Mogollon Mountains
The Dark, the Wet, and the Cold
Monday, November 17th, 2025: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico, Whitewater.
Since the new knee doc said I could continue to hike without damaging my knee – and since for the past month I’d been limiting myself to 6 miles and 1,500 feet of elevation gain – I felt ready to tackle a little more mileage and elevation. But in my now-vast library of regional hikes, most options over 6 miles result in more elevation gain than my body is ready for.
I ended up with only two alternatives in less than a two-hour drive from home. But one of those was the partial hike of a trail I’d done many times, and ended at a very undramatic spot. The remaining option was a trail I’d never hiked before, a trail the official websites said had suffered catastrophic washouts and had been impassable since the 2012 wildfire.
The reason I was willing to try it was that in the previous week, I’d found a recent online trip report that said the trail had been at least partially cleared. But – on the eve of departure I could no longer find that trip report.
On top of everything, I’d had a very challenging couple of weeks and kept telling myself I needed a pleasant, fun hike – not a grueling bushwhacking, routefinding challenge. But in the end, the allure of hiking an unfamiliar trail and penetrating new habitat proved to be irresistable.
As usual, before leaving, I checked the weather forecast – but crucially, I only checked the forecast for town, which was for clear skies and a high just over 60. My first surprise occurred when the highway turned north and clouds appeared ahead, and my biggest surprise occurred when the high mountains appeared, partly obscured under a dark storm. That was my destination.
Since our weather finally turned cool, I was prepared for fall conditions – sweater, storm shell, thermal cap and glove liners – but not for winter weather, which in the past would’ve been essential in November. Winter wear includes thermal bottoms, fleece jacket, and insulated Goretex gloves.
Today’s trail starts on the rocky backcountry road – usually closed by now – that traverses the northern boundary of our big wilderness area. This road climbs a narrow, dark canyon with steep sides. The trail itself climbs over a ridge and descends into the biggest canyon on the west side of our high mountains, continuing up the other side to a junction near a 10,200 foot peak. When I was at peak fitness this trail had never appealed to me, even as a routefinding bushwhack, because it spends most of its time below 8,000 feet. But if I could reach the bottom of the big canyon today that would net me 7.5 miles and 2,400 vertical feet.
Two big pickup trucks from Texas had parked in such a way as to block the entire parking area for the trailhead. I’d passed dozens of hunting rigs on the way here, so I assumed the pickup drivers would be hunting somewhere along the trail ahead of me – not a pleasant thought. But I’d driven most of two hours to get here, so I continued to another parking spot about 500 feet up the road.
My previous hikes from this road had started more than a thousand feet higher, in the burn scar in former spruce-aspen forest. Here the forest was intact, but the trail started dauntingly steep. In fact, I couldn’t imagine anyone hunting deer in such steep terrain with such dense forest. Deer hunters seem to prefer level ground and open woodland where you can keep a steady eye on moving game and easily follow it on foot.
But my concerns were more immediate – making steady progress on steep grades, up and down deeply eroded gullies, and staying dry – it began to drizzle, then rain hard enough for my poncho, in the first quarter mile. Not what I’d planned for at all! I realized I should’ve checked the forecast farther north.
Despite the official warnings, it was a good trail, with narrow but level tread, and most deadfall had been logged. The habitat – high-elevation pines, fir, and eventually spruce, with occasional lichen-covered boulders – was beautiful in the rain. Still, it was so steep that I had to stop often to catch my breath. When I finally felt the saddle approaching, I checked the time, stepped under a pine to get out of the rain, and dug out my map. It’d taken me an hour to go only a mile and a half. Hopefully I’d make much better time on the descent into the canyon – but then I’d have an even longer ascent on my return.
In the saddle, I stepped into a howling barrage of drizzle. As usual, my view of the big canyon was blocked by treetops, but when I climbed a rock formation to shoot a panorama, rain spotted the lens.
