Wilderness Access, but at What Price?
Monday, May 22nd, 2023: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Again I had trouble choosing a Sunday hike – my first choice, on the east side, turned out to still be inaccessible due to road closure. Then I drove west planning to try an alternate route to another trail that had been inaccessible since last fall, but at the last minute decided that was too risky, too. So I continued to the turnoff for a trail that had been wiped out last September by a big flood, because I’d seen some notes online that indicated someone had been using it recently – maybe they’d cleared a path through the damage.
This is one of those few trails leading to the crest of the range that are precious to me. So imagine my delight when I found that someone had cleared a path and laid down good tread through last year’s flood damage!
It had rained yesterday, the temperature was in the low 70s, and as soon as I reached the canyon bottom a rich cocktail of plant perfumes hit my nostrils. Spring flowers were out, and my boots and pants were soon soaked with dew.
But after I reached the abandoned cabin, the trail work ended. Distances on this trail are confounding. The cabin doesn’t show up on any maps – I’ve always assumed it’s two miles in from the trailhead. I’ve hiked this trail often enough that I was easily able to find my route through flood debris, blowdown, and overgrowth beyond the cabin, but two things soon became obvious: big floods like this renew habitat, and the equestrian trail crew had been here, because the trail was now lined with invasive dandelions.
Despite the online notes, and invasives spread by horses, I found no tracks anywhere. It looked like I was on virgin trail, especially as I began climbing the traverse to the first saddle. Birdsong surrounded me everywhere, and the traverse was more choked than ever by scrub oak, manzanita, and the thorny shrub I have yet to identify. I literally had to force my way through dense thickets in addition to climbing over occasional blowdown, all the way up to the saddle. Most hikers would’ve simply turned back, assuming the trail no longer exists, but I’ve gotten used to conditions like this and can follow even the most subtle indicators of a route.
Storm clouds had started peeking over the crest even before I left the canyon bottom, and now towered over the ridge to the east.
It took me over three hours from the trailhead to reach the saddle, which is shown on maps as a distance of less than four miles. This never fails to amaze me, because I’m good at estimating distances, and this part of the trail always feels closer to six miles. And I hadn’t been moving slow – the trail in the canyon had felt easier than usual to follow.
Past the saddle, the trail climbs steeply in a series of switchbacks, which are not shown on any maps. A hiker who had left a recent note online said the trail simply stops here, but of course I know the route well and had no problem continuing. But the shrubby overgrowth was so bad on this next ascent that I fell once, tripping over a low branch that had been hidden by the plants I was pushing through.
Beyond the switchback, there’s a traverse that rounds the base of a white comglomerate cliff and enters the head of the main drainage, revealing the arc formed above by the crest. As before, there were no human tracks anywhere, but elk love this area and are the only thing maintaining tread at this point. I suddenly realized that I so seldom find footprints on these wilderness trails because backpackers are the only people who penetrate as deeply as I do, and backpackers in this part of the range are few and far between.
The trail traverses toward a second set of switchbacks that lead to a second saddle. But these switchbacks are faint and easily confused with numerous game trails left by elk, so I usually end up finding different routes going up vs. coming back down. At the saddle, the little cairn I’d made a couple of years ago was still waiting for me.
Past the second saddle, there are only faint, occasional traces of a trail, but again, I know the route well. After entering intact forest, it climbs in several switchbacks – also omitted from the maps – and passes an old junction before beginning another long traverse toward the crest.
This traverse looks exactly like a game trail. If you can follow it, it leads across a series of narrow talus falls, through thickets of thorny locust, to more switchbacks that climb the back side of a sharp rock outcrop. The air was muggy and I’d been getting pretty hot climbing thousands of feet, but as I continued up this traverse the clouds had been spreading, it had been getting darker, and a cold wind had dropped the temperature to the 50s.
Stopping before a switchback that’s blocked by deadfall, I noticed a tick on my sleeve, and after brushing that one off, saw one climbing my pant leg.
It’d been a hard climb and I was really beat. And my time was running short, so I stopped at the top of the switchbacks, next to the upper part of the rock outcrop, instead of continuing a couple hundred feet higher to the ghost grove of burned aspens below the crestline, as before. I figured I’d gone almost seven miles and climbed 4,000′, although the map would show less than six miles and 3,600 feet.
On the way down, the leg cramps began, and continued for the next three miles. I always get leg cramps on this descent, and this is the only hike where I get them – despite other hikes being much longer and harder. I drink plenty of water, with added electrolytes, and stretch regularly, but it makes no difference. Something about this hike just triggers cramps.
I’d only felt one tiny raindrop, and now the clouds were moving off and the air was quickly warming. When I reached the first saddle, I stopped to do a complete series of lower-body stretches, and drank a bunch more water.
Despite all the precautions, I still fought cramps all the way to the canyon bottom. And when I reached the bottom and began seeing dandelions again, I slipped and fell a second time, at a debris-choked creek crossing, and thought more about trails, condition and maintenance, and the larger issue of wilderness access.
Although I usually give up when confronted with hundreds of fallen logs per mile, I figured I’d climbed over at least a hundred today, spread out over a distance of six or seven miles. And I’ve long been perfectly content with trails that are faint or overgrown by thickets. But the vast majority of hikers seem to expect trails that are clear and meticulously maintained – probably because most of their hiking occurs in crowded urban parks and popular national parks, where the effort and cost of trail maintenance is justified by the level of traffic.
I only recently had the revelation that trails themselves, as we know them, are a product of wildfire suppression. The trail networks in our national forests and parks would never have been sustainable before, in natural wildfire regimes, which regularly rearrange the landscape.
But very few hikers, even backpackers, will attempt to penetrate wilderness areas without trails. So the whole idea of “wilderness access” ultimately depends, to some degree, on wildfire suppression.
And the demand for wilderness access has led, since COVID, to some troubling trends in my region. Just over the border in Arizona, a coalition of urban mountain bikers has been granted a permit by the Forest Service to do all trail maintenance, and the mountain bikers have accompanied their work by a slick online propaganda campaign, in which they conceal or downplay their agenda as bikers, promoting their selfless work “for the benefit of all trail users”.
Equestrians are doing the same thing in my local forest. They got an exclusive permit to do trail work, and they’ve established a slick, authoritative website on trail conditions which likewise hides their agenda as equestrians, claiming to be selflessly improving trails “for the benefit of all trail users”.
It’s clear to me that both these special-interest groups are working proactively and effectively to assure themselves access to public lands. Equestrians know they’re accused of damaging trails and spreading invasive plants, and afraid of losing access, they’re positioning themselves so nobody can exclude them from wilderness.
Likewise, mountain bikers have been fighting for decades to get access to wilderness, and by making themselves indispensable to all trail users, they may finally succeed.
My question is, does anybody actually deserve good trails, and “access to wilderness”, at the cost of habitat degradation?
