Monday, September 25th, 2023
Monday, September 4th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
I didn’t feel like driving this Sunday, but the day was forecast to be hot and I wanted to keep working on my conditioning. There was really only one option near town, the eighteen-mile crest hike that utilizes part of the national trail. It’s not wilderness, it’s close enough to town that I often meet casual hikers near the lower and upper trailheads, and cattle occasionally use the upper part, but it allows me to achieve serious mileage and elevation on a reliable trail. And even though it’s not wilderness, it proves how healthy our mountain habitat is in general, compared to public lands near urban areas.
The approach is on a sporadically maintained primitive forest road up a narrow canyon. There were two other vehicles at the trailhead, but the only track I found on the road, and on the upper trail, was from a single mountain bike. The upper trail is so steep and rocky I assumed the biker took the gravel fire road to the crest from the opposite side, and rode down this canyon segment.
The habitat along most of this trail is lush even in a drought, but we’d gotten enough rain recently that wildlife was really thriving. Heading down though dense regrowth past the shoulder of the 9,000 foot summit, I noticed a hummingbird working the flowers ahead and froze where I was. The bird also stopped, to perch on a low branch beside the trail. I waited several minutes, then slowly moved a couple yards closer and froze again. I kept moving closer in stages like this until I was literally only a yard away, and the hummingbird – probably a female broad-tailed – hung in there, staring back at me with what appeared to be curiosity.
That experience was so cool that I kept stopping in flower-dense areas during the rest of the hike, hoping pollinators would ignore me and approach. It generally worked, but I was paying so much attention to what was happening above the trail that I slipped on a rock and tweaked my ankle at one point. My reinforced boots allowed me to keep hiking, but it was swollen and sore the next day.
The lower part of the trail is mostly shaded, but burn scars and scattered clouds along the crest meant that I was moving between hot sun and chilly shade for most of the day.
The last two-and-a-half miles are very seldom used, running just below the crest through wildfire burn scar and remnant forest on a steep and rocky slope. I heard whooping and hollering behind me, and the grinding of tires on gravel, and was glad the mountain bikers were sticking to the fire road on the north side of the ridge.
There’s always at least one hawk working this slope, and today there were three, along with many other birds closer to ground. But finally, I heard tires behind me, and scrambled to find a place to safely get off the trail on this steep slope.
It was a group of three mountain bikers, the first of a convoy of twelve. The leader, the oldest, stopped to placate me, warning about the others to follow and wishing me “peace and tranquillity”. He said they were riding to honor the race which had been cancelled this year – a downhill race where they get a permit to close off one of our most popular trails, and competitors bomb down in full body armor on $10,000 bikes.
The other riders were spread out over a half mile, and from then on I kept having to quickly find a safe place to step off the trail so they could pass. The last group was a duo, and the young female rider lost her balance on a loose rock so I had to wait patiently while she figured out how to get going again.
Riding high on their machines, they were obliviously disrupting all the wildlife I’d been enjoying in my frequent stops. Our natural habitats were just a colorful backdrop for their adrenaline sport.
When I reached the “park”, the shallow natural basin at the end, I stretched out on pine needles in the shade and rested for a full half hour before heading back. The next day, lying on the sofa with an ice pack, I found myself wondering how much longer I can keep doing these punishing marathons!
Eighteen miles is a long hike, even on a good trail, and I was getting pretty sore by the time I reached the shoulder of the peak. That’s an important milestone because it’s all downhill from there.
And by the time I reached the trail crossing four miles from the end, I was limping. I collected some trash left by hikers or bikers during the day, and I finally took a pain pill to get me through the last two miles on the canyon road.
Monday, September 11th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, McKnight, Southwest New Mexico.
This weekend was forecast to feature what I hoped was the last of our seemingly endless Southwest heat wave. Ironically, Sunday, my hiking day, was forecast to reach 90 in town, while highs in the following week were predicted to drop into the 70s.