From here the trail traversed across the ridge, and when the rain stopped I was able to get a panoramic view across the big canyon. The burned slopes on the opposite side were colored vivid red and gold by oaks, maples, and locusts, but the entire landscape under the storm was so dark, the colors were almost impossible to capture with the camera.
The traverse continued around a rocky shoulder, below dramatic outcrops made forbidding by the storm. Rain had abated and I took off the poncho and replaced it with my storm shell. This was the prettiest stretch of trail, until it descended into a washed out gully where the footing changed dramatically.
Rounding another shoulder, the trail began descending, in long switchbacks, a brushy slope that consisted of pale crumbling rock. Brush, and older logs, had been cut in years past, leaving an open corridor across the crumbly rock but no level tread, so you were continuously side-hilling instead of walking, and mounds of beargrass or bunchgrass every two or three yards had to be climbed over hundreds of times on your way. Plus at the ends of the switchbacks there were deep gullies with precarious crossings where tread completely disappeared and I had to use boot edges and reach for handholds.
Meanwhile the storm clouds temporarily parted, revealed patches of blue sky, then closed to dump more rain. I knew I was running out of time, but rejoiced when I reached the end of the crumbly switchbacks, rounded another shoulder, and emerged into sunlight with the treetops of the canyon bottom only a couple hundred feet below me.
It’d taken me two hours and forty-five minutes to go 3-1/2 miles, even with most of that downhill. I could probably ascribe the slow pace to the weather – requiring frequent stops for changing outerwear – plus my cardio recovery. I figured my stops had so far amounted to close to 30 minutes.
It was a little frustrating to be so close to the bottom – I could hear the big creek roaring down there – but that descent had been brutal on my lower body and I knew I’d be sore later. And I would already end up making at least part of the drive home in the dark, something I really hate to do with the potential for wildlife on the roads.
The sunlight was soon replaced by more darkness, and at the foot of the crumbly switchbacks I was suddenly hit by a downpour that had me scrambling to dig out and pull on the already wet poncho. I’d dreaded the climb – over 1,100 vertical feet, most of it sidehilling on wet gravel – but it’s all part of hiking in wilderness, so I just switch off my feelings and take it in stages, trying to enjoy the Gothic drama of this steep, rocky landscape under a storm.
More than an hour later I reached the saddle, where the wind suddenly grabbed my poncho, and for a moment I felt like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz was carrying me off to perdition. It was so bad, I briefly lost the trail on the other side, racing to get down out of the wind.
Once out of the wind, I stopped to roll up the poncho and replace it with my storm shell. I added the thermal cap, but my hands were wet and Raynaud’s syndrome was turning them white, so I had to rub them frantically to dry and warm them before donning the lightweight gloves. I definitely need to start packing for winter conditions.
My new Goretex boots were soaked, my canvas pants were soaked to the thighs, and it was only forward motion that kept me from shivering. Both knees were sore and I was getting some kind of cramp that made stepping down rock ledges painful, but the rain had finally abated, and the descent wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.
The big trucks were gone from the trailhead – they hadn’t used this trail, so I couldn’t imagine what else they’d been doing here. With stops, it had taken me five hours and forty minutes to go seven miles and 2,105 vertical feet.
Driving down out of the mountains on the narrow, partly one-lane winding road with its sheer drop-off, I faced some beautiful sunset skies in the west. The storm clearly covered our region, and fifteen miles out of town I hit another downpour which followed me home. Definitely not in the forecast!
At home the next day, I re-checked the official websites, and discovered their trail description had been changed in the past few days, showing the trail had been re-routed around washouts and cleared to the big creek.
Monday, December 15th, 2025: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
I didn’t feel like hiking this Sunday, but the night before, I reviewed my options and made a short list.
In the morning, I reviewed my list, and didn’t like the areas I’d chosen. I reviewed the options again, and found a partial hike I could do in an area that appealed to me more.
