Mogollon Mountains
Monday, July 26th, 2021: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Conflicting desires this Sunday. The weather was forecast to be cloudy and cooler – in the 70s. So this was a perfect time for a lower-elevation hike, for example over in Arizona where I could get a burrito and a beer afterward.
But for the past few weeks I’d been frustrated with shorter hikes and less elevation gain, so I felt I really needed a bigger hike today to maintain my conditioning. On paper, I’d been investigating ways to get longer hikes by stringing together multiple trails into loops. However, these loops would have to include include trails that were abandoned or in bad shape. The problem with Arizona is that the longer driving time limits me to shorter hikes on bad trails or longer hikes on good trails. So for today, I decided to try a loop close to home, involving two trails I knew to be in good shape, and one that appeared to be long abandoned, with no info available on its condition. As usual, I was just going to take my chances, hoping I could redeem myself somehow if the first attempt failed.
Driving west of town, I could see clouds literally hugging the low mountains ahead. We’d had a lot of rain the past week, and both air and ground were saturated.
The hike starts with a two-mile stretch on an old familiar trail, dropping into a canyon and following it up to the trail junction. As usual this time of year, the canyon bottom was a green jungle, but the creek was barely running. The branch trail, climbing over a ridge into the next, bigger canyon system, leads ultimately to an old miner’s cabin, and is maintained by the Arizona family of his descendents. The Forest Service reports this trail impassable, and at the junction it’s overgrown to the point of invisibility, but once across the creek, it turns into a good trail.
Entering the monsoon jungle of the first canyon I discovered an unexpected problem: heavy dew on all the vegetation crowding the trail meant that by the time I started climbing toward the ridge, my pants were soaked. This was a northwest slope, mostly in shade, so I was hoping that once I crossed over to the southeast side, sunlight from regular openings between the clouds would dry me off. Despite the cooler temps, it was so humid that my shirt was soon soaked with sweat and I had to keep mopping sweat off my brows as I climbed.
One unexpected benefit of this trail was the different perspective I got on previous hikes, which continued north up the first canyon. As I climbed higher, I could see that canyon was much rockier than is apparent from the trail, which sticks to the densely forested canyon bottom most of the way. Above the forest are numerous huge rock outcrops and cliffs.
The miner’s cabin trail crests the ridge at a low saddle, where I had a great new view into and across the bigger canyon. This canyon is eight miles long and very rocky, and there’s no trail up it from its mouth like there are in every other canyon on this side of the range. You can only drop into it from farther up the sides, as on this trail.
The trail drops into the narrow side canyon of the north fork, which is where I hoped to pick up the abandoned north fork trail that climbed to a ridge, far back in the wilderness, where I would return on the continuation of the trail I’d left in the first canyon. The full loop would be about 15 miles, with nearly 5,000′ of accumulated elevation gain.
The clouds shifting around, covering and uncovering the peaks and ridges across the big canyon, made this a spectacular descent. Most of it had been burned in the 2012 wildfire and was exposed, through oak scrub, but I was relieved to find a little shoulder halfway down, shaded by parklike ponderosa forest. Descending past that, I flushed a white tailed deer.
From there the trail got steeper and rockier. I began to hear a roaring from the canyon bottom – this side must really be draining a lot of rainwater!
As I approached the canyon bottom, I checked my map for details of the junction with the abandoned north fork trail. It seemed to be close to the creek, but when I got to the bottom of the canyon it was very narrow, with steep sides lined with dense jungle. The cabin trail just disappeared – the only way down this canyon was via the flooded creek, through overgrown riparian vegetation. There was no sign of a trail junction, and this was no place to linger.
I double-checked my map, which was a just a low-resolution printout from a trails website. Now I could see that the junction probably lay 40-80 feet above the creek, so I began climbing back up the steep trail, carefully examining the right side for any sign of an old branch. After a quarter mile of climbing, I was about 120′ above the creek and had only seen one faint game trail that might be worth exploring, so I climbed all the way back down and tried it out. It disappeared within a dozen yards, and clearly wasn’t the old trail.
I spent about 45 minutes exploring all along that stretch of the cabin trail, bushwhacking several long side trips, and never found any sign of the old north fork trail. It’s just completely vanished. The only thing I could do was return, back over the ridge, to the first canyon. It was a steep climb and I was feeling exhausted and very sweaty as I headed over the saddle and back down to where I’d started, but at least the sporadic sunlight on the southeast-facing slope had dried the dew off my pants.
Approaching the original trail junction in the first canyon, I decided to make up for my aborted loop hike by walking up the first canyon trail a ways. I was pretty beat, so I’d just see how far I could get. I know this trail well, and figured I’d probably turn around at the base of the switchbacks that lead to the crest. That would give me another mile-and-a-half one-way and a few hundred more feet of elevation.
Not far past the junction in the first canyon, I surprised a rattlesnake at the base of a log alongside the trail. It’s always surprising to find a western rattlesnake in such a lush environment. I carefully sidestepped it and stopped to look back and memorize the configuration of rocks and logs so I could watch out for the snake on my return.
When I reached the base of the switchbacks, a tiny clearing in creekside forest, I wasn’t feeling completely exhausted yet. So I started up the switchbacks, figuring I’d stop at the boulder pile before the long traverse up the other side. There’s a really steep stretch leading to the boulder pile, and I figured that would do me in.