I’d already done all the high-elevation hikes in our area, except one – the crest hike that requires a two-hour drive and traverses a moonscape burn scar with hundreds of logs across the trail. I was grimly determined to deal with both the drive and the logs, when at the last minute I remembered another crest route – a route I’d never considered because it’s not wilderness, and most of it consists of a road instead of a trail. At this point, even if I didn’t get much hiking in, it would be worth it just to escape the heat.
This route is approached from the west side of the north-south range east of town. I’ve delayed exploring this area until the past six months, because all the hikes must be accessed via long drives up long ridges – “finger” mesas – on rocky roads. After several tries, I’d given up – none of the trails have been cleared in the wake of two mega-wildfires, one in 2013 and one in 2022, that burned almost the entire crest of the range.
At 10,020 feet elevation in the south half of this range, the second-tallest peak hosts an active fire lookout, and I’ve climbed that many times on what is probably the best-maintained trail in our area. But in the north half of the range, there’s actually a forest road that climbs to a cabin less than two miles from the 10,165 foot summit.
It’s almost 18 miles from the highway at 6,200 feet to the cabin at 9,500 feet. I’d driven the lower 9 miles twice – the last mile of it is over sharp ledges of bedrock with a sheer dropoff and is very nerve-wracking. The upper 9 miles is widely reported to be one of the most brutal roads in existence, completely undriveable without high clearance and low-range 4wd. Since I was looking for more hiking and less driving, my plan was to try to drive within 7 or 8 miles of the summit, but I didn’t even know if that would be possible with my vehicle.
Since the road follows the crest of the range and spends about three miles traversing a burn scar up there, I would be exposed for most of the hike. I wasn’t worried about sun, since there would likely be a breeze across the north-south crest, but we were forecast to get clouds in the afternoon, and although I hoped for rain, lightning would be a real concern.
The vertiginous upper road climbs over 2,000 feet in the first six miles, and it turned out to be barely driveable in low-range with my 9 inch ground clearance, as I slowly pushed the little vehicle up a seemingly endless series of sharp bedrock ledges. Including the easy stretches, I averaged about 6 miles per hour.
I did bash the undercarriage pretty good in one spot, but the payoff was the views. Approaching the crest, I was facing the highest points in the range across a wide canyon that had been burned to a moonscape. I was looking for a saddle with a surviving stand of conifers where I could park in the shade, and I finally found one, at the site of a SNOTEL – a snow telemetry site maintained by the National Weather Service.
From the snow telemetry installation, I had about a four-mile walk on the road to the cabin, followed by about two miles on a trail I was sure was unmaintained and overgrown. But first, I was curious about the junction with the northbound crest trail, a trail I’d hiked many times from the south, and tried to reach recently from a canyon that parallels this road, below on my right.
The first thing I noticed was wildflowers – they were probably peaking now at this elevation, helped by the little moisture we’d received in the past two weeks. Then I reached the trail junction. I suddenly realized that although I’d be walking a road, the road here is actually a segment of the crest trail. That made me feel better – I wasn’t choosing to walk the road, it was actually the only route available.
Since the trail junction marks the beginning of the crest, it also marks the crossing to the eastern watershed. This is a huge watershed in which three long creeks cross a broad basin to merge into one at the bottom. The surrounding ridges and slopes are topographically diverse, ranging from cliffs and pinnacles to shallow slopes blanketed by annuals. I’d never seen any of it before so I made slow progress as I stopped to study the landscape opening out below me.
Walking the crest, I hadn’t expected much elevation gain or loss, but this is where I realized it would actually be a rollercoaster. My whole day would be spent ascending and descending hundreds of feet, crossing back and forth between eastern and western watersheds, over and over, up in the sky.
After about two-thirds of a mile with that eastward view, the road crossed to the other side, where I could view that badly burned canyon I’d seen on my way up. The stands of aspen and fir that had been killed in the fire created bands of black and tan on the slopes that alternated with white outcrops of volcanic conglomerate and green regrowth of locust and Gambel oak.
There are always hawks along a crest, and I encountered the first of the day here.
Finally I reached the cabin, and the end of the road, in a small forested basin facing east. I remembered seeing photos of this cabin on InciWeb, wrapped in foil to protect it during both of the big wildfires. Structures like this are where firefighters invest most of their effort.
