Black Range
Monday, July 8th, 2024: Black Range, Hikes, McKnight, Southwest New Mexico.
Sunday was forecast to be clear across the area, with a high in town of 95. I faced the same old challenge, finding a hike that would keep me out of the heat without crippling my knee. Reviewing the map of hikes I’ve already completed, I noticed there was a gap in the crest trail east of town. At over 9,000 feet average elevation, it should be cooler, and hiking it would connect previous hikes on the northern and southern segments, yielding a total of 21 continuous miles hiked on that crest.
The out-and-back distance would be ten miles with an accumulated elevation gain of 2,200 feet, which is about all my knee can handle now. The only problem was that the access road is the worst in our region, requiring all of my vehicle’s ground clearance in low-range 4wd to climb over 3,000 vertical feet of exposed bedrock ledges. I’d only driven the entire road once, and had sworn never to do it again.
Plus, I didn’t know what kind of trail conditions to expect – would it be cleared or blocked by logs and overgrowth? There had been two mega-wildfires across that crest – would I find shady forest or exposed thickets? Fortunately, there was a shaded option about an hour’s drive downhill if the crest hike didn’t work out.
I can take the lower gravel-and-rock-lined half of the road at an average of 30 mph, but my vehicle’s safe average on the second half – a distance of seven miles – is 5 mph, with much of it at less than walking speed. Still, I was feeling pretty good until I reached the 9,400 foot turnout for the trailhead, and the inside door handle broke off when I tried to get out. No problem, I just rolled the window down and opened the door using the outside handle.
Then I stepped out into the sunlight, and it already felt like the mid-90s at 10 am. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breeze in the air. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, but it’d taken me more than two hours to get here – I was committed whether I liked it or not.
Another reason why I’d chosen this hike was because it started with a descent, and hence ended with an ascent, which would be easier on my knee. At the beginning, it teased me with a patch of shady forest, then confronted me with a wall of New Mexico locust. The locust, the first wave of regrowth after the alpine mixed-conifer forest had been burned off, had grown to ten or twelve feet tall, and covered the ridges and slopes in virulent green as far as the eye could see, interrupted only by scattered patches of surviving forest.
My route forward was indicated by a shoulder-height corridor of younger growth through the mature thicket. Apparently a crew had cleared a path a few years ago, and new growth had completely fill it in since then. Virtually no one had used this trail in the past decade, so on the ground below, there was no tread – no actual trail – at all. There was only hard, uneven dirt. Not only did I have to push my way through a thicket of thorns, I was continually stubbing my toe or tripping over the stumps that the earlier trail crew had left, which were now hidden under the regrowth.
I’d had a lot of experience with locust thickets before, but never this much – this was probably a hundred times what I’ve encountered elsewhere. It shows how much we lost in these fires, that hundreds of square miles of forest were replaced by this. Of course the main impact is on the native ecosystem, but for me, it involves always hiking in long sleeves and long pants made from a rugged material, and holding my arms upraised in front of me, twisting from side to side as I push forward, to deflect the thorny branches.
Ridge trails wind up and down and around high points and saddles, and the thickets were interrupted often enough by trees that I could occasionally escape the burning high-altitude sun. I saw and heard lots of birds, and although my route was only sparsely scattered with wildflowers, butterflies and other pollinators were abundant.
After about a mile, I came upon what was obviously an old, long-abandoned forest road, and remnants of that would reappear over the next few miles. This led me from the 9,400 foot level to the 9,000 foot level, around which the remainder of the route would oscillate.
My main purpose in taking this route was to see unfamiliar parts of the landscape, to complete my mental map. But in this early stretch, I didn’t see anything I hadn’t already seen from other angles.
I’d brought a map, and after two miles I knew I was approaching a major saddle, a divide between east and west, at the head of a long west-side canyon. That would be a little more than halfway.
I reached the expected saddle and found myself looking down a long, wide canyon, eerily deforested by the wildfires and lined with bright green locust and Gambel oak. My map didn’t show the name, and it wasn’t until reaching the next big canyon that I realized this is the one hikers sometimes use to do a loop with the next trail. A cairn in the middle of the saddle marked the point where the canyon trail came up, and I followed it a ways down, but it seemed to be equally overgrown with even less tread.