But somehow I was getting a second wind! I breezed up the steep part and past the boulder pile. A trail crew had been up here recently and cut up all the logs that had been blocking the trail for the past couple of years, which made it easier. Now I figured I might make it to the end of the first long traverse, where you get a view out over the big canyon where I’d failed to find the abandoned trail. That would really give me some elevation to compensate for the aborted loop.
As it turned out, I was feeling so good, I not only made it to the end of the first traverse, but I continued onto the much steeper and more difficult second traverse, which brought me to the edge of the final ascent to the crest – as far as I got on my first hike on this trail, 2-1/2 years ago. I now knew this was turning into a respectable hike – true redemption for my failure to find the abandoned north fork trail over in the other canyon. Although the combined hikes would amount to a little less than 13 miles, my accumulated elevation gain for the day was now nearly 5,000′. After being pretty miserable a couple hours earlier, I was now elated.
I descended in late afternoon through a forest made magical by alternating low-angle light and blue shadow. It looked like some weather was coming in the west, toward the mouth of the canyon.
Sure enough, when I reached the rattlesnake’s place, it was still there, in exactly the same position, but now it was asleep. It must’ve eaten recently and was immersed in the long, slow digestive process.
Climbing out of the canyon toward the trailhead, I finally got a glimpse of rain, miles away to the south.
It just kept getting better. Light rain appeared on my windshield as I neared the highway, and when I stopped there to loosen my bootlaces, I saw a half rainbow to the south. Rain and rainbows kept shifting around as I drove south, and all the arroyos were in flood. A big storm hung over the Gila River where it emerges from the mountains, and it was way over its banks at the bridge. What a day!
Monday, August 23rd, 2021: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Insomnia Saturday night…only 3 or 4 hours of sleep. When my alarm went off at 6 am, I had no faith in my ability to get back to sleep, so I got up and prepared for my Sunday hike. I felt half dead, and figured I’d just go as far as I could, and stop for a nap along the trail if I ran out of steam.
I’d already decided to take the trail I’d hiked most frequently and used to consider my favorite. How things have changed in only two years! When I first hiked this trail, the 10 miles to the crest and back was two miles too far. Now, 15 miles doesn’t seem far enough.
Last time I’d been over here, I’d discovered a trail crew had cut a path through the many deadfall and blowdown logs that’d accumulated since the last trail work in 2019. I wondered if they’d continued up on the ridge, where the trail snakes along the crest into the heart of the range, and where I’d been exploring farther and farther over the past year, bushwhacking over deadfall and through thickets of thorny locust. If they’d cleared that part of the trail, I might be able to make it all the way to the junction saddle. That would be pretty cool.
I wore my new “upland hunting” pants, in case of rain. The day started out cool, but the lining in the damn pants ensured that I immediately overheated down in the humid jungle of the canyon bottom. And the flies – gnats, really – swarmed me from the beginning, so I quickly got tired of swatting and donned my head net.
Two and a half miles in, not far from where I’d encountered a rattler on my last visit, I was forcing my way through the jungle when I spotted a rattlesnake tail receding across the trail right in front of me. It disappeared under the dense vegetation on my left, rattling weakly. I started pushing through the equally dense vegetation on my right, but that triggered a second rattle. There were two snakes, one on each side!
I retreated out of the thicket and found a broken limb that made a good walking staff. I returned to the snake spot and began probing ahead through the vegetation on both sides of the trail. No response. I crossed the jungly patch and passed a small tree. More rattling on my left. After peering into the vegetation below the tree, I finally spotted the snake, coiled in the shadows. Interesting. I wondered if this was the snake I’d encountered nearby, weeks earlier. And now it had a mate.
I left a small stick across the trail to remind me of the location when I returned in the afternoon. And I used the staff to probe for snakes while crossing thickets up ahead.
The thickets, the hot pants, the humidity, and the snake factor were all slowing me down. I had to stop regularly to rinse my sweaty head net and hat in the creek. I knew I wouldn’t get very far in these lined pants. I planned to stop at the base of the switchbacks, about 3-1/2 miles into the hike, and take them off. Beyond that, I’d be climbing out of the canyon bottom, and the trail would be mostly clear until the crest.
The pant legs are cut super wide, and zip up to the knee, so you can, with a certain amount of struggling, get them on and off while wearing boots. So I climbed the mountain in my skivvies, which felt great! Once the pants were rolled up in my pack, I realized I should never start a hike wearing them. I should simply always bring them along, and switch pants when the going gets wet.
Highlights of the ascent were giant, beautiful fungi, and a Montezuma quail – my first! That quail simply refused to fly away – it kept hiding behind clumps of bunch grass only a few feet off the trail, where it kept bobbing its head up briefly to see what I was doing.
Just past the spring below the peak, the steep trail through the forest was blocked by a rope hanging from a ponderosa branch, about 20 feet above. Tied to it were 3 large carabiners, and there was another long rope wrapped separately around the tree trunk. Someone had obviously been camping at the spring, and had constructed this elaborate setup to lift their food out of reach of bears. But they’d walked away without it. This was the second time this summer I’d come upon things left attached to trees in the wilderness – a bad trend of careless forest users. I pulled both ropes down, coiled them up, and stashed them in my pack to carry out.
