Black Range
Monday, August 29th, 2022: Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Nature, Plants, Southwest New Mexico, Wildfire.
Since mid-June, when this year’s massive wildfire burned through the habitat of one of my regular hikes, I’ve been yearning to go back there. But the Forest Service had issued a closure notice for that entire area effective until the end of the year.
The trail is really popular with Texans from El Paso, so on Saturday, on a whim, I checked the web page for that trail on the most popular online hiking forum, and found trip reports from a couple of weeks ago saying the trail had just been reopened. So this Sunday’s choice of a hike was a no-brainer!
I was especially concerned about the beautiful old-growth fir forest on the back side of the peak. That forest had survived the big 2013 wildfire as an island of lush alpine growth, and there were two ancient firs I really loved that stood on each side of the trail, like sentinals. During this year’s fire, the incident team had noted that the burn on top of the peak was low-intensity, so I was pretty sure my favorite trees had survived.
The weather forecast I quickly checked before leaving predicted cloudy skies and mild temperatures, so I reluctantly pulled on my heavy waterproof boots and packed the heavy, uncomfortable waterproof hunting pants. I was so tired of dressing for rain! But by the time I’d crossed town and entered open country, I noticed there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky ahead. Damn! Had I forgotten to refresh the weather page? It doesn’t auto-refresh on every platform – maybe I’d been looking at yesterday’s forecast.
The highway was virtually empty of other vehicles, but I came close to hitting deer twice – our deer population has exploded again, and driving anywhere outside of town is super stressful. But on the plus side, as I was slowly winding up through the tall forest toward the pass, a bobcat crossed in front of me. I hadn’t seen one in years.
Since this is our most popular trail with out-of-towners, I always expect to meet other hikers, and today was no exception – within the first 2 miles I encountered a single middle-aged man heading back out. We exchanged brief greetings but that was clearly all he was interested in. Most people using this trail are simply heading for the famous fire lookout on the peak, but I’m here for the wilderness – I bypass the lookout and continue several miles farther on the crest trail.
This year’s fire had stopped its southward advance at the peak, 5-1/2 miles north of the trailhead, and its scar couldn’t even be seen until you reached the top. But the 2013 wildfire had turned most of the crest into a treeless moonscape, colonized in the intervening years by shrubs and annuals. After this year’s wet monsoon, I saw plenty of flowers and birds in that area.
And during the initial traverse through the old burn scar, I was a little encouraged to see some small clouds rising behind the crest to the north. Maybe I’d get some weather after all, to justify my preparations!
By the time I reached the end of the burn scar at a saddle below the peak, a storm was definitely brewing in the north. And it hit me just as I crossed the southeastern shoulder of the peak, quickly developing into a heavy hailstorm as I scrambled to change pants and pull on my poncho.
Climbing the final switchbacks to the peak, I finally came upon scars of this year’s fire. Here, they were simply small black bare patches in a sea of lush annuals – it looked as if windblown sparks had started spot fires that had burned out without spreading.
But when I traversed around the peak through the lush forest below the lookout, I became confused. This area alternates between dense stands of fir and small grassy meadows surrounding isolated stands of venerable pine, fir, and Gambel oak. Here, many firs had been killed while their immediate neighbors had been spared. As before, there were small black bare spots where ground fires had burned with high intensity, but hadn’t seemed to have spread. The more I looked, the harder it was to tell where and how the fire had actually burned, because most of the ground cover was grass and forbs, which could’ve come up after the fire.
Suddenly I came upon two blackened stumps, and realized my favorite firs had not only been killed – they’d completely burned down. It was so strange – firs only 40 feet from them hadn’t even been scorched.
The peak forest is an island. Forest on the slopes below it was destroyed in the 2013 fire, and the trail there is crowded with seedlings of thorny locust and aspen. Some of this survived this year’s fire – enough to really slow me down.
And at the bottom, a trail junction and saddle where some tall ponderosas had survived the 2013 fire, this year’s fire had burned hot. The tree holding the trail signs had been torched – its charred trunk lay on the ground, and the trail signs had apparently burned to ashes. I’d often stopped at this saddle for a shaded lunch or a few minutes’ rest, but it was a bleak place now.