Finally, on the drive north toward our high mountains, I realized there was another hike on my way that felt more interesting. It goes up a super-rugged, rocky canyon to an 8,200 foot saddle overlooking the next canyon. The rockiest stretch is really slow going, but I figured I would have just barely enough time.
On the long gravel drive to the trailhead – made longer by dozens of washouts last summer that still hadn’t been graded – I was surprised to notice a snowfield just below the 10,700 foot peak. Pretty impressive – our last storm was, what, more than a month ago?
Trailhead parking was empty, a relief after my last hike, in Tucson. Clear skies, temps in the high fifties, but hiking in the sun kept me almost warm enough in my sweater.
The trail begins with a mile of difficult and slow climbing up and down a couple hundred vertical feet over loose rock, finally reaching the creek.
In a bare patch I found fairly recent boot tracks.
The trail in the lower canyon was catastrophically washed out a few years ago, and eventually rebuilt. For some reason, the cliffs above are easier to see now – the canyon bottom used to be a jungle with low visibility.
Blowdown, washouts, and debris flows since our 2012 wildfire have repeatedly invalidated the Forest Service map for this trail, and early GPS routes were low resolution, yielding a mileage to the saddle that I always knew was too low. But the most recent GPS is more accurate. The trail proceeds in five sections: the rocky hike from trailhead to creek, the rebuilt section that mostly uses creekbed and banks, the mid-section detouring around boulders the size of apartment buildings, the gentler final canyon bottom stretch, ending in the long, steep traverse to the saddle.
The trail up the canyon bottom was a slog as usual, but with mostly good tread, and as mentioned above, I enjoyed the exposed boulders, cliffs, and rock formations more than before, with the creek frequently pouring over little waterfalls for a soundtrack.
I’d started late, and by the time I reached the traverse to the saddle I knew I was going to run out of daylight. To make it worse, I had to stop often to catch my breath. But because the fire burned at high-intensity on this slope, regrowth was brushy, providing great views over the spectacular head of the main canyon, and after each stop I kept going.
And when the trail rounded a shoulder into the side canyon where you can first glimpse the surviving mixed-conifer forest below the saddle, I knew I would go all the way, despite having to drive home in the dark.
In the past, this saddle would’ve been only the first milestone as I continued to the crest, or all the way down into the next canyon. But in my current condition, having lost so much strength and cardio capacity, it felt like a real achievement.
The next canyon is one of the biggest and most rugged in the range – and with no trails up it, can only be accessed from the adjoining canyons, with this being the nearest. Aspen seedlings in the saddle blocked my view, so I continued down the trail for a few hundred yards to a rocky shoulder, making my full out-and-back distance exactly 8 miles.
My new physical therapist had recommended using trekking poles when going downhill, so I’d carried them in my pack all day. I’d bought these expensive poles last winter, tried them and hated them. And now, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to assemble them. They’re totally non-intuitive, and the instructions that came with them were pictorial and made no sense.
I ended up using them as much as possible anyway on the traverse, but they kept coming loose, and I couldn’t use them at all in places where shrubs or dense annuals crowded the trail, because the poles would get hung up in the vegetation.
I had a headache, my neck was so stiff I could barely turn my head, there was a sharp pain in my right hip, and both my legs were burning. I knew it would last all night, so I kept putting off taking my pain meds.
The canyon was in deep shadow by the time I reached the bottom of the traverse, and I still had three miles to go, including the hard middle part. But it was beautiful with the rim, high above, lit golden by the setting sun. And for some reason, I noticed the many abandoned mine tunnels, in cliffs on the east side, for the first time.
I finally took a couple of pain pills at the halfway point. The sun had completely set by the time I started the final section, out of the canyon bottom on all that loose rock, but the pills had done their job, freeing me to enjoy my surroundings.
The washed out access road resulted in an hour-and-a-half drive home, but the clear sky revealed a splendor of stars and constellations as I made the final descent into town.
