Sunburn Ridge
Monday, July 31st, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Nabours, Southwest New Mexico.
For the past week, our forecast had predicted the afternoon high to dip below 90, beginning this weekend. So I was looking forward to more hiking options – I wouldn’t be limited to the now-mostly-impassable trails above 9,000 feet.
But the ranges over in Arizona would still be too hot, and as I studied my list, I realized the remaining local trails were either too exposed or spent most of their time at elevations where temps could still exceed 90. I was about to give up when, a half hour before departure time, I remembered the trail I’d tried to reach a few months ago, only to be turned back by a road flooded with snowmelt. Snowmelt! Those were the days.
I’d forgotten to add this trail to my list. It climbs out of a narrow canyon to a ridge that it follows to the 9,000 foot crest, where after five and a half miles it connects with a two-and-a-half mile southbound trail to the 9,800 foot peak I pass on one of my old favorite hikes. Of course, it crosses the burn scar of our 2012 mega-wildfire, but the first three miles had been cleared last fall, and the rest was scheduled to be cleared this fall. So maybe there were enough clues left for me to be able to puzzle out. If I could reach that southern peak – unlikely in this heat – it would be a 16 mile round-trip with 5,700 feet of elevation gain.
Deciding at the last minute, I got a late start. And amazingly, although it was Sunday, a road crew was busy at the halfway point on the highway north, delaying me another fifteen minutes. I had plenty of time to recall how this has long had one of the best road surfaces in our region. But the creek crossing, a raging flood a few months ago, was now bone dry. The trailhead logbook had been removed, but a rocky section of the road requires high clearance so I figured this trail sees few visitors.
Choosing this trail had involved some denial and wishful thinking. The trailhead lies at 5,100 feet, almost a thousand feet lower than my home, so today’s high was likely to reach 95 there. And most of the climb up the long ridge would be exposed, through scrub and open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland. It’s a continuous climb from the trailhead, and at an average 14 percent grade, it would be the steepest trail I know of anywhere. I’ve done steeper bushwhacks, but trails are generally routed with gentler grades. I was surprised, but also pleased – this is the kind of trail I like, and the steeper the ascent, the more rewarding the descent.
The trail begins by climbing two hundred vertical feet out of the narrow canyon to the top of the ridge, which is near the lower edge of a dissected alluvial bench. This bench forms a broad, gently sloping skirt below the western wall of the range. Parallel streams dissect it, either into flat-topped mesas or long, narrow ridges like this one.
The sky was clear, the air was still, I was totally exposed and sweating like a pig as I labored upwards, wondering when I would either get too hot and turn back, or reach the shade of a ponderosa forest above 7,000 feet. The ridgeline consists of a series of little peaks or humps, each of which the trail climbed over at between 20 and 30 percent grades. And from these, the 9,000 foot peaks and ridges above beckoned.
Reading the trail, I soon confirmed no one else had been up this trail besides cattle, probably not since the trail work last September. The cattle sign was really old, but the trail was in great shape, and while suffering in the heat, I looked forward to an easy descent later.
Eventually I left the totally exposed scrub zone behind and began passing between pinyon pines and junipers where I could step off occasionally into some momentary shade. Radiant heat was my nemesis – it felt like the low 90s on the exposed trail, and the mid-70s when I stepped into the shade. Finally I surmounted the steepest grade yet, traversing a prominent hill, and came to a saddle with a big cairn.
Past the saddle was another steep hill, and traversing the north slope of that I encountered my first ponderosa pines. But then the cleared trail ended at a shallow slope covered with bunchgrass and strewn with charred deadfall.
After some scouting, I found some pink ribbons that had been hidden by charred snags falling after last year’s trail work, and eventually picked up a faint trail on the high side of the clearing. The trail crew had continued up the ridge, cutting some brush but leaving the deadfall, and soon I came to oak thickets where the old tread had been completely obliterated by the erosion of post-fire sheet flows.
Miraculously, I was still able to find an occasional pink ribbon that beckoned me forward. Most of these ribbons were in the midst of thickets, so you couldn’t see them until you pushed your way in. Some of them led to impenetrable blowdown that I had to back out and circumvent.
