When 90 Degrees Is Cool
Monday, July 24th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Our daily high temperature was forecast to drop from 98 to 90 this weekend – a significant cool-down from the past three weeks. But the humidity remained high, and I still needed high elevations and shade for my Sunday hike.
And after last Sunday’s routefinding and bushwhacking, I wanted an easy trail. The mountains in Arizona were still too hot, so there was really no choice – I had to do the crest hike near town that I’d already done only two months ago.
There’d been a brief storm yesterday, the canyon was dripping with dew, and the flies were out in force. I was sweating heavily from the humidity even before the air warmed up. I found lots of tracks from yesterday on the canyon bottom stretch of this popular trail, but as usual they dropped off in the first couple of miles before the climb to the crest. The only tracks that preceded me on the climb were from a mountain bike sometime in the past weeks.
I wound my way up through the mixed-conifer forest on the south side of the 9,000 foot peak, and just below the crest noticed an older couple sitting in the shade fifteen or twenty feet above the trail. We exchanged pleasantries about the cooler weather and the beautiful day, and I pointed out we were lucky the wildfire that cleared forest from the north side had left this side intact.
The woman immediately launched into a lecture about fire suppression and the importance of fire in the ecosystem. I smiled, letting her finish, then I said that for years, my hikes in this and other national forests had been amateur studies in fire ecology. I said one thing I’d learned is that hiking trails like this are unsustainable in wildfire habitat. The man said “Yeah, they’re actually abandoning a lot of trails!”
“Yep, habitat will just have to recover without us,” I added.
“And that’s a good thing!” the woman maintained, sternly and emphatically. “Nature is better without humans!”
I smiled again. Here they were enjoying a day in nature, and she was resenting it.
I asked them where they’d hiked from. Like others I’ve met recently here, they’d driven all the way up the fire lookout road to the crest, and hiked less than a mile to this spot. They’d actually spent the night there on the road, battered by yesterday’s storm, and would drive the twenty miles back to town today.
The man asked me where I was hiking from, and after I’d told him said “That’s a big hike! How far do you go from here?”
I told him about the shallow basin with old-growth conifers and a grassy meadow three miles farther out the crest. “Wow!” he said.
“Yeah, eighteen miles out and back, but on an easy trail, which is what I need at this point.” I told them about the bushwhack I’d done last week, when it took me seven hours to cover seven miles. I recommended hikes over in Arizona where trails were better maintained, but got the impression they were only interested in van camping and short walks near town.
The remaining three miles went smoothly, but I was hot, sweaty, and plagued by flies even on the crest. Such a relief to reach the shallow basin and collapse on a bed of pine needles in the shade.
Flowers were more subdued here than on previous hikes – many had already gone to fruit. But the pollinators were still busy. I was really feeling the heat on the way back, stopping to drink my still-cold water in every patch of shade.
The big milestone on the return is the saddle below the peak. At that point you’ve done twelve miles, and what remains is all downhill. I was wearing my best boots and my feet were doing better than on other recent hikes. And bigger clouds were forming, so I had intervals of darkness and cooler air in addition to the shade of the forest. The flies continued, worse in some parts of the forest than others, seemingly without rhyme or reason. But my head net allows me to ignore them.
On the final descent into the canyon I began seeing tracks of people who’d walked a few miles in while I was hiking on the crest. My left heel was acting up. I stopped to stretch, but was still limping intermittently on the last two miles in the canyon bottom, where I found more footprints and hoofprints of horses.
And when I got home, I discovered my whole lower body was covered with a rash that burned like fire in some places. So ironic that what keeps my heart, lungs, and mind healthy is causing skin problems, at the same time as trails become less accessible.
