Southwest New Mexico
Sunday, March 30th, 2025: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Continuing my knee rehab, I’m looking for 2-mile hikes with increasing elevation gain. And this weekend, I realized there’s a nearby 8,000 foot mountain that I’ve always avoided because the hike to the top and back is only two miles. It’s our most iconic mountain because its profile suggests a bear.
Since it’s only a 2-mile hike, I hadn’t really studied the topo map, and it wasn’t until I started climbing that I realized this is by far the steepest hike in my repertoire – an average 22% grade from bottom to top. So not so smart for my knee.
It’s just tall enough to host an island of ponderosa pines at the top, so one of the highlights of the climb was the final transition from pinyon-juniper-oak to ponderosa forest.
And of course there was a decent view, to northeast, northwest, and southwest.
When hiking downhill with patellar tendinitis, it seems the important thing is your gait. You need to use your whole foot, landing on the heel and rolling forward to grip with your toes. So I tried that on the entire 1,054 foot descent. It was still hard on my knee, but hopefully not as hard as if I’d descended mindlessly.
Sunday, April 6th, 2025: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It had snowed yesterday – just flurries in town, but I was looking forward to driving northwest for a view of fresh snow on our high mountains. Out of curiosity, I checked my photos of Aprils past. In 2012 it snowed here on April 14, in 2017 it snowed on April 1, and in 2021 it snowed on April 29. So not that unusual.
When I left the house it was freezing outside and I had to scrape frost off the windshield. I was planning to hike the first mile or so of one of my favorite wilderness trails, and on the drive north I could see snow on the slopes down to 7,000 feet. But most of the crest was obscured by a layer of clouds.
Along the highway, I passed hunting hawks of different species. Turning east off the highway, I followed the paved road up the edge of the broad floodplain of our famous river, then climbed the rough dirt road to the mesa at just over 5,000 feet. Eleven miles north I turned east again on a ranch road which drops into the valley of a big creek – now dry outside the mountains.
The creekside ranch apparently has a new owner, who has posted “Beware of Dog” signs every hundred yards for the two-mile stretch of ranch frontage. Must be quite a dog!
With its long approach on rough back roads, this trail doesn’t get much use – last entry on the trailhead log was more than two months ago, and the only tracks I found were from cattle.
Towering white clouds were forming and growing above as I hiked the rolling terrain, crisscrossed by shallow washes and crowded with Emory oaks and alligator junipers.
After traversing the maze of washes, the trail climbs gradually to a high bench before hitting the first slope of the mountains. My destination was a sheer rock outcrop that forms a natural dam across a steep canyon. It was really farther than I should’ve hiked at this stage of my knee recovery, but it provides a great view over the mesa.
And with the towering white clouds against the deep blue sky, and glimpses of fresh snow on the crest, this was the most glorious day for a hike I’d seen in a long time!
The sky just got better and better on the way back, with cloud shadows drifting across the slopes and occasional rays of sunlight glistening like diamonds on far-off patches of snow.
I grew up in the rural Midwest – a place whose wild, native history was totally erased long ago. Then, I spent most of my adult life in huge metropolitan areas – Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles – participating in a series of cultural and technological revolutions that defined historical eras in our colonial society.
And now, I’m blessed to have found a refuge far from the colonial capitals and urban sprawl, far from the centers of imperial wealth and power, at the edge of this vast mountain wilderness.
Monday, May 12th, 2025: Hikes, San Francisco Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Again, I was yearning for a long drive to a hike I’d never done before. The region that regularly draws me is the extremely rugged maze of interlinked mountain ranges about two hours’ drive north of here. It’s mostly unprotected cattle range, mostly unknown to hikers, anchored by the tiny town notorious as headquarters of the right-wing anti-government movement. I’ve done enough hikes there to know that most of them are really hard to drive to, and many are overrun with cattle or defended by rogue bulls. But I love the remoteness, the solitude, and the fact that despite being grazed, this area features native habitat in better condition than much of our big, famous wilderness area.
In the upper part of this area, right below the east-west crest that tops out at 9,000 feet, there’s a T-shaped convergence of abandoned, unmaintained, unpublished trails. Back in 2021, I’d hiked the stem of the T from the south – probably the hardest route-finding challenge I’ve ever faced, since there was literally nothing left in the entire seven miles but occasional cairns, many buried in tall grass.
The top bar of the T is divided into an east half and a west half, traversing the slopes below the crest for a total of seven and a half miles. Last fall when my knee injury prevented me from hiking, I drove to the unmarked trailhead at the east end of that crossbar, hoping I could return later to do the whole traverse. But the backcountry access road was so slow as to make it impractical.
So for this Sunday I had a brainstorm. I’d driven the crest road several times, passing the western trailhead of the T’s crossbar at a high saddle in dense mixed-conifer forest. Despite being shown on maps as abandoned, the trailhead features a maintained kiosk. The hike would start with a major descent into a canyon, which I’m usually not crazy about, but returning with an ascent would be better for my knee. And to the junction and back would be about 5-1/2 miles and 1,800 vertical feet, which should be just right at this stage of my knee recovery.
The day was forecast to be warm, but this trail would lie between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, and I believed most of it would be forested with at least partial shade.
At the kiosk, I noticed that someone had tucked a handwritten message into the bottom of the signboard. I pulled the message off, turned it over, and discovered they’d removed and written on the back of the Spanish-language “WELCOME TO YOUR NATIONAL FORESTS” placard which the United States Forest Service posts on every kiosk.
