Mogollon Mountains
Sunday, September 25th, 2022: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
The day before, I’d driven a half hour east of town to attend the harvest festival that I started when I first moved here, in 2006. I was truly grateful to see it resurrected two years after the start of COVID, with a new generation of volunteers to keep it going.
A few of the old-timers are still around, too, and it was good to see them. But everyone else was just a stranger.
After forcing down a mediocre lunch prepared by one of the food vendors, and after enduring a mediocre performance by what used to be called a folk singer and is now called a “singer-songwriter”, I discovered that the mother-daughter country gospel act had canceled due to a family injury. And I realized that they were the only reason I was there. I’d been in charge of “entertainment” – everything from oral history and poetry slams to music and the announcing of prize winners – and they were one of the first acts I’d hired, and my personal favorite. In their honest, angelic voices, they’d delivered the songs I grew up with in the Appalachians.
So I left early.
I devoted hundreds of hours to that festival, and I’m still proud of it, although it’s no longer part of my life. It now seems to be self-sustaining, and it’s the only event in that rural valley that brings everybody together, once a year.
That night I tried to figure out where to go on my Sunday hike, and was stumped. I had a busy week coming up and didn’t want a long drive or an overnight, but most of the nearby hikes were undesirable due to monsoon overgrowth.
I woke up in the morning completely unmotivated and could barely get out of bed. I’d found a recent online trip report from a trail over in Arizona that I really wanted to try, but it would involve 5-6 hours of driving and an overnight, so it was out of the question right now.
After delaying my start to make up my mind – and almost giving up – I finally made a decision, and hit the road late. I would drive an hour and a quarter northwest and take a slow, overgrown canyon trail up to a high saddle, where I could cross into a more remote canyon and eventually reach the confluence of two big creeks. The latter part of the hike would offer some epic views.
I’d hiked the first canyon ten times in the past four years, but always found it maddeningly slow – the rampant vegetation, the debris flows, the random piles of logs, the continual detouring around giant boulders, the dozens of creek crossings. Really, the only reason I ever came back here was for the views you get once you climb out of the canyon to the crest. I had only made it to the remote confluence, in the farther canyon, once before. Out and back, it would be a little less than 13 miles and 4,000′ of elevation gain.
Driving north up the highway into the valley of our famous wild river, I saw signs for the river festival, and realized it was also on this weekend. It’s organized by our local environmental non-profits, and features conservation-oriented lectures, panel discussions, field trips and workshops.
I’d volunteered and attended several sessions at the river festival in my first year here, ultimately deciding that something more subsistence-based and inclusive – like my harvest festival – could be more effective for both land and community. The river festival is just preaching to the choir – the liberal retirees and idealistic youth that always temporarily patronize this sort of thing, but seldom put down roots in this land or this community.
I reached the turnoff for the trailhead, and discovered that the little creek was flowing vigorously out of the foothills and past the highway, something I’d never seen before. And I quickly found that the long gravel approach road had been washed out by debris flows at many places – something that should’ve tipped me off even before reaching the trailhead.
The road was in such bad shape it took me twice as long as usual. And at the trailhead I was surprised to find two vehicles – only the second time I’d had company here. According to the log, there was a birder from Arizona – he wouldn’t go far! – and a party of two planning the same remote destination as me.
Like most of these west-side trails, it traverses down into the canyon first, then continues upstream a few miles to the base of switchbacks that then lead to the crest. In this case, it’s 3/4 of a mile from trailhead to first creek crossing, and that’s where I had my next surprise. The canyon bottom had been scoured by a very recent flash flood – probably in the last couple of weeks – that had brought down tons of debris – rocks and shattered logs. The creek was roaring along but was precariously crossable on submerged rocks thanks to my waterproof boots.
But the farther I went, the less trail was left. What made this trail bad to begin with with – the narrowness of the canyon forces it to stay in or near the creek – means that when there’s a bad flood, the trail just gets wiped out, and the going gets very tough, since you have to find your way over, under, or around an obstacle course of shattered logs and boulders while trying to stay out of the rushing, foaming water.
I kept thinking of the other hikers ahead of me. Surely I would meet the birder soon – they typically stop after only a short distance to watch and listen for birds. But although their footprints were everywhere, they all must’ve gotten a much earlier start than me. I was beginning to feel like a real loser.