Beyond the saddle was a bowl that had been turned into a chaos of fallen logs by the 2013 fire, and these logs had clearly provided fuel for this year’s fire. Now that those logs had burned, along with the new growth of shrubs, this year’s wet monsoon was quickly eroding the bare soil and washing it downstream.
Below the bowl is a narrow canyon, whose forest had been partly killed by the older fire. This year’s fire had killed all the rest, and this summer’s rains were alternately flooding the creek with debris and cutting it into deep gorges.
The trail through this canyon had been cleared of logs just last fall – 8 years after the 2013 fire – and now it was rapidly being eroded away. As usual, it was only my past familiarity that enabled me to follow it. Slowed down by all the fire damage, I only made it to the second saddle – a mile short of my destination. The rain had finally stopped, and despite frequent thunder from surrounding storms, I could pack away the poncho for the rest of the hike.
The rain had chilled the air here between 8,000′ and 10,000′, so I could climb the 1,400′ back to the peak without much sweating, which was a relief from the heat and humidity of so many recent hikes. And as usual on crest hikes, there were no flies bothering me!
The long descent gave me an opportunity to watch storms developing far away across the landscape, as well as to appreciate flowers and fungi I’d missed on the way up. Just below the peak, I surprised a small hawk from the slope just above the trail. It first thought to perch on a seedling right in front of me, then decided it was too close and soared away to a much farther branch, so I couldn’t get a good picture.
The work of my hikes seldom ends when I reach the vehicle. During a wet monsoon, or in winter snow, my gear gets soaked and filthy. I can’t relax back home until it’s stashed somewhere for next morning’s cleanup, and the next day begins with a cleaning session for hat, boots, pants, poncho, etc.
Monday, October 17th, 2022: Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Southwest New Mexico.
The world changes around us, and we must adapt. I’ve lost most of my high-elevation hikes to flood damage and debris in their canyon approaches, and I’m still not sure what to do about it.
This Sunday arrived with a forecast of rain all day, for the entire region. I considered postponing my hike and staying home – the vast majority of hikers avoid “bad” weather – but rain was forecast for Monday as well. And one of my main goals has always been to experience habitats in all conditions.
With the need to avoid flooded creek crossings, there was really only one remaining option – the crest trail east of town. I’d last hiked it less than two months ago, in late August – the trail had just been reopened after this year’s big wildfire, which had burned patches on the peak and destroyed my favorite fir trees. I wasn’t looking forward to returning, because overgrowth and fire damage had slowed me down then, and I expected conditions to be even worse now after much more monsoon rain.
Resigned to a day of frustration, I pulled on my waterproof pants and boots, and packed cool-weather accessories – the temperature was in the high 40s.
The sky was clear over town, but when I drove through the low pass into the eastern river valley, getting my first view of the mountains, I saw that most of the crest ahead was blanketed by clouds. And nearing the top of the narrow, winding road, I entered the cloud layer, and the slopes around me disappeared.
This trail takes more than 5 miles to climb the 2,000 vertical feet to the 10,000′ peak, so the grade is mostly gentle, and for some reason I had a lot of energy and moved fast for the first 3 miles. This is normally a trail with continuous views far across the landscape to east and west, but today visibility ranged from 200′ to only 50′. I was all socked in.
Then my energy crashed, my legs seemed to lose all their strength and I suddenly felt exhausted. My fingers got chilled – Raynaud’s syndrome – so I pulled on wool gloves and stuck my hands in my pockets until they warmed. I’d been walking in a cloud all the way, and in the last mile before the peak, a light rain began to fall.
The rain only lasted about 15 minutes, and as I crossed to the back side of the peak, the clouds receded over me and I spotted tiny patches of blue above.
I’d seen horse poop on the way up, and their hooves had punched postholes in the wet dirt of the trail on the backside, making for tricky footing. Despite the wishful thinking of the Feds, horses and hikers are generally not compatible trail users.