Monday, January 26th, 2026: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
I’d spent September through November rebuilding my hiking capacity. By December I felt like I was on a path to recovery, but life spun out of my control. I went from 8-9 hikes per month, to only 5 hikes in the past two months.
Still, my brain was stuck in recovery mode, so even with 2-3 weeks of down time between them, every hike had to be more challenging than the last, leaving me in lots of unnecessary pain. Before this latest hike, I even wrote a big note to myself: Take it Easy! But we’d had a two-day storm, and in the end, the only hike that appealed to me was one that would get me up into some snow. It was an old favorite hike I’ve done many times, and this would be the first time since my knee injury that I would try to reach the first milestone – a spring just below the 9,500 foot crest.
Under clear skies, the air temperature in the shade was in the 20s as I began the traverse into the canyon. In a sunny spot where the dirt of the trail had melted, I came upon the bootprints of a lone hiker – probably a man – who had gone out and back yesterday.
Expecting snow, I was wearing my winter boots for the first time in almost two years, and after entering the wilderness area in the first half mile, the stiff boots had triggered a pressure point on the inside of my right ankle, and it felt like someone was driving a nail into the joint.
Three options: (1) dose myself with pain meds, which I hate to do this early in the day, (2) stop, take off my boot, roll back my socks and thermal bottoms, dig the adhesive-backed felt out of my backpack and cut a piece to fit around the hurt area, or (3) keep going and hope it would get better. (Actually, a 4th option would be alternate lacing, but I’m not thinking too well these days.)
I chose option 3, and instead of it getting better, I just decided to put up with it, every step hurting equally for the next 4-1/2 miles.
It’s about a mile to the canyon bottom. From there, the trail up the creek bank is easy for another mile, but after that, the grade up the canyon increases steadily for another mile, to the base of switchbacks that climb to the crest.
And I discovered that, probably because I’d had so many inactive intervals between hikes recently, I’d lost much of my cardio conditioning. Any grade at all – even less than 5 percent – immediately left me out of breath. The farthest I could go without stopping was about 100 feet. How could I possibly make it up those increasingly steep switchbacks?
One thing that kept me motivated was the gaps in the forest opened up by drought-induced tree mortality, providing better views of the rock formations on the slopes above. And at one point I got a glimpse of snow-laden trees on the crest. They were two thousand feet above me – at this rate, and in this much pain, how would I ever make it?
I couldn’t remember ever having to stop so often, but every time, after long minutes of regaining my breath, I continued for another 50-100 feet. I expected deeper snow in shady spots ahead, and my pant legs were already getting soaked from creek crossings, so in the first bare spot I pulled out and strapped on my gaiters.
In shady spots where the snow was deepest, I found the other hiker’s deep tracks overlaid with an inch or so of overnight snow. I knew if I could make it past the lower steep part of the switchbacks, I would have a much easier time on the long stretches traversing the upper slopes of this side canyon. Holding that thought, I finally reached the overlook, on an outlying shoulder at 8,400 feet. This is always an inspiring moment, because you actually look down on the mountain that was looming above you while you were ascending the canyon bottom.
I’d made it most of the way to the crest – but the steepest climb was still ahead of me. As before, I just doggedly continued in very short stages. The steep part faces west and was mostly snow-free. And I eventually made it, to the higher shoulder with a little rock outcrop which is where I stopped the first time I hiked this trail, seven years ago.
Past that outcrop, the trail turns back into shade and gets steeper – hence it held snow, mostly about 4 inches deep. I hadn’t planned to go any farther. But the sight of untracked snow ahead – the other hiker had stopped either at the overlook below, or here at the little outcrop – tantalized me. I believed I had plenty of time, and it’s only another quarter mile to the spring.
What I’d forgotten is that this stretch of the trail crosses two deep gullies on a steep, shady slope where snow drifts two or three times as deep. The first drift completely obliterated the trail. If I lost my balance or slipped crossing that drift, I would slide 60 feet down a 45 degree slope before hitting a log.