In the end, I made it less than a mile and a half before giving up. The general outline of the canyon I knew so well was still there, but the canyon-bottom trail was completely gone, and I had no desire to spend my day in this congested, scrambled up place. It had become such a brutal scramble, I couldn’t believe the birder was still ahead of me. I was sure the party heading for the high saddle and the remote confluence would not make it – it would take them most of the day just to get through this apocalyptic canyon. Presumably they were young people who would just embrace the challenge.
I remembered a party I’d gone to in 2008, where I met a guy returning from a hike on this trail. The original trail ascends over 4,000′ to the crest of the range, passing an iconic 10,600′ peak and connecting to a broad network of crest trails, but that network has been completely abandoned since the 2012 wildfire.
The guy I met had been part of a large group of young people who set out to reach the iconic peak, a round-trip hike of 18 miles and over 5,000′ of elevation gain. He was older than them, and gave up and headed back as the sun was beginning to set. He arrived at the party around 9 pm, sore and exhausted.
The others continued, scrambling on dangerous talus slopes well after dark, returning long after midnight – the kind of adventure many of us have had in our youth.
Back at my vehicle after only two hours of hiking, I tried to think of another nearby option for the remainder of the day. But they would all require long backcountry drives and would likely have experienced the same amount of flooding and disruption. Most of my high-elevation hikes are in this area – would all those trails now be lost? It would take a huge effort to rebuild them – an effort I doubt will be practical. This was the worst flood damage I’ve seen in this area in 16 years.
This Sunday’s hike was a total washout.
Monday, October 3rd, 2022: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
What a day.
When I got up in the morning, my two choices were to drive to Arizona for a hike that didn’t interest me, or to revisit a hike closer to home that I’d done only two months ago, and take a branching route that had never interested me. I chose the latter.
This was my third drive up the west side of the mountains in three weeks. Last week, I’d discovered there’d been catastrophic flooding on the west side that had taken out the canyon trails. Today’s trail didn’t follow a canyon, but the access road did cross the biggest creek in the range. I didn’t think the crossing would be a problem, because the creek had a very wide channel there, and the water level would be low enough for my vehicle by now.
Approaching the creek, the dirt access road enters a shady sycamore forest, emerging abruptly into the light to descend a steep bank into the creekbed. It’s a good thing I was driving slowly, because the road ended suddenly in a four-foot drop-off, and the creek, which had previously been about 15 feet wide, was now more than 60 feet wide. A huge amount of water had come down, recutting the whole broad channel. I assumed the ranch on the other side of the creek had another access road, because they weren’t going to be using this one for a while.
Nor was I. My choices of local hikes were rapidly diminishing, and it could be years before most of those trails were salvaged, if ever. I turned around and drove out to the mesa road, where I stopped to ponder my options to redeem this ill-fated day.
There was really only one that didn’t add a lot of driving. I could continue up the mesa and re-do the hike I’d done only two weeks earlier, that had ended at a swimming hole. I hated to repeat a hike I’d already done so recently. And it would involve a creek crossing that had surely been devastated by flooding, but at least the creek would now be low enough to cross.
And there was a possible way of putting a new spin on that hike.
The day had started clear and cool, but the forecast was for partly cloudy skies and a chance of rain in town, which meant I had to dress for rain in the mountains. Dark clouds were massing over them as I drove north to the next trailhead.
And at the bottom of the long traverse into the canyon, I began to glimpse fallen trees and a new debris flow in the bottom. The flood had pushed shattered trees way up the bank on each side.
I crossed the rushing creek and found a logjam hanging six feet above the current creek level on the other side – that’s how high the flood had reached here.
Drifting clouds kept changing the landscape from sunlight to shadow as I climbed the long switchbacks, turned into the long hanging valley, and trudged up the steep trail of loose rock to the little peak at the start of the rolling plateau. There, the broad vista of the western edge of the wilderness spread before me. But it was the ridge in the middle of that view that interested me.
As I continued east across the plateau, I had my eye on the series of rock outcrops and peaks that punctuated that ridge. For the past two years, on every hike along this trail, I’d dreamed of bushwhacking up that ridge. It seemed to offer views into the deep, rugged canyons on both sides, but it clearly had very steep sides, which would need to be traversed to bypass sheer cliffs, and some of those slopes included dangerous talus.