In the big burn scar from the 2013 fire, on the western slope of the peak, I got my first view to the west, and could see storms developing and clouds flowing from canyon to canyon in the direction I was headed. And I discovered that the horsemen who’d made the trail harder to walk had cleared most of the thorny locust where the trail passes through thickets. So I was able to proceed faster than expected. Maybe I’d get to the rock formations, halfway to the far junction saddle?
Before I knew it, I was at the little saddle at the western base of the peak, where the trail marker tree had burned down.
At this first junction saddle, the horsemen had stopped and turned back, but after crossing the deeply eroded basin below, I found that another hiker had added tread to the trail down the narrow canyon since my August visit, so it was a little easier going.
I’d been walking downhill for over a mile now, and my energy had returned. And so had the rain, this time harder and longer. Making good time, I continued past the little saddle where I’d turned back in August, where the trail leaves the narrow canyon and passes to the west side of the crest. And since the trail gets better there, I shortly reached the first of the two rock formations. Would I actually make it to the next junction saddle?
The rain slacked off, and the hike seemed to go faster than ever before. I came to the long descending traverse, a corridor through Gambel oak, that leads to the saddle, and found a continuous trail of fresh bear scat, literally dozens of piles lined up in a row. I came upon a flock of band-tailed pigeons, flapping through the canopy, a hundred yards from where I’d first encountered these birds more than a decade ago. They’re hard to miss because their wings make a lot of noise. Then I suddenly emerged into the saddle, so smothered by the cloud I could barely see the forest on the other side.
More firs had been killed here by this year’s wildfire, and this saddle was no place to linger. But what a hike! I’d gone at least 9 miles – by the end of the day, I would’ve covered more than 18 miles and 4,500 vertical feet, far more than expected. And in the chill and the damp, my gear was working – I was warm and dry. Despite not being able to see out of the forest, I was feeling pretty happy about the way things were going.
On the way back up the narrow canyon, rain started again, harder than before, and this time it lasted all the way to the peak, more than an hour, as thunder crashed off to the west.
Approaching the peak, I developed a sharp pain in my right knee. It’s strange – for a decade, I had sporadic tendonitis in my left knee – that’s why I have multiple knee braces. But now, for some reason, it’s shifted to the right knee. Maybe it has something to do with the chronic inflammation in the left foot and the right hip. Ah, the joys of aging with an active lifestyle!
I toughed it out for another mile going downhill, then finally stopped to strap on my brace. But the brace didn’t help, so after another half mile of limping, I took a pain pill. That did nothing for the pain, but made me feel good in general, so I could ignore the pain, which is sometimes the way it works. Trying to discourage abuse, doctors often claim that pain meds don’t work, but the fact is that they help immeasurably even when they don’t eliminate the pain.
During the last two miles, it started raining again, this time harder than ever. It would continue for the next two hours, becoming a torrential downpour on the drive home.
It was getting really cold and I donned my storm shell under the rain parka, and my thermal cap under the hood. Here above 9,000′, after a day up in the clouds being rained on for hours – conditions most hikers would avoid like the plague – I was warm, dry, and despite the sharp pain in my knee, feeling great. Not even the low visibility could dampen my mood – I’d actually come to enjoy being socked in, surrounded by the gently flowing cloud blankets. Like the walls of a house, they temporarily obliterated the endless outer landscape, and I’d spent most of the day walking through interior spaces that felt intimate and, despite the storms, comforting.
Monday, December 12th, 2022: Black Range, Hikes, Sawyers, Southwest New Mexico.
As my regional options for long, high-elevation day hikes have shrunk due to post-wildfire deadfall, overgrowth, erosion, and flood damage, my motivation has reached an all-time low. Yes, there are a few favorite trails left – one to the east, two to the west, and three over in Arizona – but I’ve already hiked all of those in the past two months, so to avoid repetition I’m trying hikes that normally wouldn’t challenge or otherwise interest me.
This Sunday’s goal was a trail that branched off of one I’ve hiked before, in the eastern range, following a canyon bottom from 7,000′ to 9,000′. I was planning to explore the crest trail beyond the junction, then return down the other canyon for a loop.