From the beginning, I’d found big logs cut to make way for the trail, which I assumed had been done long ago, after the 2013 wildfire. But now I was beginning to notice logs that seemed to have been cut recently, often surrounded by sawdust. And past the cairn for the big canyon, the nature of my route completely changed. It was lined with cowshit, and occasionally horseshit, and dotted with the invasive grasses that cattle spread. Luckily the cowpies were at least a year old, maybe more.
And I found bear scat only a few hours old, and started making more noise to announce myself.
Past the saddle the route seemed to climb forever, once again through a wide swath like an old road, until it finally crested on a long plateau with expansive views to east and west. The view to the east was across a high, rolling basin, and at the southeast end of it was the 10,000 foot peak I climbed two weeks ago. I’d never seen it from this angle, and today’s hike was intended to link up with the trail I take north from that peak. The long plateau also brought the first breezes of the day, a huge relief in such an exposed position.
I was also joined on my right by a barbed-wire fence; west was cattle country, and east was federal wilderness – but the cowpies on my side proved the fence wasn’t holding.
At the end of the long plateau my route began traversing the west slopes of a series of hills. The old roadway ended and most traces of the route disappeared. I followed what looked like faint animal trails, always keeping the fence in sight below. The fence trended gradually downwards, so I knew I was heading for the junction saddle that would be my turnaround point.
I knew I was on the right track when I came upon a cairn, followed by a ponderosa with a blaze in its bark – neither of which were accompanied by a trail. After a mile and a half, the barest vestige of a trail appeared, and I emerged on the rim of the next big canyon, and saw my old familiar trail descending the opposite slope, with the high peak behind it in the east. That peak is an old friend, and I was now seeing the back side, which I’ve hiked so many times, in perspective for the first time.
Below, I could now see my current route continuing down to the saddle, but I’d visited that saddle many times and it held no attraction. This canyon rim view provided a much better turning point.
It’d taken me four hours to go five miles, fighting through that locust. I dreaded the hike back, especially since it involved more uphill in this heat. It seemed to take forever to reach that midway saddle, but I was so tired I wasn’t even aware I’d passed it, so that in the end, I suddenly found myself facing the final ascent by surprise. That last stretch was the hardest, especially knowing I had that nerve-wracking drive left to do.
With so much locust to push through, I was constantly reminded of how important my hiking clothes are. You can’t get clothes like this at REI – they make outdoorwear as if wildfire never existed, using thin synthetic fabrics that are expensive and wouldn’t last one day in these conditions.
My shirts are made from chambray, a lightweight but tough cotton weave, and my pants are canvas. Thorns do tug at them and they don’t last forever, but they do last at least a year, which for me means up to 1,000 miles of hiking. There are tougher fabrics, but they’d be too hot in our summers.
After seeing dozens of logs sawn through recently to clear this route, I was puzzled that the trail crew didn’t attempt to clear the locust thickets. At home that night, I found an online report that a Forest Service crew from Montana had cut those logs in April. Apparently they were only equipped, or only had time, for sawing logs, so they just pushed through the locust like me. Or maybe they were horseback, and made their horses endure the thorns?
I made much better time returning – five miles in three hours – but the drive down the mountain took 50 percent longer. I hope I never try it again.
Alcoves, Rock Outcrops, Nooks, and Crannies
Sunday, September 7th, 2025: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
Our weather’s getting cooler – at least for now – but it still wasn’t cool enough for low elevation hiking. And since my knee is still (hopefully) recovering, I needed a level hike – which are hard to find at cooler elevations. But to narrow my choices even more, I wanted a decent lunch spot somewhere along the way. I’d already done the northwestern option last Sunday, and the northeastern option offered a couple of untried lunch spots that didn’t excite me at all.
But looking at the map again, I realized the northeast route offered the possibility of a shady canyon hike at over 7,000 feet, accessed via one of our most iconic backcountry roads. The map shows a trail running less than a mile down the canyon, but I figured I could keep walking to get my mile in. The Forest Service has a web page for that trail mentioning “alcoves, rock outcrops, nooks, and crannies”, but all I was interested in was the elevation and shade.
Not a cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see. But I was encouraged to find the river running – and actually in moderate flood. Amazing that in town we can still be in severe drought, while only thirty miles east they’re having a sustained wet monsoon.
Leaving the highway and climbing to the mesa, I found abundant wildflowers and lush grassy slopes all around, and actually began to get excited about the coming hike, despite the boring sky. This road starts out well-graded gravel, but as it dips into canyons it gets rockier – and it’s popular, so you gotta watch those blind curves and be ready for big pickups going too fast and tourists going too slow.