I could barely discern the trail leaving the cabin for the peak. There was no sign, but there was a vague disturbance in the annual ground cover, heading up in the direction of the ruined outhouse. When I followed that, I noticed a branch veering off into the forest. No one but animals had used this trail in the current growing season – it was almost completely overgrown and blocked repeatedly by deadfall. But it had been used heavily by firefighters last summer, so there was enough tread left under the vegetation that I could read it by going slow.
Before approaching the summit, the trail climbs to a 9,800 foot peak – it’s actually hard to identify the summit from a distance because it’s surrounded by peaks that are only slightly lower. The almost invisible trail first crossed to the eastern slope, then at the top of the lower peak, crossed again into a new watershed that was tributary to the big canyon I’d seen on the drive up. I was crossing so many watersheds it was hard to keep track!
Past the lower peak, the trail traversed a steep slope that had been badly eroded and colonized by thorny locust. Here, I flushed a small hawk, not much more than a foot long, probably a Cooper’s or sharp-shinned. This was the slowest part of my hike, and the hardest to follow. But again, the trail crossed watersheds, and I was facing east again on an even steeper slope, where the trail seemed to be maintained by deer and elk. I’d seen no evidence of humans on this trail, probably not since the summer 2002 wildfire.
The last stretch crossed back to the west, and climbing through dense ferns, entered a young stand of aspens, fir, and spruce. A wide corridor had been cut through these, and a few small peaks rose on my right, but I had no idea if any were the actual summit, so I just kept following the open corridor.
Finally I emerged from the trees, and could see another peak about a quarter mile away across a low saddle. My trail seemed to continue downwards to the east, looking more like an old road. I checked my map, but still wasn’t sure, so I started up the opposing peak, and soon found myself stopped by regrowth and deadfall with no easy way forward. Checking the map again, I became convinced I’d passed the actual summit – it was probably one of those little bumps I’d passed in the forest.
I returned into the corridor through the forest, and eyeballed an easy way up. Sure enough, I soon emerged on a little rocky bump, where a rusty can covered a jar with a record of ascents. I had no interest in that, but just below the bump, a grassy ledge offered a 360 degree view, a view I’d only dreamed about.
Clouds had been forming for the past hour or so, looking like a storm in the north, with wind rising and temperature falling. Now I could see curtains of rain to the north and east. I tried to absorb these views, but was most captivated by the view of the big eastern basin. I became more and more convinced that this was the most beautiful landscape I’d ever found in this area. It was worth walking that long road, just to reach this view!
Returning, I could see rain ahead in the west, and as I emerged from the corridor in the forest, there at 10,000 feet, I was hit by showers blown by a strong wind, and had to dig out my rain poncho.
From the next couple of hours it would rain on and off, with temps in the 60s, occasionally clearing here and there. I’d definitely escaped the heat wave!
After leaving the cabin and rejoining the crest road through the burn scar, I came upon two hawks, soaring together and apart, hovering, diving and briefly grappling mid-air. My views of the landscape were an ever-changing pageant of monsoon weather.
As I left the western watershed and re-entered the eastern for the final segment before the trail junction, it was great to be able to see the southern peak that I’d climbed so many times, from this angle. When descending the back side of that peak I’d been facing this road, but at nine miles it’s just too far to pick out with the naked eye.
It hadn’t been a long hike, nor entailed as much elevation gain as I prefer, but I couldn’t have gone much faster – the unmaintained peak trail made it challenging and slow. The drive up the road had taken two hours, and the hike, with many stops, had taken six-and-a-half. With the two hour drive back home, it turned into a ten-and-a-half hour day.
And the agonizing drive down that road, where I bashed my undercarriage on rocks twice, convinced me that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore. Comparing the way my vehicle drives on rocky roads vs paved highways, I finally realized that the MacPherson struts that make it handle well on pavement, are definitely not designed for off-road use. They have little give, producing a stiff ride, which is just miserable on rocky roads, where I have to drive extra-slow.