But I’d brought trekking poles, and I figured I would just cross the drift a step at a time, taking short steps and kicking a foothold in the drift before the next step. With that, and the poles for balance, it took me about fifteen minutes to traverse 50 feet – but it worked.
Despite the constant ankle pain, the safe crossing and a view of snow-frosted trees above elevated my mood. I was going to make it to the spring after all! I would definitely dose myself with pain meds here, and hopefully have less pain on the descent.
What a magical place! There’s a small ledge below the spring where someone had apparently built a cabin a hundred or more years ago – hauling tools and supplies on muleback, cutting native timber. Now all that’s left is the spring and the ledge. I’ve drunk from this spring many times – delicious – but there’s no trail and the slope is too steep to climb in snow. So I just dosed and started back down, trying to keep as much weight off my ankle as possible with the trekking poles.
On the way up, the pain in my ankle had distracted me from discomfort in my left foot, where I have chronic inflammation that was triggered a few weeks ago. I clearly hadn’t recovered, because on the way down I found myself shifting weight to the outside of that foot. And with weight shifted to the outside of both feet, I soon had sharp pain in the outside of both knees. Of course my right shoulder was in constant pain from the long-standing rotator cuff tear, so the 4-1/2 mile descent was an increasing ordeal.
I reached the bottom of the switchbacks, where it was getting very dark. And halfway from there to the trail junction, I suddenly developed cramps in the inside of both thighs. I literally screamed and fell over on the ground, jerking around in excruciating pain, and couldn’t find a position that relieved the cramps. That nightmare went on for about ten minutes.
After the cramps faded away, the ankle and knee pain became bearable! I made it up the final climb out of the canyon just as the sun was setting behind the range in the west. Sitting in the vehicle, I actually felt free of pain for the first time all day. It had taken me 8 hours to go 9 miles out-and-back.
But at home, the minute I tried carrying my gear up the stairs to my back porch, all that knee and ankle pain came back, worse than ever. Even my shoulder was screaming. So I took another dose of meds, and spent the night waking over and over, never able to find a comfortable position. When will I ever learn?
Monday, February 2nd, 2026: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico, Whitewater.
The hosting service for this blog tracks visits, and during the past two weeks, I’ve suddenly been bombarded by visits from Hong Kong and Singapore. Apparently this consists of bots scanning my content for personal data that can be harvested for criminal purposes. I assume this will fade away as they fail to find anything useful. Reminds me of when my dad died and his estate went through probate. The court shared my personal data with criminals who harassed me for up to a year by phone and mail, including a syndicate in China who sent me what appeared to be a legal document by express mail with signature requested.
I do try to omit personal data, but I’ve been liberal with personal feelings lately, so the idea of criminals greedily delving into that is pretty creepy. Let me know if you think I’m a fool and should just shut this thing down completely.
After last week’s excruciating hike, I was finally able to scale back my ambitions for this Sunday. From 9 miles and 3,000 vertical feet before, I was hoping to cover only 7 miles and 1,500 vertical feet. After a week in sneakers, I was hoping the inflammation on my ankle had subsided – I certainly couldn’t feel anything.
At least, I didn’t feel anything until I put my boots on. Then the pain came back just as bad as last Sunday. So my hike started with an hour of searching for some kind of padding – at home, then all over town, because the nearest drug store was closed due to staff shortages.
Armed with a couple of pads, I drove north to the trailhead.
The sky was clear and the expected high in town was in the high 50s. Arriving late at the trailhead, I started trying out my purchases. None of them did anything to reduce the pain. I finally dug a cotton handkerchief/bandanna out of my pack – I carry three, they come in handy for all sorts of hiking issues – folded it into a pad a little over a quarter inch in thickness, and stuck it in my boot. Over that, I laced the boot skipping the hooks nearest my ankle. It didn’t stop the pain but it helped enough to get me going.
