Smoke Alarm
Monday, April 10th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
It looked like spring was finally here. Still hoping to regain more mileage and elevation on my Sunday hikes, I decided to try an area in the high mountain range east of here, a range that had been off limits for months due to heavy snow.
I’d always assumed the trails on the west side of the range could only be reached after long, slow drives on poorly maintained dirt roads. One of those roads actually reaches the crest, at 9,500 feet with the highest peak only a mile and a half farther – more driving and less hiking is definitely not what I need.
But further map research over the winter had revealed a couple of high-elevation trails that should be little more than an hour’s drive from home. They topped out over 9,000 feet, so I expected some snow, but one had mostly southern exposure, which should be bare by now.
So I headed over there. And ironically, just like last week, I’d ignored the fact that the access road starts by crossing a river, which of course was in flood now.
So there I was, 45 minutes from town, blocked and in search of a second option. I’d previously hiked three trails in the vicinity and had no desire to repeat them. But a little over three miles north there was another dirt road I’d been curious about for a long time. It was known to be challenging to drive and would ultimately yield more driving time and less hiking time in my day. But it didn’t cross a river, and it featured several trailheads – including the CDT, which should be in better shape than the now-brutal Forest Service trails.
The road is historic and fairly legendary. Built originally by the military in the 1870s, it was improved in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and during the same period, it became the narrow corridor between our two huge wilderness areas.
The first stretch runs up a mesa toward the distant crest and goes quickly. The first trailhead was well-marked, and I set out on a surface pockmarked by hooves. Within a half mile I came to a side drainage, with a view toward the river canyon, downstream to the right. And I saw smoke, drifting through the pinyon and juniper.
As I stood watching, the smoke moved off and dispersed. I followed the trail around the head of the drainage and came to a junction where a branch trail went down toward the river. I saw another cloud of smoke drifting just below the canopy. Damn! This is the dry, windy season when most of our wildfires start – had I avoided a flood only to be turned back by a forest fire?
Today’s air was perfectly still, the sky was mostly clear, and we hadn’t had any storms for weeks. But the last couple of days had been cloudy in town – maybe there’d been dry lightning over here?
There were isolated remnants of a burn scattered around me. They looked recent but not fresh. This was on the edge of last year’s mega-wildfire. I watched carefully and couldn’t see an origin for the smoke, so I headed down the branch trail. After about a hundred yards I saw a meadow off to my right in the bottom of the drainage and made my way over there for a better view. Again, isolated charred logs and patches of ash-covered dirt, and another little cloud of smoke drifting through the trees. I touched a charred log – it was warm, but it was in the sun. I hadn’t smelled smoke yet at any point.
I decided to return to the main trail and keep going, while remaining vigilant. Maybe I’d get a better view into the river canyon, if that was the source of the smoke.
After climbing a steep, rocky slope, I reached a sort of grassy plateau dotted with junipers, and suddenly noticed another wisp of smoke drifting through the crown of a low tree. What the hell?
In the distance I could see what appeared to be the edge of a precipice, so I headed over and found myself atop the rimrock of the river canyon. But there was no smoke anywhere to be seen. So I returned to the main trail and climbed still higher.
Eventually I had a view back over my approach. And the first thing I saw was a cloud of smoke which appeared to lie in the side drainage I’d first encountered. There was an active fire, burning toward my route back!
I took off running down the trail. But with 4 liters of water in my pack for warmer weather, I couldn’t really run on the rocky stretches without risking a broken ankle. My heart was pounding, even when not running. If the trail was on fire, I’d have to try to bushwhack around it. Or reverse and go the long way around, connecting with other trails to reach the road much farther north, fifteen miles or more. Meanwhile, my vehicle might be destroyed by the fire.
I was exhausted when I reached the side drainage – and there was no sign of smoke. I began to wonder if maybe the “smoke” I’d seen had actually been dust raised by the passage of a vehicle on the road, a mile farther away. In any event, I had no interest in retracing my steps after that desperate run downhill.
