Falling Forest
Sunday, February 15th, 2026: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
This Sunday’s hike needed to be nearby, and there are only three hikes near town that offer significant distance and elevation gain. All of them are forested, and only one has a distinctive destination – a peak – so that’s the one I planned to do. But it shares trailheads with a long ridge hike with better views, so at the last minute I set off on the ridge hike instead.
The full hike is over six miles one-way, ending at a “lake” at the west end of the ridge, which is really just a large stock pond. The first mile or so sees regular traffic, but despite being close to town, it hasn’t been regularly maintained, and blowdown and overgrowth have made this trail nearly impassable at times. Sometimes in the past I’ve been the first hiker in months or even years to go halfway, let alone reach the lake.
One attraction of this trail is that it mostly traverses the steep north slope, with views north over our vast wilderness. And in 2020, a wildfire killed much of that forest, improving the views. The last time I hiked all the way to the lake was three months after the fire, when I found an expensive pistol that someone had left under a pine on the shore.
Today, with my sore left foot, I was only hoping to reach the plateau at the halfway point – the high point of the ridge at a little over 8,600 feet – for an out-and-back distance of seven or eight miles. The sky was partly cloudy and the high in town was forecast in the mid-50s.
I was prepared for snow and should’ve expected it on that steep north slope, but I’d really hoped for an easier hike than last Sunday. When I did reach the first snow after the initial climb to ridge top, it was only a couple inches deep and had been tracked by a small woman and her huge dog since our last storm, a few days ago.
The next complication I should’ve anticipated was the deadfall. This long after the fire, dead trees of all sizes were constantly falling across the trail, many with their branches intact.
A hundred yards in, where the snow got deeper, the woman and the dog had turned back. Past there, the deeper snow, laid down in January, had been tracked by one bigger hiker, then their tracks had been smoothed by last week’s additional snowfall. Since much of the trail is in perpetual shade, the surface was packed and walkable in the morning, but I knew that on my return in the afternoon much of it would’ve melted and be trickier.
So even before reaching the first stretch of snow, I stopped to strap on my gaiters and assemble my trekking poles. The poles helped with the snow but were a handicap climbing past the deadfall.
As the ridgetop rises and falls, the trail occasionally crests in a saddle, and each saddle was swept by a cold wind from the southwest that dropped the effective temperature into the teens. I wore wool gloves at all times.
The north slope traverse zigzags continually out and back, and finally after about two-and-a-half miles I rounded the last shoulder before the steep grade to the high plateau. Here, the snow was up to 14 inches deep, and I could see that the hiker who’d laid tracks before last week’s storm had also been using trekking poles.
As expected, the plateau, with its parklike ponderosa pine forest, is exposed enough to be snow-free by now. But it’s also windy enough to get constant blowdown. Despite a little annual overgrowth that obscured the already faint tread in many places, I remembered it well and was able to reach the west end, where the trail drops precipitously toward the next saddle.
I was aiming for a tiny saddle just below the plateau that has a nice view west. By the time I reached that view, I’d climbed over, under, through, or around 50 fallen trees in 2-1/2 miles – nothing compared to the 500 per mile on the crest trail of our high mountains. But worth considering for those planning to hike forested mountains in this new fire regime!
Sure enough, much of the snow on the north slope had melted by my afternoon return, so that although it was easier going downhill, it was almost as slow as the morning’s ascent. The sun did come out, enhancing the view and the contrast of drought-killed vs intact pines in the forest below.
Past the final snow patch, rounding the last shoulder at the east end of the ridge, I came upon a male spotted towhee in a little trailside tree, doing his mating display of wing flapping and tail spreading. And I got my last view of the high range to the east.
It ended up taking me 7 hours to go 8 miles, and my foot was hurting even more than last Sunday. I wondered if I would need another 18 months of twice-daily ultrasound treatments like in 2017 and 2018….