I was really happy to find that the recent trail crew had cut a path through the dozens of logs blocking the trail along the crest. Despite my slow ascent, I was now determined to head for the distant saddle. I figured if the trail ahead continued to be passable, I had just enough time to reach it.
But what I found was perplexing – and much harder.
Past the saddle at 9,500′, a wide swath had been cleared through the thickets of aspen and locust, continuing down through the stand of fir that’d been blocked by dozens of deadfall aspen. On the other side, an eerie 8-foot-wide swath of trail had been completely cleared, like a firebreak, for a few hundred yards. Then it stopped, and the old path continued through locust thorns. My bare legs were soon bleeding from multiple scratches and I had to stop and pull my hot upland pants back on. Fortunately there was a good breeze blowing across the crest.
That’s when I realized I’d left my snake staff a mile or so behind – and I noticed I’d also lost the splint I wear to keep my trigger thumb at bay. This is only one of several health problems that have accumulated since the house fire, and I haven’t had time to treat properly. It has to be special-ordered and takes up to a week to replace, but over time the fit gets loose, and I wasn’t surprised it’d fallen off. It’s just hard living without it.
Descending the ridge, I discovered the trail crew had indeed cut through all the logs across the trail, but except for that short “firebreak”, they hadn’t done anything about the thorny locust overgrowing the trail and often completely blocking it.
I fought my way down and across to the farthest point I’d reached in the past, and kept going past that. The locust thorns just kept getting worse, to the point where you couldn’t even see a trail ahead.
Then suddenly another “firebreak” appeared – a several hundred yard clear swath, isolated in the middle of nowhere. It was welcome but didn’t make sense. Why would they clear these isolated stretches and do nothing with the rest of the trail?
It was taking much longer than expected and I was running out of time. I kept misreading the landforms ahead, thinking I was almost there, and that’s what drew me forward, despite how difficult it was.
Finally the trail switched to the opposite side of the ridge, and I could see what had to be the junction saddle, much farther ahead and hundreds of feet lower. I’d come too far to stop, so I kept going, through a broad burn scar choked with thorns.
I came to a forested rock outcrop, behind which, but much lower, I could sense the saddle. The vague trail continued down a deeply eroded bowl, then abruptly stopped at a big blowdown which was completely overgrown. Massive trees had fallen every which way across the trail, and locust had grown up between them, forming an impassable wall. The trail crew’s work ended here, only a few hundred yards from the saddle. It was amazing to get so close and be unable to go any farther!
Still, from the rock outcrop, I had a great view across the spectacular, almost inaccessible big canyon I’d fought my way into earlier this year.
I was now way behind schedule. I try to get home by 7 to warm up leftovers for dinner, but it was now looking like, despite getting an early start, I’d be 30 minutes to an hour late. I’d been wondering all day if I’d get any rain to further test the new pants, and working my way back up the ridgeline, I could see rain falling from heavy clouds a few miles to the north. An occasional crash of thunder reached me, but the storm didn’t seem to be moving my way.
It took just as long to fight my way back up that ridge as it had to fight down it – exacerbated by the 1,500′ climb. Fortunately my insomnia hadn’t caught up with me – I still had plenty of energy. And even wearing those hot pants, the ridgetop breeze and sporadic cloud shadows kept me relatively cool.
Finally I crossed the 9,500′ saddle and began my descent. Since walking too fast was regularly causing me pain, I paced myself. Halfway down the switchbacks I stopped at the big boulder pile to fill my water bottle. I happened to glance down, and there was my thumb splint! Out of the dozens of places where I stopped on this hike, I’d lost it here, and by accident, found it here hours later!
When I reached the canyon bottom, the swarms of flies found me. I picked up another branch to probe for rattlesnakes, but when I reached the spot where they’d been in the morning, didn’t find any.
It was only a few hundred yards farther that the familiar rattling started. There was a huge rattlesnake a few yards away, in rocks above the trail on my right. I photographed it and continued, but another rattling started immediately, below the trail on my left. There were two of them – they must be the same pair, on opposite sides of the trail, just as before! I’d never encountered this many rattlesnakes before – as much as I hike, I usually only see two or three a year.
I wasn’t walking slow, but I was really going to be late. I realized I wouldn’t get home until after 8, and I’d be exhausted.
The sun had just set by the time I reached the vehicle, but it was still plenty light out. I offloaded my gear into the right places and dug my iPad out of hiding so I’d have music on the hour-plus drive. Finally I got into the driver’s seat, belted up, and felt my shirt pocket for my sunglasses. They weren’t there!
I checked all around the front seat and in my duffel bag. I got out and looked under the seats. Nothing. I freaked out. I’d paid $150 for those, out of desperation, on my recent trip to Indianapolis. I’d tried cheap sunglasses from the drugstore in Silver City but they hurt my ears. I’d looked at REI in Phoenix, enroute, but they only had a half dozen pairs on display, all over $200. Sunglasses are surprisingly hard to find if you don’t live in an affluent neighborhood in a huge metropolitan area.
I got out of the vehicle, opened the rear door, and scanned the ground all around. Then I trudged up toward the trailhead. I knew I’d been wearing them on the hike back – maybe I’d absentmindedly dropped them near the trailhead. But I’d left the vehicle running – first I’d have to go back, turn it off, and lock up.