I parked in the tiny campground in the dark, narrow canyon that had seen a lot of debris after past wildfires. I saw a couple other vehicles back in the trees, but no people. The campground track had once crossed the now-dry creek, but floods had made it undrivable. There was no trailhead so I just followed what was left of the vehicle track until it ended and I found a trail sign.
Taking flower photos slowed me down a lot. I came to a spot where the creek held a little water in bedrock, then reached a cairn where the trail began climbing. I checked my map and found this should be the spot where the canyon trail branches off. But there was no tread through the new growth of annuals, so I just started finding my way down the banks of the creek.
Within a hundred yards or so I found the barest vestige of a trail – maybe just a game trail. It soon petered out, but short stretches would reappear at random. No worries, I’m pretty good at find the best route, and I couldn’t go wrong in this narrow canyon.
I saw some rock bluffs along the dry creek, and a formation on a slope above, but after a half hour I still hadn’t reached the “alcoves” etc.
Finally I saw something off through the trees that might be an alcove. And from there on, the slopes on both sides of the canyon became rockier and rockier, until I came to a narrows with an overhanging rock wall.
This is where the party began! I laughed, remembering how I had disregarded the name “Rocky Canyon”, thinking it would just offer mild temps. Little did I know it would turn out to be one of the most spectacular short hikes in our entire region.
Of course, the rocks were still mostly hidden behind trees, and up slopes that were a struggle in my knee brace. But even the canyon bottom was a beautiful, magical place.
No trail in this narrow, rock-walled stretch of canyon – I mostly stepped precariously from boulder to boulder in the creekbed, protecting my knee as best I could.
I’d spent more than an hour so far, on what was intended to be a one-mile out-hike, but I had to keep going until I ran out of rocks. In the end, it took me an hour and a half, and when I checked the map I found I’d hiked almost two miles and dropped over 400 vertical feet. No matter, I was in heaven – and the weather was perfect. I even had a breeze.
With less stops for photos, it only took me an hour to get back to the campground. Looking up, I spotted a few clouds through gaps in the canopy. The last remaining camper was just leaving, but others were arriving in a huge pickup.
Monsoon clouds were beginning to fill the sky as I drove up onto the mesa and headed back toward the highway. I had a late lunch at the less boring of the two untried spots – I was the only customer, not a good sign. But the huevos rancheros were actually pretty good, so I’ll be back.
Monday, February 9th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, Sawyers, Southwest New Mexico.
My new physical therapist, trying to treat my right knee, gave me a new exercise that instead, triggered pain in my left foot. The left foot condition was diagnosed 9 years ago by my San Francisco foot doctor, a national authority on biomechanics, and the nonsurgical treatment required 18 months of twice daily ultrasound. Since then, I’ve been able to control two or three minor flareups with something called contrast bathing, which is even more inconvenient than the ultrasound.
So for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing both the twice daily contrast bathing for the left foot, and three times daily icing on my right inner ankle bone. But on Sunday morning, getting dressed for another hike, I discovered that as soon as I put my boot on, the ankle bone hurts just as much as before.
I spent another half hour experimenting with padding. Finally, in desperation, I tried attaching one of the “beveled” metatarsal pads I use for the left foot, just below the ankle bone. And miraculously, that worked – apparently it’s the lower edge of the ankle bone that’s suddenly become a pressure point, and the pad holds the boot lining away and absorbs most of the pressure.
Today’s hike would be one that’s been on my list for months – just the right distance and elevation gain. I’ve been avoiding it because the drive is dangerous, the habitat is almost exclusively burn scar, and the last time I tried it I gave up because it was overgrown with thorny locust.
But that was years ago, and I figured by now, it would’ve either been cleared or seen enough traffic to beat back the thorns.
The sky was mostly clear, and the high in town was forecast to reach the mid-60s. So despite the high elevation – this hike climbs a peak, from 8,200 to 9,700 feet – I expected most of the snow we’d had weeks ago to be melted by now, especially in the exposed ground of a burn scar. I carried my gaiters and trekking poles but didn’t expect much trouble.
