Pollen Peak
Sunday, April 13th, 2025: Blue Range, Hikes, Southwest New Mexico.
The vast wilderness area north of my hometown encompasses canyons and mountains that rise to a nearly 11,000 foot crest in the west. That’s where most of my all-day wilderness hikes have taken place, accessed via the highway that leads west out of town and then north past the wall of mountains rising on your right.
But I’ve become more and more curious about the lower mountains that rise to the left of that highway, along our border with Arizona. Most of them lack wilderness protection and are grazed by cattle from bottom to top. But they do host an old network of unmaintained trails, and the area is so far from cities that these trails are seldom used by humans.
There’s one small mountain group, at the center of a broad network of intersecting trails, that I’ve been especially curious about because although it’s easy to find on the map, I’ve never been able to identify it from the highway, and it’s really hard to get to. First you have to ford a river, then you need to drive almost 15 miles uphill on increasingly bad ranch roads. The overall distance from town is less than 80 miles, but I figured it would take at least 2-1/2 hours one-way – more than I can justify for an all-day hike.
But now that I’m doing short hikes, it suddenly seemed doable.
In this severe drought, the river was dry, so that was no problem. The main ranch road climbed to a mesa, where immediately to my right appeared a spectacular canyon with sheer volcanic walls.
A little farther upstream, the road crossed the dry wash above the canyon and climbed to a higher mesa, from which I could see the ranch house in the valley to my left. And I could finally see the mountains I was heading for: a higher conical peak at left and a lower rounded peak at right, connected by a low ridge.
The road was graded all the way to the Arizona border, where I found a crude gate. On the other side the road was just a trail over volcanic rocks. I opened the gate and waited for several cows to usher their new calves out of my way.
The road past the gate turned out to be the rockiest I’ve ever driven. No way would I have been able to drive it before my recent suspension lift. Mile after mile, it just kept getting worse: big, sharp, loose volcanic rocks, with chunks of bedrock sticking up a foot high in places. My maximum ground clearance is now a little over 11 inches, so I had to pick my lines carefully. I couldn’t go more than 5 miles per hour in most stretches, and I often had to slow to walking pace.
The suspension upgrade hasn’t improved the ride quality at all, which is kind of what I expected. The farther I crawled over these rocks the less sense it made to drive rather than walk – but the trailhead was still miles away, and I wanted to at least reach the lower of the two peaks, which would be over a mile from the trailhead.
When I figured I was a half mile from the trailhead, I found a place to pull off the road. That turned out to be fortunate, because beyond here, the track got even worse, climbing at a perilous grade on even bigger loose rocks, and there were no more places to turn around before the end.
I’d been expecting a hot day, but it turned out to be very windy. It was hard walking on those loose, sharp rocks, and the track got continuously steeper, until it topped out on a shoulder of the rounded mountain, with the trailhead just ahead.
Almost as soon as I started up the trail, I had one of the worst allergy attacks I’ve ever had. I’d packed Zyrtec that morning, but foolishly left it in the Sidekick, which was now a half hour back down that hill of loose rock. So for the next couple of hours, I used up the bandannas I carry in my pack, sneezing constantly, so violently I had to stop walking to hold my balance, my nasal membranes burning, a mucus factory working overtime.
At the same time, clouds were moving over and the wind was increasing, so I had to pull on my windbreaker and cinch my hat down tightly.
Along the way, I distracted myself by examining the spectacular views north, and as I crested the first peak, northwest. The top had burned patchily in past fires, but still hosted tall ponderosas, and eventually I got a narrow view of the taller, pointed peak a mile south. That’s where I stopped to turn back, figuring I’d gone at least a couple miles.
On the way back, despite my constant, violent sneezing, I managed to clamber off-trail several times to shoot panoramic photos over the low country between here and the higher mountains to the north. All that wild country was beckoning me, and hopefully I’ll be able to hike it someday.
Past the trailhead, I began picking my way back down that steep slope of loose rock, and immediately realized it was too dangerous to ever drive in my vehicle. Regardless of ground clearance, if I lost traction and slipped, I was bound to damage something underneath on either a loose rock or a sharp outcrop of bedrock. I don’t want to think about how long it would take to get a tow out here – I might have to pay Matt’s Off-Road Recovery to drive over from southwest Utah, and I’m not confident that even Matt could make it up this road.
But after reaching the Sidekick and bouncing back down the road at little more than walking pace, I began to get better and better views east toward our high mountains. I’d taken a Zyrtec and a pain pill – usually very effective at drying my membranes.
I kept wondering what was triggering my allergy. Both oaks and pines can bloom in spring, and both were all around, stirred up by the fierce wind. I’d had a bad attack in town the other day, but nothing like this.
At home, I had to take a second Zyrtec – not usually recommended – and a second pain pill, but despite running my air purifier on high and flushing my sinuses with the neti pot, I had yet another bad attack within a couple hours. Can’t remember anything like this before!