It was on the walk back to the vehicle that I spotted my sunglasses sitting on the corner of the rear bumper, behind where the rear door hinges open. That was a place where I never would’ve set them consciously or intentionally. There was simply no reason for them to be there. I guess the insomnia was finally catching up with me – not to mention the lingering PTSD, which often makes me feel like an idiot.
I was treated to a spectacular cloud show, amid occasional sparse showers, on the drive home.
I got back at 8:30. I was too tired to eat, so I just swallowed a shot of protein supplement and took a quick shower. I’d hiked over 16 miles and climbed over 5,000′, but it had taken me 10-1/2 hours.
Monday, August 30th, 2021: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
I was hankering to get back to my favorite trail, the rollercoaster hike that takes me across two rocky canyons and the rolling plateau in between, with spectacular views at almost every point. The weather was forecast to be warm but not hot, with the potential for some afternoon cloud cover, if not a bit of rain.
Descending into the first canyon, the first thing I noticed was the flies. They were everywhere today, not just in the humid canyon bottom. I decided to try ignoring them at first.
Halfway down I came upon one of the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen, lounging right on the trail. I grew up obsessed with snakes, and despite decades of forgetfullness I figured it for a kingsnake or milk snake. Back home I would identify it as an Arizona/Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake – my first.
The creek had been dry on my last visit, three weeks into the monsoon. Now it was roaring, and I had to find a stick to stabilize my crossing over flooded steppingstones. One of my boots got wet, but I figured it would dry out soon. The crossing was precarious enough that as I continued the hike I scouted for a pair of sticks to use on my return, and left them along the trail where I could easily spot them later.
There had been two city vehicles at the trailhead – first time I’d seen anyone else there – and only a mile into the trail I saw two men about my age camping on the bank of the creek. Now I knew I had the rest of the trail to myself.
Despite the mild temperature and the steep north slope being in shade, it was humid enough that I was drenched with sweat on the long climb out of the canyon, and the flies gave me no peace. After one had flown up my nose and another down my throat, I finally gave up and pulled on my head net. It was hard wearing it while sweating so much, and I still hoped the flies would fade away at higher elevations, but no such luck – they stayed with me all day.
I was trying to maintain a steady, relentless pace, because I wanted to go farther than before, to the bottom of the third canyon. The only place where it’s possible to go fast is the middle rise of the plateau between first and second canyons. I hadn’t seen any human tracks on the climb up, but suddenly on that middle rise I found a recently trampled annual plant. After that I looked closely for tracks but could only spot animal sign, until I finally neared the far edge of the plateau, climbing out of the last deep hollow toward the saddle above the West Fork. There I found a track that at first looked like a boot print, but which I eventually realized was from a big bear.
I started down into the deep canyon of the West Fork, with the long, talus-striped wall of Lookout Mountain towering above on the opposite side. It was slower going than before due to additional deadfall, and the steep, rocky trail was as treacherous as ever.
One of the points you most look forward to on this hike is after that brutal descent, entering the parklike ponderosa pine forest at the bottom of the trail, above the west bank of the West Fork. I’d been a little worried about crossing the West Fork, but easily found two sticks and adequate steppingstones. As before, I left the sticks where I could find them on my return.
After all our recent rain, the less-maintained trail beyond the creek turned out to be densely overgrown. Clearly nobody but me was using this trail. Most people only walked the first mile, to the first creek, and no one except me had climbed to the plateau this summer, let alone penetrated all the way to the West Fork.
As I fought my way up the steep traverse across the base of Lookout Mountain, it was starting to dawn on me that despite this being my favorite trail, it was damn hard, and damn slow going. I’d been imagining the extension to the third creek just in terms of miles and elevation, but what with the steep and rocky trail, the humidity, the flies, and the chance of rain, it became an excessively long, slow ordeal.
Eventually I reached the farthest point I’d hiked to in the past – the saddle where the traverse begins descending into the third canyon. I was pretty much spent, but I just had to go a little farther, to make this day’s hike worthwhile.
In the end, I descended far enough to see into the third canyon. There was a storm building over it, and the canyon itself turned out to be rockier and a little prettier than I’d expected. I got to a point where the trail skirted a cliff edge that gave a good view both upstream and down. It was time to turn back, but I was glad I’d achieved that new view.
The rain caught me on the way back, just as I reached the saddle below Lookout Mountain. It came down pretty hard, but huddling under a small juniper, it took me 15 minutes to change into my new rain pants, by which time the rain had ended. Such is our weather. However, I was glad I had those pants on while pushing through the wet vegetation that overgrew the trail.
As I returned toward and across the West Fork, the storm spread north and west over the second canyon. I always want to stop and hang out in the parklike forest on the west bank, but I’d had to make so many stops I was now behind schedule.
It started to rain again just as I was starting to climb that brutal slope out of the canyon. So I switched hats and prepared to don my poncho, only for the rain to stop again. But the flies were relentless.
I was so worn out, and sweating so bad, it seemed to take forever to climb that slope. I was literally stopping about every hundred feet to catch my breath. What an incredible relief to reach the saddle and start back across the plateau!
The storm dispersed as I headed west. I was now moving as fast as I could, and continuing to work up a sweat even when going downhill. The long switchbacks into the first canyon seemed interminable, and I had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes, through the head net, which drove the flies nuts.