All summer, while recovering from my illness and finding my lung capacity reduced, I’d avoided the challenge of bushwhacking, while sticking to trails I believed to be in good shape. But today, I was finally in the proper mood. I’d made a false start and the day was too advanced to try one of my marathon trail hikes, so why not go exploring off trail?
The best approach to the ridge was hard to judge. The north edge of the plateau seemed to lead more or less directly up that ridge, but the lower part of it was densely forested, and that forest could hide a lot of arduous ups and downs.
Previously I’d assumed the best way up would be to follow the trail to the saddle above the next canyon, then turn left and bushwhack up a low ridge that seemed to lead directly to the higher ridge.
But now, after descending partway into the hollow below the saddle, I realized the trail would add a lot of distance that I might be able to avoid by taking a short cut from here, completely avoiding the saddle and its low ridge.
This did involve crossing an intervening gully, and traversing around a rocky bluff, but what surprised me was how quickly I could gain elevation when I didn’t have a trail to follow!
My lung capacity was still limited – I had to stop a lot to catch my breath – but for most of the hike to the ridge, I was just hiking straight up the slope, which varied between 30% and 45% grade. That gets you a lot of elevation, and some great views!
The rock underfoot was also rapidly changing, from pink to orange to white. I hadn’t thought about it much at the start, but one of those distinctive outcrops became my first milestone, and it turned out to be even more interesting than I’d expected.
Just before reaching the big outcrop, I came to a little ledge featuring a couple of wind-sculpted junipers – a dead one and a live one that offered enough shade for me to rest a while and enjoy a snack.
Afterwards, continuing toward the first peak of the ridge, I noticed what seemed to be a cave on the up side of the outcrop. Sure enough, some hiker in the distant past had stopped there, accumulating a pile of firewood that seemed excessive, considering no one else had reached this spot in ages.
The peak I reached afterward had some great views of storms developing over the region, but it was only a temporary stop. I had my eye on two little peaks higher up that blocked my way to the long “hogback” in the middle of the ridge, which bore an attractive fringe of tall ponderosas.
Unfortunately, the first of those two little peaks turned out to consist completely of talus – large, sharp, loose rocks – colonized by dense thickets. And while I was fighting my way through that, a light rain began to fall. Hanging to the branches of shrubs on that perilous talus, way up in the sky, I climbed precariously to within a few yards of the peak, then scouted a few dozen yards to left and right for an easier route around, only to conclude it was just too dangerous to continue.
My way up the ridge was blocked.
I hadn’t gained the desired view into the big canyon to the north, but I wasn’t really disappointed to turn back. I’d bushwhacked over a mile on steep slopes, climbing a thousand feet above the trail, discovering a shelter cave. Not too shabby for an old guy recovering from a long hospitalization.
As I scanned the landscape around me, I noticed a flash of white farther down the ridge – it was a white-tail deer bounding from rock to rock, mostly hidden behind tall scrub oak. I was really surprised to see it atop this steep, rocky ridge – not typical deer habitat.
I fought my way down to the rise above the rock outcrop, and paused for a few minutes to consider my return route. The way I’d come up was known, but there was also the possible route to my right, down the arcing extension of the ridge I stood on, which seemed to connect to the rolling plateau in an area of dense forest and shrubs whose topography was unclear. It was a hard choice, but in the end my mood spurred me into the unknown.
The first part of it, down an open slope of grass and low shrubs, went incredibly quickly – I could even run down in some places. But when I reached the trees, it got more complicated.
I somehow managed to avoid gullies, but near the bottom, I found myself in open forest blocked by a maze of scrub oak, mountain mahogany, and manzanita that I just had to push through for a long distance, trying to hang onto my sense of direction to avoid missing the plateau.
Hence it was a big relief when the shrubs suddenly opened ahead of me, revealing a cairn and the plateau trail.
Clouds were still moving all over the landscape, alternately threatening rain or highlighting slopes and rock formations, as I returned across the plateau. And the flies, which had deserted me up on the high ridge, began to swarm me again.
About a third of the way down the switchbacks into the first canyon, some serious rain began to fall, but it cleared before I reached the bottom. And the climb out of the canyon to the trailhead, which usually finds me sore and exhausted, seemed a lot easier than usual.
