Five Fires in One Mile
Sunday, March 23rd, 2025: Hikes, Nature, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico, Wildfire.
After a week’s hiatus, here’s a short Dispatch from a short hike (still rehabbing knee).
Pics are dull under a cloudy sky, but after the hike I added up all the wildfire scars seen today and realized it’s actually kinda interesting.
The hike begins at 7,200 feet elevation, at the eastern foot of a long east-west ridge, in the narrow, pine-forested canyon of a seasonal creek. It traverses through pleasant, open ponderosa forest thinned by a 2020 fire that started at the west end of the ridge and mainly burned on the crest and the north slope – but surprisingly sneaked around to burn at low intensity at the southeast end.
The trail climbs the east end of the ridge toward an isolated outcrop of striking, bulbous white rock, where you next enter a gentle, exposed slope lined with ferns, locust, and scrub oak that is the small scar of a much older high-intensity wildfire that killed all the pines in this spot. That wildfire opened up dramatic views to east and south.
Climbing to the north side of a rocky peak, the trail briefly re-enters intact forest, which is where I turned back today, at a little over 8,100 feet elevation. But through the trees, I could see west toward the high-intensity burn scar of the 2020 fire. Temps were in the 60s today, but I found patches of snow in shaded spots from 7,000 feet upwards.
Turning back and emerging from the forest, I could see south across the canyon toward the apocalyptic moonscape left by a 2014 fire, and west to the Black Range, devastated by high-intensity mega-wildfires in 2013 and 2022. I’ve hiked all these burn scars extensively.