The next trails were about 7 miles north, past the gnarliest part of the old road. It climbs in hairpin twists up a tall ridge, then winds down in more hairpins into a dark, narrow, rocky canyon, where it basically turns into a path up a debris flow, crossing and recrossing a network of flowing creeks, where my vehicle slowly rocked over small boulders, humps and ruts, averaging less than five miles per hour.
Finally the road left the creek and climbed through more hairpins over another high ridge, and I emerged in the north country, with a long view north and the main crossing point of the CDT. I hadn’t really studied the topography of any of these trails that trended eastward toward the crest of the range – starting from trailheads a little below 8,000 feet, I just figured they would go up over ridges and down into drainages, while gradually rising toward the crest. I knew I was about 12 miles from the crest and wouldn’t reach it in the time I had left – I was just exploring, in preparation for a better-planned return.
As I’d expected, this part of the CDT was in better shape than Forest Service trails – it’s maintained annually whereas a few forest trails are cleared once or twice a decade, and most are simply abandoned. But I couldn’t find any recent tracks, and heavy growth from last summer’s monsoon meant that tread was nonexistant in many places. I had to imagine a path forward much of the time, but I’m getting pretty good at that!
The first milestone shown on my map was called “Rocky Point”, which I was hoping would offer a vista across the landscape. But I hadn’t checked to see how far it was, and the trail just kept climbing, and climbing. This area had burned patchily, and I could sometimes see north between the trees, but that wasn’t very interesting. Finally I spotted a peak with talus slopes ahead – maybe that was it? But the trail turned, and climbed around its flank, where I finally got some longer views west across country I already knew well.
Past the talus peak, the trail climbed toward outcrops I figured had to be Rocky Point. It turned out to just be a slope dotted with outcrops. I could see a much taller peak in the distance, with a trail traversing across it. After making my through the rock outcrops and across a saddle, I found myself on that trail. I was glad to be gaining some good elevation. I knew this trail would eventually connect with the one I’d attempted earlier, but I didn’t know how far I would get in the time I had.
The trail eventually reached its high point, a little below 8,800 feet, crossing another saddle into a shaded north slope where some patches of snow remained. There, the trail condition deteriorated farther – but I’d been noticing faint bootprints and finally confirmed that one medium-sized person had been here before me, maybe as long ago as last fall, before the snows. That’s another thing about the CDT – despite all the effort put into maintaining it, it tends to see little use outside the window of late-April to early-May, when most through-hikers start north.
Even harder to follow now, the trail began to gradually descend, across saddle after saddle, until in a shallow drainage, I came upon the junction with the other trail. Nothing spectacular, but my time was up.
As soon as I turned around and started back, I discovered that the downhill run I’d done after that early-morning smoke scare had damaged my left knee. It was like having a knife in my knee, so I now only had one good leg to hike about 5 miles downhill on.
Despite the excruciating pain, this had been a beautiful day and a pretty nice trail. I wish it had better views of the crest to the east – all I had was narrow glimpses through surviving stands of conifers. But the west flanks had been cleared in past wildfires, and were so steep that the traverses were impressively dizzying.
Another thing that impressed me was the past trail work. In level spots this trail had often been outlined with rock berms, and on traverses and switchbacks it had been built up with retaining walls that must have taken many days to construct, sometimes using rocks weighing over 200 pounds.
Still, the drive is a little too far, and the accumulated elevation gain turns out to be too modest, to encourage a return visit.
But back home, studying my photos, I realized something I should’ve guessed on the trail, something I learned when I first moved here, and had since forgotten. Tolkien’s ents aside, we think of trees as passive and immobile. But junipers can forcibly eject their pollen in explosive clouds. The “smoke” I saw on that first trail was actually juniper pollen. And the smoke I saw lying in that drainage had to have been dust from a vehicle on the road. That knee damage turned out to be pointless.