Sadly, I was wrong. Like many trails in the Southwest, this is routed mostly on north and east slopes to reduce solar heating, and most of the trail was snow-covered, up to 16 inches deep. And making it much worse, someone or something had walked the trail shortly after the last big storm, punching deep holes at intervals longer than my own footsteps. And adding insult to that injury, the snow had then melted and frozen repeatedly. Each step I took would either land on rigid snow, or snow that would compress a few inches, or snow that would collapse a foot or more, and there was no way to anticipate without taking the step. In the process, my foot might sink directly down, or slide forwards, backwards, or sideways, and sometimes end up tilted, throwing me further off balance.
For the first few hundred yards the snow was only a few inches deep and packed by a confusion of tracks, but after that, it was only Bigfoot, with a stride length of a meter – more than a yard. What human can stride like that in deep snow? The only animal out here that approaches that stride is a bull elk, with from two to three feet between tracks – and this was longer than that. What are the chances that an elk would stick to a man-made trail, back and forth across the crest, for three miles? And I saw no elk droppings all day.
I immediately thought about giving up on this hike, but as usual, figured I would just try it and see how far I got. The trail begins in the high pass on the crest of the north-south range, and proceeds for more than a mile in long traverses up a bleak northwest-facing canyon on the west side.
When I reached the crossover to the shadier east side of the crest, the patches of snow became deeper, and I strapped on the gaiters and broke out the trekking poles, hoping they would improve my balance as I lurched across the sometimes frozen, sometimes soft snow between deep holes punched by Bigfoot. The view from the east side – across rocky foothills and the Rio Grande Valley to 12,000 foot Sierra Blanca Peak over a hundred miles away in the Sacramento Mountains – would be spectacular except for the skeletons of pines and firs killed by the 2013 wildfire.
Two-thirds of a mile farther, I reached a saddle which reminded me of previous hikes on this, the southern extension of the crest trail. I’ve hiked over 17 miles of the northern crest, but since the 2013 fire, this southern part has only been cleared for the three miles to the saddle below the peak. Back in 2020, I tried bushwhacking farther south, but only made it a little over a mile, where the old trail disappeared under an obstacle course of blowdown and deadfall.
On that 2020 hike, I encountered four bull elk with huge racks and a group of six mule deer bucks, likewise with nice horns. Then, while bushwhacking to what I thought was the peak, I was caught in a hailstorm with lightning striking all around me. Finally, at this very saddle, I discovered a lost dog, abandoned by its owner, a dog so depressed that even after I offered it food and water and tried to lead it by a nylon strap I carry in my pack, it refused to leave the saddle and I had to leave it behind, presumably to be eaten by a mountain lion.
At the next saddle, the trail crosses to the west side and passes through remnants of intact forest. Even there, patches of snow with holes punched by Bigfoot kept slowing me down. But now, I could glimpse the peak looming hundreds of feet above, so I was no longer likely to give up.
At a saddle just below the peak, the trail crosses to the east side again, but here, Bigfoot continued straight up the steep slope. I’d done that before, there was no way I was going to try it in snow that was now over a foot deep. So I followed what I thought was the trail, beckoned by the tracks of a lone deer. I was halfway across the traverse to the next saddle when I realized the deer had led me off the actual trail, and I would now have to pick my way through deadfall to the back side of the peak, where the slope is gentler.
I finally found myself above the little saddle on the south side of the peak, where I normally start my bushwhack upwards. Although the south slope is gentler, it was burned in the fire and is becoming crisscrossed with more and more deadfall every year as giant pine and fir snags continue to topple.
I started to make my way across it, but every glance upward was more discouraging. I finally stopped and decided to give up on the peak – at least for a few minutes. But how could the masochist in me turn back when my goal was so close?
The horizontal distance is only a few hundred yards. But climbing over or around those huge fallen logs seems to take forever – and just when you think you’re approaching the peak, it turns out only to be an outlying shoulder or false peak.
When I finally saw a bald mound above me, I felt like something was wrong. The peak I’d climbed several times in the past was surrounded by a dead forest of standing snags that blocked its view, whereas this peak was completely clear all around.
I finally realized that what I thought was the peak in the past, was only a false peak a hundred yards east. How could I have made such a mistake, over and over? Anyway, it was nice to have my labors rewarded with a view.
Of course, going the distance meant I’d have to repeat that struggle with snow postholed by Bigfoot on the way down. I kept using the trekking poles, although it was a toss-up whether they helped or hindered, because they had the same problem as my boots – either hitting rigid snow, or sinking part or all the way. And when they sank all the way into the snow, they often snagged and yanked me further off balance. And they constantly got caught in the thorny locust that leaned over most parts of the trail.
