A Day in the Clouds
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.
