Mystery Spot
Monday, December 5th, 2022: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
By Sunday morning, it’d been raining on and off in town for almost 24 hours, and I assumed the crest of the mountains would be getting even more. The vast majority of trails in our region involve canyon bottoms or major stream crossings, any of which could be flooded. And I was really enjoying listening to the rain outside while staying warm and dry with a roof over my head.
Plus, I was still trying to go easy on my knee, so I needed a trail that didn’t involve long steep climbs. There was really only one option – to try the national trail from the starting point I’d used last week, but in the opposite direction. I was pretty sure it would also be overgrown with cosmos and feature the dreaded volcanic cobbles, but I had no other choice. Really hard to get motivated, but you know me.
On the plus side, it was warmer – in the 40s starting out, expected to reach 60 in town later. But most of the landscape was blanketed by fog.
From the remote westbound highway, the southbound trail winds through a dispersed camping area on a maze of dirt roads. Those roads would be muddy now, so instead of hiking from the highway, I drove through the campground all the way back to where the foot trail started, a little over a mile from the paved highway. This detail would become important later.
This trail starts at around 6,200′, in ponderosa forest at the base of terraced bluffs of volcanic conglomerate which the rain had stained a dark russet. I had studied the topo map months ago and picked out a vague destination about 8 miles in that should yield me about 2,500′ of elevation gain – but gradually, which would be easy on my knee. I would judge how far I’d gone by the time it took – I generally hike about 2 miles per hour including stops.
Several miles beyond that point, this trail would connect with a trail I’d taken last spring, and a little beyond that, it would connect with the trail that provides the longest hike in my repertoire – 18.3 miles out and back. Together, these converging trails form a sort of tripod intersecting on the crest of our local mountain range, so today’s hike would help fill a gap in my local hikes.
It wasn’t raining when I started out, but the thick fog, drifting slowly in and out of canyons and over ridgelines, limited my view to a hundred yards or less, so I had no idea what kind of landscape I was traversing. But the first mile or so climbed up the conglomerate bluffs, and along the way I got to enjoy some of that exposed rock.
This mountain range tops out at 9,000′ and consists of a maze of forested ridges which all look the same from a distance, so it’s normally my least favorite terrain. But the fog completely transformed it. Foliage, fire-killed tree trunks, soil, gravel, and stone were all saturated, so all the colors were darkened, and again I was walking outdoors in an intimate interior space, enclosed by the fog, with little sense of distance or elevation.
Climbing out of the ponderosa forest, I entered the pinyon-juniper-oak woodland and was immersed in a powerful pine fragrance, like turpentine but sweeter. That fragrance remained with me as long as I was in that habitat – I’ve hiked it for 16 years in all conditions but have never experienced anything like this before.
There was plenty of burr-laden cosmos parviflorus beside the trail, but unlike the eastern segment I’d hiked last week, this part of the trail was clear and easy to follow. And amazingly, it was cobble-free, the ground remaining nice and smooth until the later, higher segment became a little rockier. All in all, one of the easiest trails I’ve hiked in this region. I wasn’t pushing myself, but inevitably made good time.
A little over an hour into the hike, I’d reached the ridge top where the trail leveled out, and a light rain began to fall. My boots were already soaked from wet grass – I’d worn my waterproof boots and pants – and now I pulled on my rain poncho. It would rain lightly from then on, until the last mile of my descent at the end of the day.
Around the same time it started raining, I heard a man yelling, down in a canyon hidden by the fog, somewhere west of me. I figured it must be hunters, but there was no road or trail down there, so they must be on foot.
As expected, my walk continued for miles up ridges through low, open woodland – bathed in that amazing fragrance – with intervals across level, wooded, grassy meadows where the trail was flooded. My nose and cheeks itched from catching invisible strands of spider web that spanned the trail between branches at face height. The fog kept me blind to the landscape around me, and except for a couple of short steeper climbs, it became hard to tell whether I was going up or down at any given time. I was yearning to reach the higher-elevation ponderosa forest, just for some variety.