Finally I reached the last ribbon. Beyond it was what looked like the ghost of the old trail, but it was completely blocked by low shrubs and deadfall for as far as I could see.
I turned back, descending a hundred yards or so through the maze of scrub oak. It was still early, storm clouds were forming over the crest and providing occasional shade, along with breezes, that cooled me off. I still had plenty of energy and wanted to keep going, but the slopes above were getting steeper and rockier, and without a route, I would soon be lost and blocked by a rock wall or boulder pile.
I kept checking the topo maps I’d brought, but the landscape I could see from this thicket seemed nothing like the topography shown on the maps. I began to suspect the trail workers had deviated from the original route.
There was an opening in the maze that led south over the ridge. I explored that for a couple hundred yards, but was no wiser for it. I turned back and hiked back up to the last ribbon. I’d pushed through thickets before, so I chastised myself and began forcing my way up the trace that I thought might be the old trail. After climbing over a bunch of deadfall, I reached a point where the “trail” became a deeply eroded drainage, ending in a wall of shrubs that was just too dense for me.
So I gave up and, with difficulty, found my way back down through the maze. But I wasn’t happy, and when I reached the point at the lower edge of the oak thicket where the trail crew had stopped clearing brush, I stopped again and started feeling guilty about not trying harder.
So for a second time, I turned back, re-climbing the two hundred vertical feet and fighting my way back through that quarter mile of maze. Along the way, I picked up bits of pink ribbon I found lying on the ground, so I could add my own ribbons past the last ones tied by the trail crew, to guide my return.
I’d seen quite a few birds, but nothing unusual. Flocks of ravens were circling, vultures rocked on thermals, and finally I saw a big raptor hunting among the peaks far above. When a hawk appeared to give the bigger bird scale, I realized it had to be an eagle. It hunted up there for quite a while but was too far for a picture.
This time, I climbed a deeply eroded slope crisscrossed by deadfall, above the thicket that blocked the gully where I’d stopped before. I climbed to the base of the steep slope above. I saw two peaks above me, where my map showed a level ridge. They looked to be at least a thousand feet higher, and I assumed one was the named peak on the map. The slope ahead of me looked impassable, and I had no idea where the old route went, or if I was even close to it. This was as far as I would get.
On the way down, I untied my ribbons so as not to mislead anyone. I became convinced the trail crew had deviated and was hacking a new route up this ridge, one which was likely doomed. I’d captured some GPS waypoints with my messaging device and at home, would compare them with the trail shown on the maps to see how far off they’d gone. I planned to notify USFS as well as the equestrian trail crew.
But in the meantime, the clouds were dispersing and a fierce heat was radiating off the trail onto my face. I figured the ground, which was gravel and hard-packed dirt, had stored and accumulated heat throughout this record heat wave. It was like walking across the crust of an active lava flow, so I descended the steep, treacherous surface as fast as was safe. My only consolation was the broad vista ahead, from the valley 3,000 feet below me to the series of blue mountain ranges on the far side, ending on the horizon at the barely visible Mogollon Rim.
Finally I reached a point where I could turn around and get a view of the crest I’d been climbing toward. Now I saw that the landmark peak and most of the crest had been hidden from me when I was in that oak maze. And when I got home and checked my GPS waypoints, I learned I’d covered much less ground than expected – 7 miles in 6-1/2 hours. I’d been on the right trail until that last pink ribbon – from there, the trail turns 90 degrees left and begins winding its way up toward the hidden peak, far north of where I’d gone. I’d gotten stuck below slopes that hid the upper landscape, so there was no way I could’ve found a route on my own, let alone reconnecting with the old trail.
In the canyon bottom, even though I’d parked it facing west with the reflective sunshade over the windshield, my vehicle was like a pizza oven. I opened all the doors and left the AC on high for a while, but even so the sweat was pouring off me as I drove out to the highway.
It was after 5 on a Sunday, but the road crew was still at work, resurfacing a highway that didn’t need it. The national bureaucracy and infrastructure most of us believe we need is actually a juggernaut of habitat destruction and waste. But people cling to the evil they know, imagining the only alternative is chaos and suffering.
