My New Home
Monday, July 13th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
By June, I’d increased my hikes to 6 miles, even accumulating up to 1,800 vertical feet, without triggering foot pain. But when I tried the next step up, I ended up limping back.
After months of false recoveries, I really, really hated to take a step back. And as usual, finding the right hike was a challenge. In summer, it needed to be shaded and/or high-elevation. I was tired of long drives, but most of our nearby high-elevation trails remain closed due to wildfire.
There’s a network of mostly abandoned and very seldom-used trails northeast of here along a famous backcountry road. It’s a pretty long drive – 1:30 to 1:45 from home – but it’s a fun drive with light traffic. I often overlook it when planning hikes, but the farthest trailhead is nearly 8,000 feet, with a mostly forested trail that climbs to almost 9,000 feet. It’s too short for me when I’m in top condition, but now, it might be just right.
Our monsoon had started with a bang and we were getting thunderstorms and rain almost every day. Even if I didn’t get rained or hailed on, I expected temps up there to stay well below 80 degrees.
The backcountry road climbs to the mesa and spends about ten miles up there. Halfway up the mesa I reached the first tree blown down across the road. Keeps the riffraff out – it would’ve stopped a car or a city SUV, and the deep, rocky roadside ditch gave my high ground clearance and all-terrain tires their first workout of the day.
I had to slow for a couple more downed trees before dropping into the fun part, a dark, narrow, and rocky canyon. It’s always rough and bumpy down there, in and out of the creek for two miles between low walls of flood-debris boulders. All two dozen of the creek crossings were flooded, and the hairpin turns in and out of the canyon were already badly eroded. Fun!
I’ve only visited the trailhead, just below 8,000 feet, three times before. Today I noticed a classic, conical Rocky Mountain juniper near my parking spot – a tree I’ve certainly passed but never identified in this area.
Today’s trail is one I hiked three years ago, aiming for a 9,600-foot peak about eleven miles in. I lost all sign of the abandoned trail at the halfway point and returned, disappointed. Today I was planning to stop after about three miles, on the traverse of the west slope of a peak called Rocky Point. I remembered some cool rocky slopes and vestiges of Herculean trail-building efforts, probably in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
I did the first segment, a gentle traverse of a west-facing slope to the first ridgetop, in the shade of isolated cumulus clouds that gave every sign of developing into a storm later. And I soon encountered more blowdown that got harder and harder to cross or circumvent on foot. I ended up working past dozens by the end of the day, but that’s still better than the thousands of logs blocking our crest trails after big wildfires.
At the ridgetop, the trail continues east to the next low rise, with more blowdown and only the faintest tread in places. I found some old horse poop but no human tracks anywhere.
Reaching the east end of that ridge, I got my first view south across the canyon below. And rounding a corner, the trail traverses across and switchbacks up the canyon’s head.
The trail gets very rocky in the head of that canyon – trailbuilders had shifted hundreds of boulders to create terraces and retaining walls, and now, sheet flows down the gravel slopes above were burying the terraces, and runoff was undermining the retaining walls. Not the most sustainable place for a trail in fire habitat and monsoon climate, but those concerns were off the radar for most white folks in the 1930s.
At the top of the switchbacks across the canyon, you reach a rocky point where you cross into a new watershed – always an exciting moment for me.
From the rocky point, overlooking the new watershed, I got my first view of the real Rocky Point, whose west slope would be my destination. This is the start of the rockiest and most fun part of the trail, switchbacks descending an area of exposed, tortured bedrock.
Crossing the saddle below, I moved into the head of yet another watershed, this one draining east to a long north-flowing creek. A gentle climb through tall pines and firs finally gave me a view of the crest of the range, eight miles east. And then I was at the saddle below Rocky Point.
Most of the west slope is burn scar, and I hiked in sunlight all the way. Mild temps, intermittent breezes, and lots of stops for plants, pollinators, and photos. Toward the south end of this traverse the trail crosses narrow talus slopes with loose rocks up to twelve feet long. I’d planned to turn back before that point, but of course, since I was feeling good, I continued into forest and up to the saddle in the ridge south of the peak.
In that high saddle – 8,779 feet – I got a view of the 10,165-foot summit of this big range, which I climbed three years ago. In good weather with high clearance and 4wd, you can actually drive to within two miles of it.
I wanted to bushwhack up Rocky Point – only another third of a mile and two hundred vertical feet – but I soon ran into a thicket of thorny locust, saw a rocky ridge ahead, and realized it would be too hard on my foot.
On the way back down the west slope, through the burn scar, with one of those top-of-the-world views across our vast wilderness, I realized I really didn’t want to go home. I wanted to live up here. This hike had frustrated me three years ago, and now I was in love with it.
To slow my return, I began studying the trees, and the rocks.
On the switchbacks up that slope of exposed bedrock, I noticed bands that could not be sedimentary. I’d always believed most of the rock in this region is volcanic, but my geologist friend tells me this is gneiss – and may have metamorphosed from sedimentary rock.
Turning back into the next watershed, I began to notice two or three different pines in among the familiar ponderosas. One appeared to be a pinyon, but at 8,600 feet, was much higher than they’re expected at this latitude.
I traversed the head of the west-draining canyon on the eroding reinforced trail, reached the last ridge, and was in the home stretch. I’d been paying a lot of attention to my left foot, and it was fine all the way down to the vehicle. I’d taken 5-3/4 hours to go 7-1/2 miles and 1,226 vertical feet. That seems to be the magic combination right now.
It hadn’t rained on me after all, although from up on the ridges I’d seen rainfall far to the west. In the morning, I’d passed one truck-type SUV on the way out. And now, near the mouth of the backcountry road, I passed a new Bronco that appeared to be sightseeing. Two other vehicles on a mild Sunday, on almost 30 miles of our famous back road – and the campground in the canyon had been empty. I definitely picked the right place to move to.