About 2-1/2 hours in, I did reach ponderosa forest, and the kind of pale, lichen-encrusted exposed bedrock I was familiar with on the crest of the range. And the trail began descending steeply into a hollow, which I didn’t remember from the map. I didn’t feel like I’d gone far enough to reach my planned destination, but this descent definitely wasn’t part of the program.
I continued anyway, crossed a little valley with running water and a faint UTV track, and began climbing again. Very strange. This part of the national forest is not designated wilderness, so I felt lucky not to encounter livestock depredations.
Less than a half mile beyond the hollow, I spotted a sign up ahead, and getting closer, a dirt forest road! I checked my watch – I’d only been hiking 3 hours, including lots of stops – how could I possibly be at the road, which I’d assumed was over 10 miles from the trailhead, and connected the three arms of the tripod? I still felt fresh, like I could keep hiking for miles beyond this point.
I noticed an old Forest Service trail sign that claimed I’d hiked 9-1/2 miles from the highway. 9-1/2 miles in 3 hours! That was much faster than my normal average speed, and I’d been taking it easy all the way. I could only assume it was because the trail was in such good condition. Wow! Now I was really excited. Why not continue to the connecting point with the trail I’d hiked last spring, and make it an even 10 miles? 20 miles out and back would be the longest day hike I’d ever done.
The road was muddy and flooded in places as it wound back and forth between the tall ponderosas. I was looking for a fence that ran alongside and intersected with another fence that was perpendicular, less than a half mile east. But I never found it, and eventually the road I was on started descending steeply off the crest. Where was the other trail? Now I was really confused.
So I returned to the trail I’d come up, and began my descent.
About a mile from the road, I heard a single gunshot – it sounded like a .22 rifle, somewhere west of me, where I knew there was no road or trail. Could it be the same hunters I’d heard, 6 miles or more to the north, bushwhacking on a completely different route from me?
Again, in the fog, I noticed that it was sometimes hard to tell if the trail was climbing or descending. I remembered from the map that this trail climbed over 2,000′, but it neither felt like I’d climbed that far in the morning, nor was descending that much now, in the afternoon. Very strange.
Eventually, I reached the final ridge that descended toward the trailhead. But even there, it felt like I was climbing more often than descending. I thought of the Mystery Spot, a tourist attraction in the California mountains designed to disrupt your senses of gravity and perspective. In the fog, this trail was becoming my mystery spot.
The freshness I’d felt at the top had now completely vanished. My feet were sore, my hip was starting to hurt, and I truly felt like this was the longest hike I’d ever done. The trail seemed to traverse in and out of dozens of side canyons on its way to the end of the ridge, all looking the same.
Finally, as I was about to shut down my feelings and switch into survival mode, I emerged into the final landscape of exposed, russet-colored, terraced conglomerate. Here, the fog had lifted enough for a view of several miles across the landscape. I saw a big canyon to the east, and reaching the end of the ridge, I could see north out over the valley of the highway. I was near the end and could stop to enjoy the view.
I also suddenly remembered that I hadn’t taken the trail from the highway – I’d chopped over a mile off the hike by driving through that campground – so I hadn’t actually gone 10 miles, and couldn’t claim this as my longest hike. Damn! Why did it feel so long anyway? Why was I so sore, and so exhausted, if I’d only gone the kind of distance I’ve been routinely covering for years now, but with even less elevation gain than usual?
It got even worse when I arrived home and checked the maps. My mapping platform contradicted the Forest Service sign I’d found, showing that the distance from highway to forest road is only 8 miles, not the 9-1/2 miles claimed by the old sign. And most discouraging, the forest road I’d reached, and continued east on to find the other trail, was not the road I thought it was. It was several miles short of the road that would “connect the tripod” and close the gap between the three trails.
All in all, instead of hiking 20 miles in a day, I’d hiked less than 14 miles, and only felt like I’d hiked 20. And the elevation gain was less than I’d expected, too. Clearly not a day for the numbers, but on the plus side, I now know the trail’s in good shape, and next year, when the days grow longer, maybe I can return and do the whole thing.