This is more pronounced when I see others driving the same roads in more capable vehicles. On this Sunday evening, I was surprised to encounter a young guy driving a pickup with camper shell up the upper part of the road, obviously intending to camp out at the cabin. We met in a rare level clearing with plenty of room to pass, but as he continued, it suddenly dawned on me that if I’d met him at most places on this road I wouldn’t have been able to back up for him without destroying my vehicle. My road clearance is so marginal I need to scope out a precise line to get over these rock ledges, which I wouldn’t be able do in reverse. In some situations I’d be obligated to back up for the other driver, and there are plenty of rednecks around here who would sooner shoot me than give way.
Monday, September 18th, 2023: Grant, Hikes, Pinalenos, Southeast Arizona.
Expecting cooler temperatures even in the lower, hotter mountain ranges across the border in Arizona, I finally enjoyed an abundance of choices for this Sunday’s hike. But when I reviewed the latest trip reports from the range I was missing the most, I was surprised to find that a trail that had stopped me more than four years ago had been cleared last fall, by convicts from the nearby state prison.
This trail climbs a ridge above the spectacular canyon that I finally hiked last December, before our snowpack got too deep. Both hikes lead to the 9,000 foot crest, but the ridge trail is actually longer – my mapping app shows it at six miles one-way, 12 miles out and back, topping out at 9,341 feet, accumulating just over 4,000 feet of elevation gain.
It’s a two-and-a-half hour drive, but I would leave early and gain an hour crossing the state line, so I hoped to start at the same time I usually begin local hikes. Unfortunately, the mountain range is compromised by the prison below and the giant astrophysical observatory that dominates the skyline above. Plus, while most of my favorite hikes end in wilderness, far from any road, this trail’s destination is a campground along the road that follows the crest. But the views, rock formations, habitat, and prolific wildlife more than make up for those deficits.
It’s designated a “Wilderness Study Area”, so the entire range is open to cattle, but they have such lush forage at low elevation that they seldom venture onto the slopes. After our hot, dry summer, the perennial creek was running at an all-time low, so I was able to ford it and drive the deeply eroded forest road, in low range 4wd, all the way to the mouth of the canyon. There, I chased a cow and her calf out from under the only shaded parking spot.
The old road continues over boulders and bedrock about a quarter mile upcanyon to the trailhead. Someone had stolen the trail sign, but as predicted, the trail itself was much easier to follow. I found fresh boot prints in the first hundred yards, but whoever had started out soon turned back. It appeared that I was the first to take on this trail since at least last spring, if not since last fall.
The trail climbs steeply to the ridge top, revealing a view of the big canyon on your right and the crest with its boxlike Large Binocular Telescope. The trail surface alternated between bare gravel, bedrock, and grass, and I was soon sweating and overheating, realizing that almost the entire route is exposed to the sun. Temperatures may have dropped across the region, but I’d picked the hottest trail possible.
Not only was it hot, it was a continuous climb, at a grade that started at 15 percent and got progressively steeper. I was still out of shape relative to previous years, resulting in a lot of stops to catch my breath and mop the sweat off my face. Thankfully the flies mostly left me alone up on that dry ridge.
In one mercifully shady stretch I found a plaque commemorating last year’s convict work party.
This outlying ridge ascends to the crest by means of a series of small peaks, and as the trail reaches the foot of each one, it becomes a seemingly interminable series of switchbacks. These make the climb possible, but they also make it longer!
Past the gate with the convict plaque, the trail got harder to follow – it seems like they focused their work on the lower third of the trail. As usual, I rejoiced when I first encountered ponderosa pines, but the rocky terrain prevented them from establishing enough forest cover to cool me off. The air temperature wasn’t bad – it was the solar heating that was killing me.
As each of the ridge’s intervening peaks loomed in front of me, I was hoping it would be the last one before the crest. But again and again, I was disappointed, and began wondering if I really had it in me to finish the climb.
Finally, I found myself on the last series of switchbacks ascending to the crest. Here I had to climb over or around many deadfall logs and branches – it seemed that the convicts hadn’t made it this far, but someone had stuck little flags in the ground, many years ago, which usually indicates trail work planned but not yet accomplished.