I couldn’t remember a recent hike that had made me this happy.
Monday, November 21st, 2022: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It was time for my first hike in three weeks – after the hiatus of visiting family in the flatlands of a Midwestern city. Before that, I’d blissed out on the exposed rock and forever views of my beloved desert, so now that I was back home in southwestern New Mexico, I wasn’t anxious to bury myself in the forests and thickets of our local mountains.
The views being better on the west side, I decided to head over there and choose a trail while driving.
The temperature was in the low 20s and I had to scrape heavy frost off the windows before starting. A low haze hugged the landscape ahead – probably some effect of the cold. At the end of September, I’d discovered that most of the west side trails had been wiped out by flash floods, and the access road to another had been cut off by the same floods. Now, two months later, I hoped that road would’ve been fixed, so I took a chance and detoured about 16 miles up the dirt mesa road – only to find “Road Closed” and “Impassible” signs at the turnoff.
By the time I got back to the highway, the false start had delayed my day’s hike by an hour. Without much hope of success, I decided to do a “reconnaissance” hike on my old favorite trail, which leads up a canyon to a high saddle with views over the wilderness. I assumed the canyon part of the trail had been damaged by the floods, but at least I would find out how bad it was.
Entering the foothills on the highway, I suddenly saw a half dozen geese wheeling low overhead, on their way south. They looked really big – I’m used to seeing them much higher.
Starting the hike on the traverse into the canyon, I scanned the ridge above, on my left, as a possible alternative if I found the canyon too choked with flood debris. I figured I could return up the traverse and bushwhack up the ridge and see how far I got.
Then, on the final approach to the canyon bottom, a big black bird emerged from the bend below me. A friend has often been skeptical of my bird sightings, correcting me when I’ve misidentified eagles, so I’ve become insecure about bird identification, and reluctant to take pictures of what might be some more humdrum species. This bird wasn’t flying like a vulture, and its coloration wasn’t right for a raven, but I was still slow on the draw and failed to get a pic as it gracefully flapped its way past me.
I continued, and three minutes later another one emerged. This time I knew it had to be a golden eagle, and I was a little quicker with the camera. Two eagles! They must be migrating and had temporarily joined up here.
But after another three minutes, yet another eagle. Three! It was like scheduled flights leaving an airport. I was almost at the creek crossing in the canyon bottom when the fourth eagle emerged from the riparian canopy, following the first three. This one passed within 60′ of me, but wasn’t visible long enough for a photo. This was the third time I’d encountered a convocation of migrating eagles – it’d been at least a decade since the last.
And to my surprise, the canyon bottom, and its creek, showed no evidence of flooding. I wouldn’t need a bushwhacking alternative, but after the false start, I didn’t have enough time to go my usual distance on this trail. I would just hike 5 miles up to the viewpoint on the shoulder of the 9,700′ peak, but that was okay – it would be a “soft” resumption of my broken hiking routine.
Unusually, there had been two other vehicles – pickups – parked at the trailhead. And about 3 miles up the trail in the canyon bottom, I spotted a dog ahead, and then its owner appeared – a backpacker, probably in his 40s. We stopped to talk, and unlike many “outsiders” I’ve met on these trails, he seemed glad to meet me and reluctant to continue his descent. As he revealed his familiarity with the area, I assumed he was local.
He’d spent two nights up on the crest trail, but he wasn’t returning happy. He’d only made it as far as I’ve gotten on a day hike, and was surprised to find I’d gone that far, as he complained about the overgrowth and deadfall he had to fight his way through. He said it was just too much work to be worth it. He said the trail was much worse now than 2 years ago, when he’d gone almost twice as far.
We agreed that in the current wildfire regime, most wilderness trails are simply unmaintainable, and he wasn’t adapting well to the new normal. He said the only way to keep trails open now is with mechanized equipment. Local trail crews had applied for a permit to bring chain saws in the wilderness, but they’d been denied, which he seemed to think was a shame.
I didn’t think it was appropriate to touch on the issue with a frustrated stranger, but afterward I revisited the question of whether human access to wilderness is good or bad. It sits within the larger problem of wilderness itself – an artifical Western concept that denies the cultural nature of pre-conquest habitats. We only preserve wilderness areas because our unsustainable society has degraded or destroyed all other habitats.