Nearing the first creek, I grabbed the two sticks I’d left in the morning. But after the day’s rain over the head of the canyon, the creek had risen over all the stepping stones. I tried to add more but the creek was just too wide and deep now. I’d simply have to try crossing barefoot – something really dangerous for my foot condition.
Using the sticks to stabilize myself, I stepped across very slowly through the rushing flood waters, across the rocky creek bottom, feeling carefully with each step for footing that wouldn’t put weight on the ball of my left foot. I finally made it across and immediately sat down on the rough rocks of the bank to dry my feet and pull my boots back on. The whole process had taken another 15 minutes – I calculated that over an hour of my hike had been used up in stops like this. It was turning into a 9-1/2 hour hike, almost as long as my “longest hike”, despite only being 14 miles total.
The blister on my little toe had returned, slowing me down even more. The sun was just setting as I reached the vehicle. I wouldn’t get home until 8:30. Fortunately I had a frozen burrito left, to warm up in the microwave…
Monday, September 20th, 2021: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
I needed to get up early on Monday and do hard physical work, so I didn’t want Sunday’s hike to beat me up or involve hours of driving. I was running out of ideas until I noticed a trail on the Forest Service “cleared trails” map that I’d never tried before, because it didn’t seem to involve enough elevation gain.
Ironically, it was a trail I’d already approached several times from the north. The last time I did the “rolling plateau between two canyons” hike, I’d gotten a glimpse of the country traversed by this new trail. It was at the southwestern edge of the big wildfire we’d had back in June, and from the north, I’d seen how the dying fire had formed a mosaic of burned and unburned habitat over there. There was a rocky peak southeast of the trail that I’d begun dreaming about bushwhacking to – south of the new trail there was a long series of rocky peaks and ridges in the midst of a trail-less area spanning about 50 square miles, which in itself is extremely tempting.
To get to this trail, you take the long dirt road up onto the mesa, then turn onto a gravel ranch road that runs out to a spur of the mesa that overlooks the deep valley of the creek the trail is named after. The road plunges down the mesa side into the valley, and you drive past the ranch, across the creek, and up the valley toward a second ranch. Although as the crow flies it’s less than 40 miles from town, the complicated route and topography make it feel incredibly remote, and the hidden valley where the ranches lie is quite beautiful, especially now at the end of a wet monsoon.
Considering the remoteness, I was surprised to find a vehicle already parked at the trailhead. The trail sets out up a low basin that curves to the left between the mountain wall and an arm of the mesa. The basin is dissected by many gullies, and the trail winds up and down and around across this low broken land of mesquite and scrub oak for a mile or so until it begins to climb toward the mountains. The surface here is the dreaded “volcanic cobbles”, my least favorite hiking surface, but it was early and I had plenty of energy so I didn’t mind it yet.
The temperature was mild when I started out, but the sky was clear and it was forecast to reach the low 80s in town. However, town is almost a thousand feet higher than the valley I was climbing out of. I was sweating pretty bad before I even climbed out of the basin.
I flushed two dozen quail out of the mesquite – half went left, the other half went right.
Finally the trail took me up into a narrow hanging canyon below the westernmost peak, where switchbacks led to a high pass into the interior of the mountains. The footing was terrible, but I was committed and just had to deal with it. A redtail hawk soared above the head of the canyon, then plunged into the pinyon-juniper-oak forest.
Suddenly I crossed the divide between west and east and saw the peak I’d been dreaming of climbing, far to the east across an incredibly rugged landscape of white cliffs and hoodoos. It was sudden, dramatic – one of those “rim of the world” viewpoints – an exciting new world that in itself justified today’s hike. As I proceeded east, the trail traversed the long eastern slope of the peak behind me, progressively revealing more and more of the white-rock landscape to the east.
Studying topo maps at home, I’d already checked out a possible route to the rocky peak along an outlying ridge that intersected my trail, and as I hiked I kept my eye on that ridge. I didn’t really have much hope of reaching the peak today – it would probably be a 20 mile out and back hike with almost half of it routefinding and bushwhacking off trail – but if the routefinding and bushwhacking were too challenging, I could continue on this trail down to the creek for a reasonable 15 mile day hike. As I said, I didn’t want to beat myself up…
The traverse dipped in and out of deep ravines, and the farther I went, the better I could see how much farther I still had to go, just to get to the ridge that connects to the rocky peak. That ridge lies far above the big creek for which this trail is named – the creek I’d looked down into from the north on my last “rolling plateau” hike.
I’d lost count of all the side canyons I’d already crossed on this traverse when the trail began climbing a steep slope, and I suddenly emerged on a little forested plateau – the second dramatic ascent on this hike – a beautiful Ponderosa pine “park” that extended for hundreds of yards and was almost perfectly level. The occasional burned shrub and scatter of ashes at the base of the tall pines showed that a surface fire had been through here, only a few months ago, but the trees, having dropped their lower limbs long ago, had escaped it.
I’d had to put on my head net on the way up to the pass, but the flies in this pine park were the worst I’d ever found. They were so thick on the net over my face it was almost hard to see through them.
At the far end of the park, where the trail dropped steeply toward the ridge below, I saw that the fire had burned up the slope, killing the pines at the upper edge, without torching the canopy of the park itself. Amazing good fortune, and another lesson in wildfire ecology.