The last switchback summited the crest and entered a burn scar colonized by aspen seedlings and thorny locust. But now, between me and the crest plateau, I faced a long, narrow ridge of rocky ground, like a bridge, broken up into more little peaks. To cross this bridge I would have to ascend and descend each intervening peak. My map showed that after that hot, brutal climb, I still had almost a mile and a half of this to go. I couldn’t believe the entire trail is only six miles long!
The lizard population up here was exploding. It seemed like there were up to three lizards per square yard, including multiple species and sizes, and they were often hanging out together. I’d never seen anything like it.
The hike across the bridge involved even more obstacles and even steeper climbs, but I was determined to finish this damn hike, even if it meant limping back in the dark.
The Forest Service recommends hiking these trails downward from the crest, so I was watching every patch of bare ground for footprints. I still didn’t find any until I reached a fairly level stretch, where intact forest returned, only a quarter mile from the end. Apparently this trail is just too daunting for everyone but me.
A lovely patch of spruce-fir forest awaited me at the end, but that last quarter mile still felt endless. The ascent had taken me more than five hours, and the Forest Service sign at the upper trailhead contradicted the distances shown on my mapping platform. I had my pick of total distances for this hike, ranging from twelve to fifteen miles! My best estimate was thirteen and a half.
Using nothing but my deteriorating body, I’d climbed all the way from arid mesquite scrub at 5,500 feet, to alpine spruce-fir forest at 9,300 feet. Alternatively, you could drive from the highway on the north side of the range to this campground on the crest. It wasn’t wilderness, but it was empty, quiet, and peaceful.
I knew from past experience that the crest of this range is a cool mecca for summer recreationists from Tuscon and Phoenix, but assumed this tiny spot was on a spur road far from the crowds. It was only after I checked the map later that I realized the ranger station had been only a fifteen minute walk away!
It was so pretty, and so cool, up there that I wanted to stay. But the climb had taken so long that I didn’t have much time left to rest. I was dreading the descent – my foot was already hurting and it would only get worse. My knees were complaining too, and I still had an ankle strain left over from a couple weeks ago. Combine a 4,000 foot descent with a steep, rocky trail, and you have a recipe for a lot of pain.
But if you could ignore the telescope above and the prison below, it remained a beautiful landscape, and once the pain pill took effect I was really glad I’d come.
Moving as fast as I could, it took me just over three hours to get back to the vehicle. I’d booked a cheap motel room, but that was well over an hour away. A comedy of errors followed, delaying my dinner until 9 pm, and bedtime until 10.
I’d logged a GPS waypoint at the top of the trail, but when I checked it on the map the next day, the satellite turned out to be off by 200 yards, locating me across a broad drainage on the opposite slope. The error may have been due to forest cover, but could’ve been troubling if I’d been sending an SOS to the wrong location.
Monday, September 25th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It’d been almost exactly a year since a catastrophic flash flood washed out the road to one of my favorite nearby trails. At least I remembered it as one of my faves. The main road up the mesa leads to two trails, and I’d checked this one several times during the past year. As of April 30, the road was still impassable, and since July, the weather had been too hot to even consider this lower-elevation trail.
This Sunday was forecast to be clear and warm – in the low 80s in town. I headed out, and lo and behold, when I reached the turnoff, the “Road Not Passable” sign had been removed.
In fact, this far into a drought, the big creek was completely dry at the crossing.
This trail starts at 5,300 feet and winds up a shallow, rolling basin to the foot of a 7,700 foot mountain, where it switchbacks up over a 6,500 foot saddle and enters a big new watershed lined with white rock pinnacles. Back there, it traverses the forested upper slope of the mountain to a narrow ridge that trends northward like a bridge for a little over a mile, with a spectacular view north across a deep canyon to the crest of the range many miles away.
Then the trail drops into the wild, upstream canyon of the big creek that was dry where I crossed it on the way in, in long traverses and switchbacks, descending over 800 feet to where the creek flows perennially. Thus the attraction of this trail is crossing multiple watersheds, gaining spectacular views, getting way back in the wilderness to a place where you feel really remote, isolated, and fully immersed in wild nature.