My right knee, that had set my hiking back for two years, was finally doing well. And the right ankle that had been so excruciating during recent weeks, was now merely uncomfortable. But as if to compensate, the left foot was getting worse and was now becoming my limiting factor. Contrast bathing had not reduced the inflammation enough – would I have to repeat the ultrasound and give up hiking for another 18 months? Might as well just put me out of my misery.
When I reached the last crossover from east to west, the sun was rapidly setting and it was clear this seven-mile hike would end up taking me a full seven hours, due to the uneven snow. This is one of the worst hikes I could’ve picked at this point in my “recovery”. But as usual, the late-afternoon sun and colors on the landscape were beautiful, and a couple of pain pills helped salvage my attitude.
Sunday, April 5th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
I usually start researching options for my Sunday hike later on Saturday, after finishing my chores. It was easy this time – there’s an area on the state line with ranch roads that might get me to a spectacular box canyon, and afterwards, the restaurant in the Mormon farm town.
But on Sunday morning I realized it was Easter, and the restaurant would be closed. It took me another hour and a half, squinting at maps and scratching my head, to come up with another option – in an area I seldom visit, in the opposite direction. It’s in the foothills of our eastern mountains, between the two big wilderness areas, and I’ve always thought of it as a long drive. But when I checked the drive time, it was actually less than that area on the state line.
It’s a trail I’d never considered, because when I’m in good shape it doesn’t offer a challenge, and I doubted that it would feature anything else of interest. It merely connects a reasonably spectacular trail, at higher elevation, to a spectacular canyon hike, at lower elevation. But it looked like the perfect distance and elevation gain to continue my knee and foot recovery.
I’d hoped to hike in Arizona, at lower elevation, because today was forecast to be cooler – in the mid-60s in town. This connector trail would be up to 3,000 feet higher, but the sky was mostly clear. From the backcountry highway in the long, narrow valley, the dirt road climbs to the mesa, runs mostly straight north, then deteriorates to one rocky lane while descending into a rugged, shaded canyon.
What appeared to be an extended family group had taken over the tiny campground beside the creek in the canyon bottom. The dirt road crosses the creek dozens of times and washes out in every good rain, so it has a high berm of boulders that are constantly bulldozed out of the way.
After about two-and-a-half miles the road leaves the canyon and climbs to the next mesa, where you immediately come upon the trailhead. I’ve never seen anyone else here, and today’s trail started out nearly invisible.
Like last Sunday, it was in the 60s when I hit the trail, but hiking would keep me plenty warm without a sweater. The trail varied between obvious and nonexistent, but as usual I had no trouble figuring out the route. It climbed steadily at an easy grade in and out of drainages on this east side of a high ridge, passing several modest rock outcrops. I studied every patch of dirt in the trail, and the only tracks I could identify were from javelina.
The ridge was completely forested, so views were rare. I was looking forward to the view west from the ridgetop, across 50 miles of wilderness. But when I finally reached it, I could only glimpse narrow slices of landscape through the tall pines and firs.
The trail followed the ridgetop for about a mile – a pleasant, mostly level stroll. I wasn’t sweating, but flies were starting to bounce around my face.
Finally the trail began descending the west slope of the ridge. Descending steadily, I was surprised to encounter pinyon–juniper-oak forest first, then ponderosa pine forest, then pinyon-juniper-oak again, then ponderosa again, over and over until I reached the trail junction at the bottom – breaking all the rules of habitat and elevation.
As soon as I started down that west-facing slope, the flies swarmed me so bad I had to dig out my head net. I couldn’t figure it out – I was barely sweating, there was no livestock anywhere near here, and the only surface water was in occasional pools in the canyon far below.
I’d planned to turn back at the trail junction, but I was so frustrated at never getting a view out of the forest, I continued on the trail into the canyon, hoping to get a view of its rock bluffs.
After about a quarter mile, I did get a view down-canyon, but this was only a tributary – not the main rocky canyon. It would have to do for today.
With its gentle grades, this seemed the perfect hike to work on both foot and knee. Yeah, it was frustrating not to be able to see out of the forest, but it was a very pretty forest.
As I’ve written elsewhere, this is part of the national trail from Mexico to Canada, so it was built well generations ago. But nobody uses it anymore – all the through hikers detour to the big river twenty miles west of here, because the official trail no longer has dependable water sources.
The drive is actually more spectacular than that trail.
