carrying her kitten. My neighborhood has turned into a sort of commune.