The trail starts by crossing a creek, which has been flooded and uncrossable at times in the past, but I was wearing my waterproof boots and carrying gaiters so I figured I could handle a few inches without getting my feet wet.
The temperate was in the 20s up there – I drove over a pool of frozen-solid rainwater to get to the trailhead. The creek was rushing and frothing, making a lot of noise, but the first crossing looked doable. I had to spend a few minutes scouting upstream for a stick, and stepping stones that weren’t slippery – a slip would plunge my foot into ice-cold water over a foot deep and end my day.
After less than a minute of progress up the trail I hit the next stream crossing and realized I’d picked the wrong trail. But I really didn’t like my alternatives, and I figured I only had a mile of this to cover before branching off into the side canyon. So I spent another five minutes returning for the stick I’d used at the last crossing and scouting up and downstream for more stepping stones.
After the second crossing, I likewise walked another dozen yards or so to the third, and likewise spent another five minutes scouting and crossing. Not the way I preferred to use my time.
Another short walk to the fourth crossing. Here, the creek had spread across a debris flow nearly 30 feet wide, with multiple channels. I picked my way precariously up most of the flooded debris flow without finding a crossing point, then saw that the trail recrossed a little ways ahead, and I could just climb up my side of the bank to rejoin the trail without crossing the flood.
At this point, long stretches of the creek had backed up behind debris to form placid channels two feet deep and eight feet wide. When I came to the next crossing, I discovered that to get past one of these uncrossable channels, I would have to fight my way through thickets of willows that floods had bent down in my direction – like the pickets of a defensive barracade – for dozens of yards, to reach another crossing point. I’d used up a half hour so far, and had only gone a quarter of a mile.
The crest trail, accessed from the pass a few slow miles’ drive away, was now my only option. Since I’d hiked the preferable northern segment as far as possible less than two months ago, I unwillingly embarked on the southbound segment, which I’d had a fairly miserable experience with back in July – I’d been slowed by thorny locust and deadfall and drenched in a cold thunderstorm without proper preparation. Since it’s in a popular location, I optimistically hoped it would’ve seen more traffic since and was maybe a little clearer.
In the event, the thorny locust had been trampled or pushed aside in places, but by horses not hikers. And to negate that minor improvement, they’d come up here in the monsoon when the trail was muddy, and postholed or undercut the trail with their hooves so it was much harder and more dangerous to walk. So ironic that the backcountry horsemen, who are now the only people doing trail work in our region, have embarked on an expensive PR campaign to show how they’re “improving trails for all users“.
To the logs fallen across the trail, more had been added. So it took me 2-1/2 hours to struggle the 3 miles to the 9,700′ peak. And most of the way, I was passing through a landscape of death – charred conifer snags, leafless shrubs, and the dry winter stalks of annuals. Yeah, I know it’s all part of the cycle of life, but even the endless view east across the distant Rio Grande was in the same drab color scheme and failed to cheer me up.
A 6-mile out-and-back hike would be a real anticlimax to my day, so I tried to continue south on the crest, past the peak. I’d made it a couple of miles farther on my first venture up here, back in June 2020, but that had involved some extreme routefinding though mazes of deadfall and overgrowth. This time, I was only able to go a half mile further, without locating any remaining evidence of a trail which had once been the jewel of the range.
Outside magazine was launched in 1977, the year after I moved to California for grad school and became a serious outdoor recreationist. For once – coincidentally – I was in tune with my times.
The love of my life had dumped me the year before, and I needed a radical change. After suffering through childhood as a weak, sickly child, enduring adolescence as a sensitive artist, and beginning adulthood immersed in academia, I abruptly started working out at a gym, training for a marathon, learning to sail, rock-climb, and cross-country ski. In the months before the first issue of Outside came out, I backpacked into Yosemite’s high country on snowshoes and did a solo ascent of 14,179′ Mount Shasta.
I was an early subscriber to the magazine, and kept it coming for the next few years as I rejected the professional career I’d trained for and threw myself into an exploration of music, art, and nature that continues to this day.
People didn’t wait until the late Seventies to go outside, but the launch of Outside marked a cultural shift. Before the Seventies, people who weren’t rich went hiking, camping, or backpacking primarily for traditional subsistence purposes. They may have unconsciously been drawn outside to enjoy nature, but ostensibly they were there to hunt or fish.