With the road recently repaired and our heat wave ending, I turned out to be the first non-wild creature to hit this trail in a very long time – probably in the past year. And the drought meant that I was facing a fairly clear trail with very little overgrowth. But what I’d forgotten is that almost all of this trail is lined with rocks – really hard on my problem foot.
And like last week’s hike, although the air temperature was mild, the sun was damn hot, with not a cloud in the sky and not a hint of a breeze on that initial climb.
Past the saddle, I began to get a little cooling breeze. Having resigned myself to a hike where I spent most of my time concentrating on my footing, I made decent time past the saddle and across the seemingly interminable traverse of the mountain’s back side, reaching the next milestone, the small level “park” lined with tall pines – a rare and always welcome source of shade.
From the park there’s a lot of serious up and down as you head north on the narrow ridge. The latter half of this traverses a burn scar which is popular with wildlife. I spooked a whitetail buck there, but after he first ran uphill away from me, I next spotted him running downhill to a vantage point behind me.
Cliffs abound in this landscape, and cliff swallows zipped past so quickly they were almost gone before I’d noticed them. Then I came upon a dove that simply trundled up the trail a short distance ahead of me, reluctant to fly away.
Leaving the ridge, the descent into the remote canyon cooled me off, despite being mostly through burn scar. My foot was hurting already, but this stretch of trail is relatively rock-free, and I had pain pills for the return.
This is a trail which is not shown accurately on any maps I’ve been able to find. My mapping platform omits most of the switchbacks and reports the out-and-back distance at a little over 13 miles and almost 3,000 feet of elevation gain, but with the switchbacks and new routing, I’ve estimated it at 15 miles and almost 3,500 feet.
The creek is hidden beneath a deciduous canopy in a dense corridor of vegetation, so you hear its wonderful sound before you come upon it. I laid down on a gravel bar beside the water and spent fifteen minutes trying to sort out the trees overhead.
The climb back to the ridge would seem daunting if it didn’t unfold in many distinct sections, with increasingly rewarding views. But my foot was getting worse, so I popped a pill, knowing it wouldn’t take effect for another 45 minutes.
Out in the exposed burn scar of the ridge, I suddenly noticed a small hawk trying to catch a tiny bird. The two of them, hunter and prey, spiraled toward me, only a dozen feet above the hillside, until when they were right overhead the hawk noticed me and backed off. I’d accidentally saved the little bird from being eaten.
I also noticed another whitetail – or maybe the same one.
Past the pine park, it’s mostly downhill, and the rocks on the trail get really bad. Constantly focused on where to put the next foot, I became pretty good at it, but I still rolled my already weak ankle a total of three times, and swore to wrap it in the future.
The worst rocks are on the descent from the saddle to the final basin. It was there that I swore never to hike this trail again. It’s just too damn hard on the foot and too dangerous for the ankle. I suppose young people could do this kind of thing without even noticing it, but it always amazes me that a trail would even be built and maintained across such rocky ground.
On the plus side, throughout the final two-mile trudge down the low basin, quail were constantly exploding out of the brush next to me, over and over, every few minutes. It may have been the same coveys, just moving downhill ahead of me. Never seen anything like it.
I was exhausted after the hour-and-a-half drive home, but while unloading the vehicle I suddenly came upon a chicken – a blonde hen – in my back yard. She circled around me, clucking, then approached tentatively.
I hear a rooster from time to time and remembered my neighbor mentioning somebody a block away who has chickens, so I called next door. Meanwhile, the hen fluttered up onto the tall fence between our houses. My neighbor said it might be the people in the next block, so he walked over to check. It was starting to get dark, and the chicken stayed up on the fence.
The guy down the street arrived, along with my neighbor and his wife. “Is it blonde?” he asked, in a strong accent. I beckoned him over and showed him the chicken. “Yes! There she is! I won’t have to tell my wife we lost her!” He reached and grabbed the hen, cradling her in his arms. By that time, another neighbor had showed up in my driveway, carrying her kitten. My neighborhood has turned into a sort of commune.