What does this mean for trails? Pundits and policymakers claim that access to natural areas encourages people to care about them, and this is lost when trails are abandoned. But the effort and cost of maintaining trails in this new regime are more than we’re willing to invest.
Talking to the backpacker slowed me even more, so I embraced this as a more leisurely hike than usual. The low haze was starting to clear as I reached the crest, but it was still chilly up there, with patches of snow in shady spots. Knowing this trail well, I continued past the crest for another half mile so I could log more mileage and elevation while still ending the hike at a reasonable time.
Unfortunately, on the downhill stretch beyond the saddle, my right knee started hurting, and I remembered the same thing had happened on my last local hike, a month ago in late October. Strangely, I’d had no trouble in the 30 miles of hikes I’d done in our rugged desert mountains. Why did my knee hurt in New Mexico and not in California?
Maybe it was the cold – it is colder here this time of year. But the more I pondered, I thought it might also be the activity itself. Here, I hike on trails that are mostly hard-packed, where I end up pounding my way downhill, which creates repetitive impact on the knees. While in the desert, with no trail, I tend to pick my way cautiously downhill, in random directions dictated by obstacles, and the ground is often loose, absorbing impact.
In any event, I’m going to be even more frustrated now since I’ll need to rest that knee for weeks!
In the meantime, even with knee brace and a pain pill, it was a really painful return to the vehicle.
At least the pain pill put me in a good mood while driving home. And as dusk turned to night, I saw a bright falling star leaving a long trail, directly ahead over the highway.
Monday, November 28th, 2022: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Sapillo, Southwest New Mexico.
Last Sunday’s knee problem meant that this Sunday’s hike wasn’t guaranteed. I’d had to ice several times a day for three days just to get rid of the pain, and I assumed that the steep, hard-packed downhill stretches of last Sunday’s hike – over 4,000 vertical feet – were to blame. Previous knee problems had taken up to three months to resolve, so I was heartsick thinking I’d have to give up my beloved high-elevation hikes for the near future, and lose even more of the lung capacity I’d tried so hard to regain.
But I’d rested that knee for a solid week, and I wanted to try an all-day hike on fairly level terrain to see how it would hold up. The problem was, around here, whereas most of the mountains are public land, all the level ground is private – fenced cattle range. And the only level trails in the mountains are canyon-bottom trails, which either involve dozens of river crossings or have been severely damaged by monsoon floods.
Well into my second day of poring over maps trying to find a level hike, I remembered the hike I’d done over on the east side last winter, which started up the broad floodplain of a long but fairly shallow canyon. The average grade of the foothills there is only about 6 percent, with the canyon bottoms gaining even less. The Continental Divide Trail goes a couple miles up one of those canyons before climbing into the hills, and I saw a tributary canyon that extended an additional 4 miles without much elevation gain. Based on what I’d seen in that area, I should be able to bushwhack up its floodplain pretty easily, yielding up to 12 miles out-and-back of fairly level hiking. On new ground, inside the wilderness area, with no company and hopefully no livestock!
Another day of clear skies and freezing air. I was aware that the eastbound trails in this valley cross the big creekbed, but near enough to its head that it should be dry by now. What I didn’t expect was to find – within a few yards of the trailhead – a flood 12 feet wide and 6 inches deep, clear water flowing over grass. Probably runoff from irrigation upstream.
I thrashed my way downstream, through shoulder-high brush, looking for a place to cross, finally spotting a fallen log that felt solid. But to cross it I’d need a stick, which I found farther downstream – a dead lower branch of a small juniper.
Once across, I beat my way back to the trail, and could see an earthen dam across the mouth of the big canyon I was headed for, dimly remembering some kind of small reservoir on the map. The CDT led up the forested slope to the right of that dam, emerging behind it for a view of its mostly dry basin, filled with mud, gravel, and rocks from post-wildfire floods – a depressingly post-apocalyptic landscape.
That would be my route for most of the next two miles. The CDT did provide a few detours off the coarse debris flows and the uneven, hard-frozen mud of the brush-choked floodplain, but I used up a lot of time scouting for a path.
I’d brought a map, but it wasn’t detailed enough to clearly identify the side canyon I was targeting for my knee-friendly bushwhack. I passed one tributary, but didn’t think it was big enough so I kept going. After the first mile, the main floodplain narrowed and began winding back and forth between low cliffs of coarse volcanic conglomerate.