Even the rich had to have a better reason than a love of nature. They went outside to sail or to ski.
Outside marked the spread of outdoor recreation to the middle class. It wasn’t clear at the beginning, but it was a revolution in capitalism and technology. During the next few decades, it seemed there was no limit to the ways consumers could apply technology to use nature for thrills and enjoyment, and the magazine, along with the REI website, remains one of the most comprehensive guides to capitalist, technological recreation.
From skiing and surfing to mountain biking and rock climbing – and even to the humble pursuit of hiking – technological recreation has made a lot of capitalists rich, from Yann Wenner, celebrity founder of Outside, to Yvon Chouinard, celebrity founder of Patagonia. And as skiers and surfers expect the powder and the waves to keep coming, year after year, hikers expect the trails to keep unfolding under their REI-supplied footwear for all eternity.
In these Dispatches, I’ve already described how the Anglo-European colonial practices of indigenous removal and fire suppression have resulted in mega-wildfires that are making trail systems on public land unsustainable. But capitalism and technology – Outside, REI, Patagonia, and the like – keep churning out high-tech gear that’s inappropriate for the new outdoor regime. Gear designed for cleared, well-maintained trails that no longer exist. Gear that doesn’t hold up in the trackless, overgrown fire scars of our contemporary public lands. “Eco-friendly” gear made out of recycled plastic that will ultimately degrade into microfibers and microplastics to further pollute natural ecosystems.
The Outside/REI/Patagonia fantasy, of attractive young consumers scampering or cycling along clear trails through towering forests and over endless white glaciers, is in free fall, along with the rest of our culture. It will be interesting to see how technology and capitalism adapt to this brave new world.
Monday, April 10th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
It looked like spring was finally here. Still hoping to regain more mileage and elevation on my Sunday hikes, I decided to try an area in the high mountain range east of here, a range that had been off limits for months due to heavy snow.
I’d always assumed the trails on the west side of the range could only be reached after long, slow drives on poorly maintained dirt roads. One of those roads actually reaches the crest, at 9,500 feet with the highest peak only a mile and a half farther – more driving and less hiking is definitely not what I need.
But further map research over the winter had revealed a couple of high-elevation trails that should be little more than an hour’s drive from home. They topped out over 9,000 feet, so I expected some snow, but one had mostly southern exposure, which should be bare by now.
So I headed over there. And ironically, just like last week, I’d ignored the fact that the access road starts by crossing a river, which of course was in flood now.
So there I was, 45 minutes from town, blocked and in search of a second option. I’d previously hiked three trails in the vicinity and had no desire to repeat them. But a little over three miles north there was another dirt road I’d been curious about for a long time. It was known to be challenging to drive and would ultimately yield more driving time and less hiking time in my day. But it didn’t cross a river, and it featured several trailheads – including the CDT, which should be in better shape than the now-brutal Forest Service trails.
The road is historic and fairly legendary. Built originally by the military in the 1870s, it was improved in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and during the same period, it became the narrow corridor between our two huge wilderness areas.
The first stretch runs up a mesa toward the distant crest and goes quickly. The first trailhead was well-marked, and I set out on a surface pockmarked by hooves. Within a half mile I came to a side drainage, with a view toward the river canyon, downstream to the right. And I saw smoke, drifting through the pinyon and juniper.
As I stood watching, the smoke moved off and dispersed. I followed the trail around the head of the drainage and came to a junction where a branch trail went down toward the river. I saw another cloud of smoke drifting just below the canopy. Damn! This is the dry, windy season when most of our wildfires start – had I avoided a flood only to be turned back by a forest fire?
Today’s air was perfectly still, the sky was mostly clear, and we hadn’t had any storms for weeks. But the last couple of days had been cloudy in town – maybe there’d been dry lightning over here?