This is a shortcut into the biggest canyon through our tallest mountains. It starts by climbing over a ridge then cuts back into a deep side canyon. Traversing from the ridge into the side canyon I spotted an older couple approaching from below. They stepped off to let me past. The man, in front, scowled at me, but his partner smiled as I asked, “How’s it going?”
The man clearly wanted to keep going, but the woman engaged me in a conversation, about my plans and where I was coming from. It turned out they live in the remote river valley, ten minutes away, but visit town often – as all country folks do. We talked about healthcare and elder care, and how the shortage of resources around here are more than compensated for by the quality of life.
Despite my determination to scale back the difficulty of my hikes, this rocky trail has a lot of steep ups and downs. I began using the trekking poles to take some load off the ankle. But after descending into the side canyon, climbing out, and climbing up and down past several dramatic rock formations high above the roaring creek, my ankle had once again reached 8 on the pain scale. I stopped at a flat boulder in the sun, figuring I’d gone less than two miles, but simply couldn’t go any farther. I ate lunch, took a couple pain pills, and waited for my GPS device to send a waypoint to a satellite.
But after resting a while, I figured I might as well make another try at padding and relacing my boot. This reduced the pain to a 6, and I soon reached the switchbacks that descend about 300 vertical feet to the narrow canyon bottom.
Of course, once I reached the cold shade of the canyon bottom, the pain pills took effect, and I was in denial that the trail upcanyon continues to climb steeply around massive boulders and cliffs. So I kept going, as the pain began increasing again despite the pills.
I was surprised by swarms of gnats – I ended up having to wear my headnet all day.
Finally, I reached my planned destination, the junction where a trail up a side canyon crosses the creek. There’s a fallen log where I could sit in the sun and listen to the creek tumbling over the rocks. Crossing the creek would soak my boots and add to my misery, so I rested there for another half hour, and began yet another experiment with my ankle.
This involved wrapping the existing bandanna pad with the Ace bandage I keep in my first aid kit, and trying yet another lacing technique, bypassing all but the top hooks of the boot.
The new lacing significantly reduced the pain, and the pills continued to help too, so that by the time I reached the top of the switchbacks the pain was down to about a 4.
From the top of the switchbacks, with my mind off the pain in my ankle, I could better enjoy the late sunlight on the rock formations all around me, and the balmy weather – I’d hiked in my shirtsleeves all day.
I was finally so relaxed that it wasn’t until I’d gone a half hour past the top of the switchbacks that I realized my ankle pain was completely gone! What had changed? I still didn’t know whether this was soft tissue inflammation or nerve pain, and there was no way to tell whether it had been eliminated by my treatment back at the creek, by the pain pills, or by natural loosening of the boot as I hiked.
Whatever made the pain go away, it sure made it easier to cross that side canyon, and the final ridge before descending to the mesa.
This is a trail I always think of first when I need something short, with less elevation gain, because it’s the most scenic short trail in our region. The beauty of that mesa is hard to convey in a photo – especially because the naked eye picks out the reflections of stock ponds far in the distance below.
However, as soon as I got in the driver’s seat and started working the pedals, my ankle pain came right back. So bizarre, and so frustrating. Now I face weeks of icing both this and my inflamed left foot, which still hasn’t calmed down.
Monday, February 23rd, 2026: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Last week I drove to Tucson to get a second opinion on the shoulder pain that’s been waking me up throughout the night for the past two years, and to resume the physical therapy I started there in December.
The second opinion will require a minimum of two follow-up visits. And the result of this first visit is that my shoulder hurts more than ever, because the drive itself is hard on the shoulder, and physical therapy has always made the pain worse.
The past two Sunday hikes have also re-triggered the chronic inflammation in my left foot. With the shoulder in the foreground, I tried to ignore the foot pain. Today – in denial yet again – I decided to do a rocky hike that’s always been hard on the feet. It starts out easy enough, heading up a long valley toward the foot of the mountains, but then it climbs a set of rocky switchbacks to a saddle, where you enter another watershed hidden from the outside and traverse the back of the ridge toward a big canyon. I’d avoided this hike for almost three years, so my memory was rusty and I just focused on the positives: that view of the interior, and the pine park which would be today’s destination.