I’d used up so much time finding my way up that nasty debris flow, I was now an hour and a half into my hike and I still hadn’t found that side canyon. As the main canyon had narrowed, large cairns had appeared linking surviving segments of the CDT that shortcutted the bends of the canyon, in the shade of the canopy up on the banks above the streambed. The stream itself was intermittant, but flowed vigorously when aboveground.
The problem now was that the intact segments of trail were overgrown by the armpit-high stalks of my old nemesis, Cosmos parviflorus. As a genus, Cosmos is both a wildflower and a popular garden flower, but all species produce burrs – seed capsules – that stick to clothing and animal fur, which is how they’re spread. Cosmos provides a great learning experience about invasive plants! Although a few species are declared invasive by state governments, ornamental cosmos are still widely planted – my new neighbor has them all over her yard – and wild, native cosmos are spread by humans, livestock, and wild animals alike, to dominate large areas of disturbed habitat, such as trails, where they quickly become an irritant to the very animals that spread them.
I knew I’d spend the rest of my day accumulating and laboriously picking them off my clothing, but there was nothing I could do but forge ahead, trying to anticipate stands of cosmos and keep my arms raised.
The canyon bottom had been heavily trafficked by horses, and the frozen mud was deeply postholed, but whenever I crossed a sandy stretch of streambed I found the footprints of a couple of hikers who’d been up here in the past week or so.
Finally, about 2-1/2 miles up the narrowing, winding canyon, with the now-picturesque stream running aboveground and dark cliffs towering above, a cairn beckoned up the left slope and I realized I was at a crucial decision point. This was where the trail left the canyon and climbed to the ridge. If I wanted to protect my knee from a downclimb, I should just turn back and find that side canyon. But I didn’t want to turn back when I had a trail to follow and the hike was just getting interesting. Maybe it wouldn’t turn out to be a long, steep incline, and I could take it easy enough on the descent so as not to trigger my knee.
Unfortunately, the initial trail up the spur of this outlying ridge was the steepest part, with almost a 30 percent grade. But as a spur of the ridge, I knew it would become gradually gentler until it virtually leveled out at the top.
Most of the ground was covered with the hated volcanic cobbles, but these are easier to ascend on, so I continued in denial of how hard the descent would be. The biggest problem was that the farther I climbed, the more the trail was overgrown by armpit-high dead grasses and annuals, which hid the treacherous rocks underfoot and included copious amounts of cosmos. On some stretches, I could see a suggestion of trail ahead where someone or some animal had faintly trampled the dry vegetation, but these stretches were intermittant, and I often had to stop and scout for a route. The few cairns were thoroughly buried in vegetation and only appeared when you were right above them. I eventually concluded that nobody had been up this trail since the peak of the growing season, late in the monsoon. Local hikers largely avoid these famous national trails, so their use tends to be minimal except in spring when through hikers start their journey north.
Although the grade did gradually become gentler and gentler, the uphill trudge through dense overgrowth, over hidden rocks that continually tripped me, through an open woodland of pinyon, juniper, and oak that blocked my view over the surrounding landscape, felt interminable, even Sisyphean. At least I was in sunlight all the way – the ground was uniformly frozen and a dusting of snow remained under the low trees.
Suddenly, through a gap between trees to the east, I glimpsed the peaks of the range, white with snow! We hadn’t had a storm in town since September – how had this one missed us? It had to have been really recent – we’d had some clouds late in the past week – and I realized the peaks, reaching over 10,000′, were showing the snow more because their forest had been cleared by successive wildfires.
On a brief steeper section of trail I looked back for a view west, and glimpsed a big redtail hawk wheeling out of sight behind the forested ridgetop at my left. Then, a half hour farther up the ridge, I stopped and glanced back again, and saw the hawk perched at the top of a low snag, watching me from about 80 feet away, looking huge. By the time I got my camera out it had disappeared.
Finally the ground virtually leveled out, the dry vegetation transitioned to mostly low grasses, and the trail became even harder to follow – but as if in compensation, more cairns appeared, some tall enough to be visible above the grass.
