Monday, August 1st, 2022
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.
