Tracking Bigfoot
Monday, February 9th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, Sawyers, Southwest New Mexico.
My new physical therapist, trying to treat my right knee, gave me a new exercise that instead, triggered pain in my left foot. The left foot condition was diagnosed 9 years ago by my San Francisco foot doctor, a national authority on biomechanics, and the nonsurgical treatment required 18 months of twice daily ultrasound. Since then, I’ve been able to control two or three minor flareups with something called contrast bathing, which is even more inconvenient than the ultrasound.
So for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing both the twice daily contrast bathing for the left foot, and three times daily icing on my right inner ankle bone. But on Sunday morning, getting dressed for another hike, I discovered that as soon as I put my boot on, the ankle bone hurts just as much as before.
I spent another half hour experimenting with padding. Finally, in desperation, I tried attaching one of the “beveled” metatarsal pads I use for the left foot, just below the ankle bone. And miraculously, that worked – apparently it’s the lower edge of the ankle bone that’s suddenly become a pressure point, and the pad holds the boot lining away and absorbs most of the pressure.
Today’s hike would be one that’s been on my list for months – just the right distance and elevation gain. I’ve been avoiding it because the drive is dangerous, the habitat is almost exclusively burn scar, and the last time I tried it I gave up because it was overgrown with thorny locust.
But that was years ago, and I figured by now, it would’ve either been cleared or seen enough traffic to beat back the thorns.
The sky was mostly clear, and the high in town was forecast to reach the mid-60s. So despite the high elevation – this hike climbs a peak, from 8,200 to 9,700 feet – I expected most of the snow we’d had weeks ago to be melted by now, especially in the exposed ground of a burn scar. I carried my gaiters and trekking poles but didn’t expect much trouble.
Sadly, I was wrong. Like many trails in the Southwest, this is routed mostly on north and east slopes to reduce solar heating, and most of the trail was snow-covered, up to 16 inches deep. And making it much worse, someone or something had walked the trail shortly after the last big storm, punching deep holes at intervals longer than my own footsteps. And adding insult to that injury, the snow had then melted and frozen repeatedly. Each step I took would either land on rigid snow, or snow that would compress a few inches, or snow that would collapse a foot or more, and there was no way to anticipate without taking the step. In the process, my foot might sink directly down, or slide forwards, backwards, or sideways, and sometimes end up tilted, throwing me further off balance.
For the first few hundred yards the snow was only a few inches deep and packed by a confusion of tracks, but after that, it was only Bigfoot, with a stride length of a meter – more than a yard. What human can stride like that in deep snow? The only animal out here that approaches that stride is a bull elk, with from two to three feet between tracks – and this was longer than that. What are the chances that an elk would stick to a man-made trail, back and forth across the crest, for three miles? And I saw no elk droppings all day.
I immediately thought about giving up on this hike, but as usual, figured I would just try it and see how far I got. The trail begins in the high pass on the crest of the north-south range, and proceeds for more than a mile in long traverses up a bleak northwest-facing canyon on the west side.
When I reached the crossover to the shadier east side of the crest, the patches of snow became deeper, and I strapped on the gaiters and broke out the trekking poles, hoping they would improve my balance as I lurched across the sometimes frozen, sometimes soft snow between deep holes punched by Bigfoot. The view from the east side – across rocky foothills and the Rio Grande Valley to 12,000 foot Sierra Blanca Peak over a hundred miles away in the Sacramento Mountains – would be spectacular except for the skeletons of pines and firs killed by the 2013 wildfire.
Two-thirds of a mile farther, I reached a saddle which reminded me of previous hikes on this, the southern extension of the crest trail. I’ve hiked over 17 miles of the northern crest, but since the 2013 fire, this southern part has only been cleared for the three miles to the saddle below the peak. Back in 2020, I tried bushwhacking farther south, but only made it a little over a mile, where the old trail disappeared under an obstacle course of blowdown and deadfall.
On that 2020 hike, I encountered four bull elk with huge racks and a group of six mule deer bucks, likewise with nice horns. Then, while bushwhacking to what I thought was the peak, I was caught in a hailstorm with lightning striking all around me. Finally, at this very saddle, I discovered a lost dog, abandoned by its owner, a dog so depressed that even after I offered it food and water and tried to lead it by a nylon strap I carry in my pack, it refused to leave the saddle and I had to leave it behind, presumably to be eaten by a mountain lion.
At the next saddle, the trail crosses to the west side and passes through remnants of intact forest. Even there, patches of snow with holes punched by Bigfoot kept slowing me down. But now, I could glimpse the peak looming hundreds of feet above, so I was no longer likely to give up.
At a saddle just below the peak, the trail crosses to the east side again, but here, Bigfoot continued straight up the steep slope. I’d done that before, there was no way I was going to try it in snow that was now over a foot deep. So I followed what I thought was the trail, beckoned by the tracks of a lone deer. I was halfway across the traverse to the next saddle when I realized the deer had led me off the actual trail, and I would now have to pick my way through deadfall to the back side of the peak, where the slope is gentler.
I finally found myself above the little saddle on the south side of the peak, where I normally start my bushwhack upwards. Although the south slope is gentler, it was burned in the fire and is becoming crisscrossed with more and more deadfall every year as giant pine and fir snags continue to topple.
I started to make my way across it, but every glance upward was more discouraging. I finally stopped and decided to give up on the peak – at least for a few minutes. But how could the masochist in me turn back when my goal was so close?
The horizontal distance is only a few hundred yards. But climbing over or around those huge fallen logs seems to take forever – and just when you think you’re approaching the peak, it turns out only to be an outlying shoulder or false peak.
When I finally saw a bald mound above me, I felt like something was wrong. The peak I’d climbed several times in the past was surrounded by a dead forest of standing snags that blocked its view, whereas this peak was completely clear all around.
I finally realized that what I thought was the peak in the past, was only a false peak a hundred yards east. How could I have made such a mistake, over and over? Anyway, it was nice to have my labors rewarded with a view.
Of course, going the distance meant I’d have to repeat that struggle with snow postholed by Bigfoot on the way down. I kept using the trekking poles, although it was a toss-up whether they helped or hindered, because they had the same problem as my boots – either hitting rigid snow, or sinking part or all the way. And when they sank all the way into the snow, they often snagged and yanked me further off balance. And they constantly got caught in the thorny locust that leaned over most parts of the trail.
My right knee, that had set my hiking back for two years, was finally doing well. And the right ankle that had been so excruciating during recent weeks, was now merely uncomfortable. But as if to compensate, the left foot was getting worse and was now becoming my limiting factor. Contrast bathing had not reduced the inflammation enough – would I have to repeat the ultrasound and give up hiking for another 18 months? Might as well just put me out of my misery.
When I reached the last crossover from east to west, the sun was rapidly setting and it was clear this seven-mile hike would end up taking me a full seven hours, due to the uneven snow. This is one of the worst hikes I could’ve picked at this point in my “recovery”. But as usual, the late-afternoon sun and colors on the landscape were beautiful, and a couple of pain pills helped salvage my attitude.