There were isolated remnants of a burn scattered around me. They looked recent but not fresh. This was on the edge of last year’s mega-wildfire. I watched carefully and couldn’t see an origin for the smoke, so I headed down the branch trail. After about a hundred yards I saw a meadow off to my right in the bottom of the drainage and made my way over there for a better view. Again, isolated charred logs and patches of ash-covered dirt, and another little cloud of smoke drifting through the trees. I touched a charred log – it was warm, but it was in the sun. I hadn’t smelled smoke yet at any point.
I decided to return to the main trail and keep going, while remaining vigilant. Maybe I’d get a better view into the river canyon, if that was the source of the smoke.
After climbing a steep, rocky slope, I reached a sort of grassy plateau dotted with junipers, and suddenly noticed another wisp of smoke drifting through the crown of a low tree. What the hell?
In the distance I could see what appeared to be the edge of a precipice, so I headed over and found myself atop the rimrock of the river canyon. But there was no smoke anywhere to be seen. So I returned to the main trail and climbed still higher.
Eventually I had a view back over my approach. And the first thing I saw was a cloud of smoke which appeared to lie in the side drainage I’d first encountered. There was an active fire, burning toward my route back!
I took off running down the trail. But with 4 liters of water in my pack for warmer weather, I couldn’t really run on the rocky stretches without risking a broken ankle. My heart was pounding, even when not running. If the trail was on fire, I’d have to try to bushwhack around it. Or reverse and go the long way around, connecting with other trails to reach the road much farther north, fifteen miles or more. Meanwhile, my vehicle might be destroyed by the fire.
I was exhausted when I reached the side drainage – and there was no sign of smoke. I began to wonder if maybe the “smoke” I’d seen had actually been dust raised by the passage of a vehicle on the road, a mile farther away. In any event, I had no interest in retracing my steps after that desperate run downhill.
The next trails were about 7 miles north, past the gnarliest part of the old road. It climbs in hairpin twists up a tall ridge, then winds down in more hairpins into a dark, narrow, rocky canyon, where it basically turns into a path up a debris flow, crossing and recrossing a network of flowing creeks, where my vehicle slowly rocked over small boulders, humps and ruts, averaging less than five miles per hour.
Finally the road left the creek and climbed through more hairpins over another high ridge, and I emerged in the north country, with a long view north and the main crossing point of the CDT. I hadn’t really studied the topography of any of these trails that trended eastward toward the crest of the range – starting from trailheads a little below 8,000 feet, I just figured they would go up over ridges and down into drainages, while gradually rising toward the crest. I knew I was about 12 miles from the crest and wouldn’t reach it in the time I had left – I was just exploring, in preparation for a better-planned return.
As I’d expected, this part of the CDT was in better shape than Forest Service trails – it’s maintained annually whereas a few forest trails are cleared once or twice a decade, and most are simply abandoned. But I couldn’t find any recent tracks, and heavy growth from last summer’s monsoon meant that tread was nonexistant in many places. I had to imagine a path forward much of the time, but I’m getting pretty good at that!
The first milestone shown on my map was called “Rocky Point”, which I was hoping would offer a vista across the landscape. But I hadn’t checked to see how far it was, and the trail just kept climbing, and climbing. This area had burned patchily, and I could sometimes see north between the trees, but that wasn’t very interesting. Finally I spotted a peak with talus slopes ahead – maybe that was it? But the trail turned, and climbed around its flank, where I finally got some longer views west across country I already knew well.
Past the talus peak, the trail climbed toward outcrops I figured had to be Rocky Point. It turned out to just be a slope dotted with outcrops. I could see a much taller peak in the distance, with a trail traversing across it. After making my through the rock outcrops and across a saddle, I found myself on that trail. I was glad to be gaining some good elevation. I knew this trail would eventually connect with the one I’d attempted earlier, but I didn’t know how far I would get in the time I had.
The trail eventually reached its high point, a little below 8,800 feet, crossing another saddle into a shaded north slope where some patches of snow remained. There, the trail condition deteriorated farther – but I’d been noticing faint bootprints and finally confirmed that one medium-sized person had been here before me, maybe as long ago as last fall, before the snows. That’s another thing about the CDT – despite all the effort put into maintaining it, it tends to see little use outside the window of late-April to early-May, when most through-hikers start north.