When I finally reached the ridge below, I got my first view north over the deep canyon of the big creek, to the terrain I’d hiked in the past. It was the second “rim of the world” viewpoint on this hike – not so sudden as the first, but dramatic nonetheless. And after another quarter mile or so climbing over bare white conglomerate and down through shady pine forest, I reached a junction where the trail I’d hiked from the north ended at the trail I was on today. The northern trail climbed steeply out of the deep canyon, and as I was photographing the trail sign, a backpacker suddenly stepped into my picture – the guy whose vehicle I’d seen at the trailhead.
He was about my age, and he’d been out alone for two nights, camping in the pine park the first night, and on the creek below last night.
I was now in the burn scar. The next section of trail wasn’t listed as recently cleared, so I didn’t know what to expect. It contined for the better part of a mile along the burned ridge, overgrown with wildflowers and with no recent tread – you had to be right on top of the old trail to see where the path was. But with all my experience it was only hard to follow in one or two places.
This area was like a vast, living textbook on how landforms, geology, and habitat shape wildfire – from the pine park where the trees’ growth habit protected them, to the broad slopes of solid rock which support only sparse fuels, to the cliffs, hoodoos, and boulder mazes which interrupt and redirect the fire’s growth.
Without forest cover, I could easily see where I’d have to leave the trail to climb toward the rocky peak. It turned out to be the place where the ridge trail began to descend into the canyon of the big creek. The slope I needed to bushwhack up looked doable – the white rock didn’t support continuous vegetation, although there were outcrops and rimrock I’d have to climb around.
As I started to traverse the first peak of this outlying ridge, I discovered it was best to just go straight up, because the scrub was sparser near the top. Up there, I found I could work my way southeastward along the ridge, where each little peak was slightly higher than the previous.
Although my focus was on the ridge I was following toward the distant peak, when I first crested that ridge it was yet another “rim of the world” experience. I now had a new view, a dozen or more miles back into the wilderness, of the upper canyon of the big creek, zigzagging back and forth to the far horizon, walled by low cliffs. A narrow strip of tall pines lined the bottom of the canyon, a thousand feet below me, where the trail I’d started on continued for dozens of miles and connected with many other trails, mostly abandoned after the 2012 wildfire, which could only be accessed on long backpacking trips.
Then I came to the base of a dramatic hill of solid white rock. I traversed steeply up its western slope on giant stone steps, and on the other side, found a maze of boulders that led down to the next little saddle at the base of the next little peak. Descending through that boulder field looked hard but was actually fun. It reminded me of the granitic landscapes in the Mojave, where you can jump from boulder to boulder.
I was starting to watch the time – I’d only had 45 minutes available when I’d left the trail. In the end, I was only able to climb two more of the little hills on the ridge leading to the big rocky peak. But it felt great to be exploring new terrain and doing it off-trail. For the first time in months, I wasn’t drenched, I wasn’t in pain, and I was actually having fun on a hike!
Wanting to get home before dark, I didn’t hang out up there. The views were spectacular, but there were cowpies under the junipers – not recent, but I’d seen sign of trespass cattle everywhere in this part of the wilderness. No doubt they were from one or both of the ranches in the valley of the big creek. The Forest Service estimates there are now between 200 and 300 trespass cattle in our local wilderness, and after a long, drawn out lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity, the feds have finally promised to do something about it – against fierce opposition by the cattle industry. I’m not holding my breath.
As usual, now that I knew my route, the return to the trail went smoother. Cumulus clouds had formed all across the region, and now, half the time I was in shade. I was looking forward to climbing to the pine park again, and hiking the traverse with the long view over the white rock interior. What a wonderful day!
My joy turned to aggravation when I crossed the east-west pass and began the final descent, on that terrible surface of loose, roughly foot-sized rocks that went on for miles. I suddenly realized something that had been only on the verge of consciousness during the past three years.
I used to believe our Mojave Desert mountains represent some of the ruggedest terrain on earth, and my new local trails in southwest New Mexico are tame in comparison. But actually, hiking in the desert, where there are no trails, turns out to be much easier than hiking the trails of the Gila Wilderness. The geology here, where all the rock is ancient volcanic ejecta or tuff-based volcanic congomerate, is just not conducive to trails. I’m convinced that the dangerous, unstable surface of most of our trails is a reason why they get so little traffic – ironically, the poor footing helps protect our wilderness, because you have to be really tough and determined to penetrate it.
It’s conceivable that I’ll eventually give up trying to hike these trails. It’s just too hard to avoid injury on all those loose rocks.
The last 2 or 3 miles of this hike are totally exposed, the earlier clouds had dispersed, and it felt like 90 degrees in late afternoon. I’d drunk all of the 4 liters of water I’d carried in my pack, and was getting dehydrated. Although I had a spare water bottle awaiting me in the vehicle, I hadn’t packed it in ice like I sometimes do, so it would be hot.
But I made it to the vehicle. 14 miles out and back, and the elevation gain had been over 3,000′, better than I’d expected. Despite the hot water bottle, the drive out, during the long sunset, was glorious. Although rain hadn’t been forecast, it was actually raining in town as I drove home, and had just ended when I arrived.
Monday, November 29th, 2021: Hikes, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
Lord, how I needed this hike! After the last venture into our local mountains, I’d flown to the flatlands of Indiana where I was able to do one 14-mile out-and-back in modest hills before succumbing to, in succession, severe hip pain and a recurrence of my chronic foot problem. I’d had to suspend strength training a month earlier while moving back into my fire-damaged house, and I was hoping that explained the hip trouble – maintaining my mobility requires a lot of bodywork “behind the scenes” and between hikes.