If I could reply to that message, I would point out that I’m a white person with an English last name, raised to speak English. But most of my ancestors were Gaelic-speaking Scots who were forced by the English to leave their homes and emigrate to this land, which had been conquered and stolen by the English from Native Americans. English is neither my native tongue nor the native language of this “country”. Like me, the kiosk vandal is a colonist, a descendant of either invaders or exiles. None of us has the right to impose one language or another on our neighbors.
So as best I could, I restored the Spanish placard to its place on the kiosk, and cheerfully set out down the trail.
As I said above, this trail starts by descending into a canyon – over 700 vertical feet – and unfortunately for my knee, the grade averaged more than 20 percent and increased in places to over 40 percent on loose rock or scree. Of course, I found none of the elaborate steps built long ago in the national monument I hiked last week – this was a clear trail, but there was no sign of humans on it. I initially assumed it was being maintained by cattle, but saw no tracks during the descent.
After spending the first half of the descent in mixed-conifer forest, I was surprised to suddenly emerge in a long stretch of mostly clear slope: an expanse of fractured bedrock with thin grasses and sporadic shrubs and small trees. This bedrock seemed to be mostly volcanic conglomerate containing colorful pebbles.
I approached the canyon bottom through open ponderosa forest, and could see it was lined with a broad, white debris flow from the 2018 wildfire that burned the crest at the head of the canyon. A very tall and slender narrowleaf cottonwood towered above the debris. And here is where I found the first cattle sign.
On the opposite bank of the canyon, I encountered a recently built stock fence, tight switchbacks that climbed the steep slope this side of the fence, and all the way up, cattle sign weeks and months old. Apart from the fence, I still hadn’t seen bootprints or any other sign of human use, so I began to assume that cattle were keeping brush off this otherwise abandoned trail, which had so far been really easy to follow.
Then, halfway up, I encountered the first of several broad swaths of bare, fractured rock. I was really enjoying the variety of healthy native habitats on this trail. The trail hugged the fence for a while, and I noticed how recent it was – maybe within the past few months. But fencebuilding in roadless country requires horses, and I’d seen no sign of horses, which can persist for up to a year.
The trail finally topped out in a vast area of bare rock, a broad shoulder past which I would enter a new watershed with views toward the area I’d discovered four years ago. I left the cattle sign behind and entered a segment of trail that was clearly being maintained by elk.
This next segment of trail traversed the steep south-facing slope below the crest of this range. On my right was a distinctive peak that I’d rounded on that previous hike, forested but with dark talus slopes on its north side.
The varied terrain continued, with the trail descending a scree slope at a 40 percent grade at one point, into a bare-rock ravine where I was surprised by a trickle of surface water.
This appeared to be an elk highway. But suddenly I came upon tiny fragments of orange rind, dessicated into thin, brittle shards. How quickly would they completely dry out? And how long would they persist on the surface without being scattered or buried by rodents, wind, rain, and erosion? We hadn’t had much precip over the winter but we’d sure had a lot of wind. I guessed they were over a month old, maybe many months – maybe they’d been left by the fencing crew. Maybe the fencing crew had been the only humans on this trail in the past year.
I’d stopped a lot, and climbed slowly on the ascents, and this hike was taking much longer than expected. I remembered the terrain ahead from the previous hike, and the trail junction I was trying to reach didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I’d been hoping to get to town before the market closed at 4 pm, but it wasn’t looking likely.
The trail had been climbing steadily, and I remembered it would descend before the junction. Just as I reached what seemed to be a high point, I stopped in frustration to check the topo map. After puzzling over it for a few minutes, I looked up, and behold! The old, partially collapsed trail sign was in shadow, right off the trail, less than ten feet ahead of me. I was already at my destination and hadn’t realized it! To celebrate, I reassembled the pieces of the sign as best I could.
Wind had been picking up all day, and since the trail was more exposed than I’d expected, I was grateful for cooling breezes. What I love about this trail, in addition to the varied habitats, is that it’s a traverse overlooking endless, rugged, roadless terrain, with views that shift dramatically as you proceed from watershed to watershed.
But it was getting later and later, so I began hiking faster than was probably good for my knee.
When I reached the bald shoulder above the deep canyon, and began descending those seemingly interminable short switchbacks, all I could think of was the tall, steep climb on the other side. After reaching the bottom and starting up, I did have to take it slow in most places, but I’ve been working up to it for months now, gradually increasing the elevation of my hikes, so my wind isn’t bad.
After reaching the vehicle, I raced up, over, and down the crest on that terrible rocky road, and reached the market in town 5 minutes after closing, to find lights out and the door locked…
Saturday, August 30th, 2025: Hikes, Nature, Pinos Altos Range, Rocks, Southwest New Mexico.
This one’s for my mom. Just a stroll through a nearby canyon that’s normally one of our wettest places year-round, but is now bone dry, late in monsoon season.
Monday, September 1st, 2025: Hikes, Mineral, Nature, Rocks, Southwest New Mexico.
I invited my neighbor along for this short hike in one of our most spectacular canyons. We seem to be entering another active phase of our Southwest monsoon, and impressive clouds were spreading over the high mountains as we drove north. But the creek, normally running, was mostly dry.
I only went about a mile up canyon, and by the time I was halfway back the sky was pretty threatening. We both welcomed the rain, but this narrow stretch of canyon wouldn’t offer many escape routes during a flash flood.
The rain hit as we walked from the vehicle to the cafe for lunch, and continued steady all the way home – one of our best rains this season.