Even harder to follow now, the trail began to gradually descend, across saddle after saddle, until in a shallow drainage, I came upon the junction with the other trail. Nothing spectacular, but my time was up.
As soon as I turned around and started back, I discovered that the downhill run I’d done after that early-morning smoke scare had damaged my left knee. It was like having a knife in my knee, so I now only had one good leg to hike about 5 miles downhill on.
Despite the excruciating pain, this had been a beautiful day and a pretty nice trail. I wish it had better views of the crest to the east – all I had was narrow glimpses through surviving stands of conifers. But the west flanks had been cleared in past wildfires, and were so steep that the traverses were impressively dizzying.
Another thing that impressed me was the past trail work. In level spots this trail had often been outlined with rock berms, and on traverses and switchbacks it had been built up with retaining walls that must have taken many days to construct, sometimes using rocks weighing over 200 pounds.
Still, the drive is a little too far, and the accumulated elevation gain turns out to be too modest, to encourage a return visit.
But back home, studying my photos, I realized something I should’ve guessed on the trail, something I learned when I first moved here, and had since forgotten. Tolkien’s ents aside, we think of trees as passive and immobile. But junipers can forcibly eject their pollen in explosive clouds. The “smoke” I saw on that first trail was actually juniper pollen. And the smoke I saw lying in that drainage had to have been dust from a vehicle on the road. That knee damage turned out to be pointless.
Sunday, April 16th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
Another warm, clear Sunday. I wasn’t sure if the snow had melted yet from my favorite high-elevation trails. But studying the map for the trail I’d aborted last Sunday, it looked like I might be able to use it to reach a 9,700 foot peak farther east. At almost 19 miles out-and-back it would be a long shot, depending on trail conditions and my endurance. But the map showed it as part of the CDT so I figured it would be in good condition.
On the drive east, a deer suddenly raced across the highway in front of me. Then another followed, slamming into the side of my vehicle. I slowed and pulled over, glancing in my rearview mirror. The deer that had hit my car was rolling on its back, kicking its legs. Then it jumped to its feet and ran off, following the first deer, as if nothing had happened. More deer followed, all racing across the highway in single file. It was like a lottery to see which of them would get hit. And it was only a little over a year since my last, and first, deer collision. Fortunately for me, there was little damage this time.
The first trail – shown on some maps as the “old CDT” – climbs almost 1,500 feet to a saddle where other trails branch off. Nearing the saddle I met an older couple with an off-leash dog. The dog barked hysterically at me, and as usual they struggled to leash and subdue it. I asked them if they were enjoying the hike, but they ignored me.
I had three choices at the junction. The left-hand branch was the branch I’d hiked last Sunday – from the opposite direction. Straight ahead a trail went down the drainage, and a sign marked it as the “New CDT”. Interesting. The right-hand branch I planned to take, shown on my map as the CDT, had faint tread traversing the slope, but whoever had put up the “New CDT” sign had blocked this trail with logs.
I started up it anyway, but it turned out to be a disaster. Frequently blocked by deadfall and blowdown, with many places where there was simply no sign of a trail. I continued as best I could, but after 3/4 of a mile I came to a broad, shallow valley where the trail completely disappeared. I cut for sign in a circle about 100 yards in diameter but found nothing. The trail shown on the map as the CDT simply didn’t exist on the ground.
So I returned to try the “New CDT”. It started okay – a couple had even gone down it before me – but it rapidly turned into an erosional gully with no sign of a trail. The farther down I went, the worse it got, turning into a debris flow choked with fallen logs. So this is the new CDT? Good luck, through hikers! Again, I fought my way 3/4 of a mile down before giving up and turning back.
I still had a couple hours left for hiking, so I decided to go up the left-hand branch a mile or so – the one I’d hiked last Sunday – just for the exercise.
Back home, I checked the official CDT website. They show the trail that no longer exists as the official route. This year’s crop of through hikers will likely be really confused. If they take the “New CDT” they’ll end up fighting their way down a flood-damaged canyon with no surviving trail, adding 15 miles and several days to their trip. I hope they’re carrying enough food!