So now I was icing the foot and lifting weights and doing core exercises again, and I was determined that this return to hiking would be fairly easy, without extreme distance or elevation gain.
However, when reviewing my options, I found myself drawn to a new idea – starting at the trailhead for my favorite hike, and bushwhacking up what looked like a gentle ridge through open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland toward Haystack Mountain, a distinctive but only moderately high peak. The ridge continued all the way to one of the highest peaks of the range, so this would be a scouting trip to see if it was a feasible route to the top.
The temperature at home was in the mid-30s, but it was forecast to reach 60 by midday.
I only found out how badly I needed this trip when I crested a divide on the highway and got my first view of these mountains, and involuntarily broke out in a big smile, feeling my heart lift.
From the trailhead at the back of the mesa, the foot of the ridge appeared as a low, broad, gentle rise. I followed a vague cattle track up the slope of dried grass to the tree line, where I found a well-traveled but very rocky trail that traversed left across the rise. Very tough to walk, but it led me through fairly dense and steep forest to a barbed wire fence with a closed gate, and along the way I noticed fragments of a strange footprint featuring what appeared to be football cleats. The print was roughly round and didn’t have the outline of a shoe, and I kept watching for it all the way up the ridge. It was the only track I found that wasn’t from a recognizable animal.
Past the gate I crossed a broad, gently rising meadow that turned out to be lined with sharp embedded volcanic rock which was very difficult and slow to negotiate safely. It was probably still in the low 50s, but I took off my sweater while laboring across that sunny ledge. Then the slope steepened through more low forest, and I began finding more cattle trails that allowed me to walk faster. The cattle trails got better and better and I found more of the strange cleat marks, still without a clear footprint. Like cattle trails I’d found recently in the Blue Range, long stretches looked man-made but clearly couldn’t have been. This was inside the wilderness area, but there were cowpies of all ages, from decades old to within the past week. I was also finding a bobcat track, deer tracks, and lots of javalina prints.
The narrow ridge rose in steps, revealing deeper and deeper views into the wilderness on both sides, until I lost the cattle trail and the ridge ended suddenly in a drop-off. I checked my map and saw that I was at a major dogleg – I had to turn right and find my way through dense forest and scrub to the next left turn, where the ridge descended toward the foot of the peak.
At the left turn, I found another cattle trail leading down, but it ended in a grassy saddle, and from there on it was hard bushwhacking.
Finally I reached the last grassy rise before the base of the peak, where I could start scouting my route. There, I found elk scat that was so warm and moist the animal had to have been there earlier today.
From the south, the peak had looked sharply triangular, but from here it was rounded. My ridge led down to a saddle densely forested with ponderosa pine, the first I’d encountered today, and then directly up an outlying toe of the peak. The map showed that the upper few hundred feet of the peak were quite steep, but the lower slopes looked gentle. Vegetation was patchy – dense forest at the bottom, grass and rocks in some places, and dense scrub in others. It looked like I could climb the first rise to get past the deep ravines surrounding the base, and from there, traverse through scrub to the next outlying shoulder, where I could see a line of tall ponderosa.
My goal was not to climb the peak, but to traverse around it, ending up at the level of the next saddle. My plan was to see how far I could get – I still had enough time to explore the next part of the ridge, where it climbed over 800′ higher, to the 9,000′ level, which would be really rewarding.
Unfortunately, past the tall pines of the saddle the forest of the lower slope turned out to be steep and so dense as to be near impassable. I kept pushing and zigzagging and finally broke out into the grassy upper part, but it was equally steep and very rocky. It seemed to take forever to reach the point where this shoulder merged with the upper slope, and there I found my traverse to the next shoulder blocked by dense chaparral.
Nevertheless, I forced my way through it, taking advantage of game tracks wherever possible. Way up there like a fly on the wall of the vast western landscape, I was clinging to a 40 degree slope with a lot of loose dirt, so it was dangerous going and hard on my vulnerable foot.
But worse was coming. When I reached the next sharp outlying shoulder and made a sharp right turn to the back side of the peak, I found a seemingly endless, deeply shadowed talus slope at the same 40 degree angle, that had been densely colonized by oaks of various ages and blocked often by pine deadfall. To cross it involved contorting my body and achieving a delicate four-point balance with every limb at nearly every step. The traverse was only a few hundred yards but it took about an hour.
Fortunately, the view I got at the end, back on the main ridge, was almost worth it.
After emerging from the oak-infested talus slope, I found myself a couple hundred feet higher than I’d intended – and what a view was opened up! Northeast over the upper canyon of my favorite trail – a canyon that had impressed me from the opposite direction, for its rocky majesty. But from here it was even rockier – the descending slope into the canyon was just a series of white promontories, cliffs and hoodoos. In the moment, this felt like the most spectacular hike I’d ever done in my home region. In the far center of the view was the 10,771′ peak with the fire lookout, and arrayed to its south were the ridges and peaks I’d either hiked to or admired from months of previous hikes.
Below me on the continuing ridgeline was a series of rounded white conglomerate outcrops. I’d had to put off lunch and could already see where I wanted to eat it – in a saddle of solid stone between two taller formations, with a full view into the rocky canyon.