As usual this winter, the sky was mostly clear and the high in town was forecast to reach the upper 50s. Snow still lingers above 9,000, even on some south slopes of our high mountains, but today I would mostly keep below 7,000 feet.
You have to ford the big creek to reach the trailhead, and it was flowing pretty strong from snowmelt in the interior, almost reaching the undercarriage of my recently lifted Sidekick.
The first half of the trail, up the long valley, is completely different from the trail shown on every available map. This turned out to be important because it made my hike a mile-and-a-half longer than expected.
There were two other vehicles at the trailhead, which is remote and unpopular: a big pickup carrying an ATV, and a Subaru station wagon from Utah. I was impressed the Subaru had made it across the creek.
At the head of the valley you pass over a scenic rock dam and begin the first set of switchbacks, which seems endless. My foot seemed to be doing okay here. The switchbacks were decorated with frequent pink ribbons, which I assumed had been left recently by the Backcountry Horsemen, who have the permit for trail work. Their horses had left plenty of shit on the trail, probably from last fall, but I couldn’t figure out what the ribbons were for – they seemed completely random. As far as I’m concerned the trail needs no more work than they’d already done years ago, but the equestrians love to cut trees, cacti, agave, yuccas and nolinas way back from the trail. I even found spots where they’d hacked manzanita as much as eight feet off-trail.
The wire gate across the saddle was closed, but the ground inside it was all dug up by cattle – something I couldn’t remember ever finding here.
The traverse to the pine park also seems endless, and the farther I went, the more the trail was dug up by cattle. This east-facing slope holds a lot of moisture, so every time the trail cut back into a drainage, it got really muddy. I was frankly getting pissed.
Nearing the pine park, which is a level plateau, I came upon a guy with an off-leash dog – a violation of forest regs. I started bitching to him about the cattle, and he said he’d seen a “whole bunch” up on the plateau, around a pond that was holding water now. I assumed by a “whole bunch” he meant at least 8-12, and was even more surprised. I wondered if these cattle had drifted over through a gate left open by ignorant hikers, then become trapped over here behind the fence.
The stranger was carrying field glasses and a tripod and said he’d camped there overnight, scouting for deer pending a return in the fall to hunt. He said he’d only seen a couple does, and I said I couldn’t remember seeing deer on this side of the big canyon.
The pond is at the far upper end of the forested plateau, so I fortunately never even saw the cattle. I love this spot, and stretched out on a bed of pine needles for a brief rest in the sun.
But I was frankly feeling kinda sick – unusually fatigued, sporadically dizzy, mildly nauseous. Dreading the return hike, I cut my rest short and unfolded the trekking poles to hopefully reduce the impact on my sore foot.
But by the time I reached the saddle between the interior and exterior of the mountains, not only was my foot hurting, but I realized the trekking poles are hard on my shoulder. So I downed the first pain pill of the day.
Those endless switchbacks are so much harder on the way down! By the time I reached the little plateau below the rock dam, facing another two miles with the sun setting, I couldn’t believe the punishment I’d gotten myself into.
At that point, the only things I had to look forward to were the landscape colors highlighted by the setting sun, and the large covey of quail that’s always flushed from the grassy slope I traverse nearing the low point of the valley.
It’s a pretty drive out at sunset, but nothing could compensate for the pain that kept me awake most of the night, and the depression of realizing I’m simply going to have to give up hiking. It will take months to overcome that foot pain – maybe even a trip to the podiatrist in the Bay Area, and more ultrasound treatment. And that’s not even the priority – the shoulder comes first, and that will take months by itself. I always knew I’d have to give up hiking at some point, but I never believed it would come this early. I just have to be grateful for the sedentary passions that remain – music, art, and writing.