Despite the general lack of views, the occasional stands of cosmos, and the treacherous rocky ground, the endless golden meadows dotted with low trees provided harmonious surroundings, and the sunlight kept me warm, so I was coming to enjoy this unplanned hike anyway. I knew the trail would eventually descend into more canyons and basins, but that was 8 miles in and I didn’t have enough time left in the day to do the whole thing. I figured I’d end with 6 or 7 miles one-way.
I could see a taller ridge looming ahead to my right, and what eventually happened was that I seemed to lose the trail as my ridge approached the base of the higher one. The forest became denser, and my faint trail branched into several even fainter possibilities, one of them leading downhill. I pursued each of them for a few dozen yards, only to reach obstacles where even the faint disturbances in the grass disappeared, and had obviously been created by game. So I tried the downhill option. In short stretches it almost looked like there was an old trail underneath the dry grass, but these traces faded so I finally stopped to call it a day, logging my position with my GPS unit.
These national trails seem to be cleared annually, and next year’s crew have their work cut out for them! But amazingly, when I checked the position at home that night, I found that against all odds I’d still been on the CDT, and had turned back at exactly the right spot, before the trail gets really steep again as it descends into a side canyon.
Returning to an open gate I passed through a half mile back, I noticed a huge bootprint in the frozen mud. Some big guy had been here at the end of the rainy season, probably right after the last storm in late September.
It was here that I became truly lost, and lost my cool for a while. After passing through the gate, the trail seemed really clear for a few dozen feet, then got really sketchy, especially since the woodland was denser here and much of the ground was in shade. I spent nearly a half hour pursuing several alternatives that gradually petered out after a few hundred yards. Each time, I retraced my steps to the gate, finally remembering how a sharp turn had immediately preceeded the gate itself. I finally relocated that sharp turn, and there was my trail – a faintly trodden path no more than 8 inches wide, barely visible in the shade of a juniper.
As expected, the descent over volcanic cobbles was really hard and really slow, but I’d given myself plenty of time and remained in a good mood. In fact, I realized that since returning from the desert, I wasn’t pressuring myself to accomplish marathons of distance and elevation, and hiking had become a pleasure again, instead of a trial.
Plus, the low angle light of late afternoon was highlighting the grasses, which were, if anything, more beautiful dead than alive.
I did get lost once more, and lost another 15 minutes pursuing alternatives, but as usual, eventually found a route that was confirmed by a hidden cairn.
By the time I reached the canyon bottom, it was mostly in shade. I was dreading the final stretch of debris flow where the trail disappeared, but the winding part, where the trail was largely intact, seemed to go on forever, with the canyon getting darker and colder all the way.
Interestingly, I found the bootprint of a hiker who’d come up the canyon today, after me, only going as far as the base of the trail to the ridge. He’d been wearing Merrill Moabs, the favorite lightweight hiking boot around here and the boot that had eventually triggered my chronic foot pain.
Eventually I did reach the debris flow, and lost the trail in the center of the floodplain, so I ended up fighting my way for hundreds of yards through dense, dry riparian brush, on uneven, partly thawed muddy ground. I missed the place where the trail past the earthen dam drops into the debris, and ended up having to climb over an abandoned fence past deep pools of standing flood water before reconnecting with the last of the trail out of the canyon.
At home, after checking alternate views on my online mapping platform, I found that this one is ironically named Rocky Canyon. And it hosted such a big debris flow because it meanders 17 or 18 miles from the northern crest of the range, descending 2,500′ on the way.
Monday, December 26th, 2022: Hikes, Middle Fork, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
I should’ve been all hiked out. I’d walked 28 miles and climbed almost 9,000 vertical feet in the past week.
But it was Sunday, and if I didn’t hike, I’d probably just lie around reading a book I’d already read multiple times.
And it was Christmas – I should have been with my family. I thought about dropping in on my neighbors, but they had families too, and small houses that were even less set up for entertaining than mine. I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position.
Looking at the map of our local wilderness area, I suddenly had a brainstorm. I’d learned in the past year that there were dramatic canyons tucked away in the north part. You can reach them either from the far north, which is a four hour drive from town, or from the center, which is an hour and a half away. I found a trail from the center that should either take me into one of those canyons, or along the rim, in only about 4 miles one-way.
By the time I figured that out, it was pretty late. But it would likely be a short hike, so I hit the road.