I don’t usually stop for lunch – I just snack regularly while walking, so I can cover more distance. But after that traverse from hell, my body deserved a break. While resting, I could visualize a route up to the next peak of the ridge, but that would have to wait – I’d used up my time for the day.
Although I wouldn’t go any farther up this ridge, I might as well at least climb the peak I’d traversed – it was only about 400′ above this rocky saddle, and the lower slope looked fairly gentle. But starting up it, I was reminded that it lay within the burn scar so it was crisscrossed with dozens of charred logs in every direction. Shortly after starting up I found my way blocked by an odd white tree branch that I suddenly realized was a huge elk half-rack. I stood there staring at it in amazement for a while, then wondered if I should take it with me. I bent to lift it – it would add at least ten pounds to my pack, but at this point I was carrying about 6 pounds less water than I carried at the start of a summer hike. And I suddenly remembered thirty years ago when I found an entire massive bighorn ram skull in the desert, with horns about as big as they get, returning from a backpacking trip, and carried it down the mountain tied to an even smaller pack than I was carrying today. That sheep skull and horns had been destroyed in my house fire, so taking this antler rack was some form of restitution.
I carry an adustable nylon strap for situations like this, but this thing was four feet long and stuck out in every direction. It took me a couple tries to find a way to hang it on the back of my pack so it didn’t hit me in the head, and I’d have to be careful not to get it hung up on passing branches. I tried not to think about what would happen when I had to force my way through scrub, or how I might be injured if I fell backwards on that thing. Carrying it home seemed like a fairly stupid idea, but these hiking Dispatches are nothing if not a record of my bullheadedness.
With elk antlers strapped to my back, the climb to the peak was short but slow and grueling. I literally used oak seedlings to pull myself up at every step of the 40+ degree slope. The view at the top was 360 degrees, but really no more spectacular than the view from the saddle below. Still, I was glad I’d done it.
There was no way I was crossing that talus slope again on the way back – I was planning to work my way down the sharp shoulder with the line of ponderosas, and then traverse back through the dense scrub to the lower, more open shoulder.
But less than a hundred feet down that steep shoulder, I noticed that the slope to my left, leading directly to the lower shoulder, was no steeper, and there seemed to be paths through the scrub. So I began working my way straight down the side of the peak, and immediately found game tracks that I could follow back and forth between the dense scrub. It was still really steep, and the only open paths were in loose rocks and dirt – very dangerous with that antler rack on my back to throw off my balance – but I somehow avoided falling and eventually made it to the top of the lower shoulder. From there I could see the rest of my path down the main ridge laid out below me.
On the way up, I had the impression it was much easier than previous off-trail hikes – because I’d been able to use cattle trails for much of the way. But on the way back, the cattle trails seemed harder to find – they only followed part of the ridge – and I had to do a lot more hard bushwhacking. Much of my route involved forcing my way through dense, nearly impassable low forest or scrub with sharp rocks underfoot, and before I even made it halfway back I was swearing never to do this again. The sun was steadily setting and I was worried about getting lost if I couldn’t reach the vehicle before dark. My headlamp wouldn’t help because I was in an unfamiliar, mostly forested landscape with no trail.
Finally I reached the edge of the slope above the broad, grassy, and rocky meadow I’d crossed when passing through the gate in the barbed wire fence, 7 hours earlier. And it hit me that I had no idea where in that half-mile expanse the gate was. On my ascent, I’d failed to look back and memorize it, like I usually do when the way isn’t clear.
The lower edge of that sloping meadow was a solid, continous low forest, and the meadow itself was dotted randomly with old junipers. How the hell was I supposed to find the gate? I could see the lower part of the dirt road way off in the distance, but the part of it that led to the trailhead and my vehicle was out of sight below the ridge. I had no way to orient myself. The only thing I could do was head down the middle and hope that something would occur to me on the way.
Nothing did. It was perilous walking over those sharp stones, most of them hidden among the grass and annuals, and the sun kept getting lower ahead of me in the west, causing a glare. Finally I got to the edge where forest resumed and the final slope to the mesa began. A short way down that steep slope I saw the fence. There was no way I could climb over it – the barbed wire was loosely tied to steel posts at long intervals and I’d get hung up and cut up trying to cross. I had to find the gate.
I turned right and began laboriously following the fence through rocks and scrub along the top of the slope. I wasn’t sure I was going in the right direction, but eventually I’d hit the end of the grassy bench and would have to turn back.
Suddenly I came to a gate. This gate was open, so it couldn’t be the right one. But I could at least get through the fence and backtrack. I tried to reclose the gate, but the posts had resettled and it wouldn’t fit. No wonder cattle had been getting through.
Traversing the slope back, to where I could descend to my vehicle, was another form of hell. I discovered that this lowest slope was deeply dissected by gullies that were often too steep to cross, so I had to climb higher to go around them. It seemed to take forever, the antler rack wobbling on my back, narrowly avoiding falling as I stumbled on rocks or slid in loose dirt. In gaps through the trees I saw black cattle grazing around my vehicle, still far below.
When I reached my vehicle, the sun was literally just setting. Close to 9 miles out and back, with nearly 3,000′ of accumulated elevation gain, this was the most extreme bushwhack I’d ever done – a far cry from the easy hike I’d promised myself…