Unfortunately, on the way out of town I immediately found myself behind a couple of bloated minivans from Texas. They turned out to be sightseers traveling together, driving well below the speed limit, and it’s a two-lane mountain road with hairpin turns and no opportunity for passing. Every time we passed a turnout, I prayed for them to pull over and let me pass. But they never did. They held me up for an hour and fifteen minutes until we all reached the big scenic overlook, where they finally pulled off to take pictures and I got back up to normal speed.
I’ve avoided trails in the center of the wilderness because it’s strictly lower elevation pinyon-juniper-oak habitat, and the Forest Service and Park Service have designated that area as the focal point for tourism. People flock there from all over the world, which is exactly what I try to avoid. Plus, it’s where the three forks of our famous river meet, and the main trails involve dozens of river crossings, which is no fun in winter. But the center is where the most trail maintenance has occurred, so the trails there tend to be in the best condition.
As expected there were already several vehicles at the trailhead when I got there, despite it being Christmas Day. But what bothered me the most was the condition of the trail I’d picked. It turned out to be an equestrian highway, and their hooves had churned it into a mud bog. It was still partly frozen at 11am, but it was forecast to be warmer, and I knew it would all melt by the time I headed back in afternoon.
This is the kind of trail I normally find boring – a very gradual ascent north through grassy meadows and open woodland to a low saddle. From the saddle, it descends into the canyon of the middle fork of the river, which is heavily forested, primarily with tall ponderosa pine. But just before the saddle is a junction where the “rim” trail takes off to the west.
My tentative plan was to go west along the rim, hoping for a view of the canyon from above. The problem with canyon trails here is that you’re mostly buried under the riparian canopy and can’t see the spectacular cliffs and rock formations above you.
But just east of the saddle I could see a point where I might get my first view over the canyon, so I clambered over there.
The view wasn’t very enlightening, since the dramatic part of the canyon was hidden behind a butte. But I did have a perspective west on where the rim trail would take me.
So I went back to the junction and headed west. This was immediately a better trail – narrow, traveled only by wildlife. The map showed a shortcut that bypassed some of the first trail along the ascending ridgetop, and I found its outlet and decided to try it on my return.
This rim trail wasn’t intended as a rim trail – these are not sheer-walled canyons cut through flat plateaus like the ones in northern Arizona and Utah. This trail simply traverses upper slopes on its way to junctions with other trails, farther west. Gullies in those slopes take it in and out and up and down along the way, always through forest, so I never got a satisfying view of the canyon – only tantalizing glimpses through the trees, of white pinnacles and strangely fluted cliffs. There were some nice red capstone bluffs above me, and some cool white ones across the canyon in the distance, but no trails go there.
Keeping in mind my late start and the stressful drive back on that mountain road, I was watching the time. I figured I had about 4-1/2 hours to hike if I wanted to get back before dark. But I’d gone slowly and made a lot of stops and sidetracks, so I kept going until I had less than 2 hours left. Thinking of the unexpectedly slow progress I’d made last week in Arizona, I guessed I’d only gone between 3 and 4 miles so far and should get back to the vehicle with plenty of driving time.
With the trail in good shape and no serious climbs, I was back to the “shortcut” in no time. I followed what looked more like a game trail down the narrow ridgetop, but it eventually disappeared. The ridge got steeper and steeper, but never reconnected with the main trail. Eventually I reached the edge of a bluff, and could see no sign of the trail below. Was I even on the right ridge? I felt totally lost, and turned back to return to the rim trail.
Back on the main trail, just past the junction with the rim trail, I met a young couple, tourists doing a late hike. The man asked me how much farther it was to the end, wondering if they would have enough time to get back before dark. It wasn’t clear what he meant by the “end” – as I said, the trail goes over the saddle and descends to the river, and the total distance is over 4 miles, but he believed it was only 3 miles to the end of the trail. I just said they had more than 2 miles to go to reach the river, and after leaving them, wished I’d clarified there was no way they’d get back before dark.
For my part, I got back with plenty of time. And at home, plotting my route on Caltopo, I discovered that with all the stops and sidetracks, I’d gone almost 10 miles in 5 hours – not too shabby for a hastily-conceived reconnaissance with lots of stops. It was now clear that to get a proper view of that rugged canyon, I’d have to approach it from the north, and that would not be a day trip.
