{"id":17939,"date":"2021-08-15T09:43:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T15:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/?p=17939"},"modified":"2025-07-14T09:38:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T15:38:56","slug":"summer-2021-escape-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/?p=17939","title":{"rendered":"Summer 2021 Escape, Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Previous: Part 3<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Short Hike on a Poor Trail<\/h1>\n

Sunday was departure day, but I didn’t want to just race back home. I didn’t want to leave at all, and I’d considered staying an extra night, but back home, the city was resurfacing the street where my house is located during the coming week, and on Monday morning I had to move my truck off the street into the driveway all the contractors were using, arranging to switch with them. To avoid getting the truck towed, if I stayed here another night, I’d have to leave really early in the morning.<\/p>\n

I had a few hours before checking out to study the maps, and I figured if I could attach some padding over the swollen ankle, maybe I could stop along the way for a shorter hike. I identified a few possibilities along the Arizona-New Mexico border.<\/p>\n

While packing, I put on all my hiking clothes, applied biomechanical taping to my foot and a felt pad over the swollen ankle, and finally slipped into my boots. I tried to walk across the floor, but there was no way I could walk in those boots with that ankle. Damn!<\/p>\n

I took off all the hiking gear, and changed back into my driving shorts and t-shirt. My sneakers were so low cut that they didn’t bother the ankle \u2013 I finally realized it wasn’t any kind of a strain or sprain, it was just some kind of pressure- or friction-caused inflammation. And then it occurred to me to try my other pair of boots, which I’d brought as backup in case the primary pair got wet.<\/p>\n

My primary boots are designed for maximum ankle support \u2013 the shaft or collar of the boot, around the ankle, is reinforced. This is the part that is apparently irritating my ankles on long hikes. The other pair of boots are cut below the swollen area, so when I tried them on, they didn’t even contact it. I realized I could probably stop for a hike after all, so I set aside all my hiking gear for quick access in the vehicle.<\/p>\n

As usual, I took the scenic route through the mountains before connecting with the highway home. It seems shorter every time \u2013 it’s so beautiful you don’t want it to end.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The lodge where I had dinner the first two nights <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View of the village from the surrounding ridge <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View of the 11,400′ peak I hiked up two days earlier <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Another <\/a>
Another view of the peak across one of the many meadow lakes in the range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"One <\/a>
One fork of the beautiful Three Forks area <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"One <\/a>
One of my biologist friends introduced me to springsnails only a few years ago – few people even know they exist, and they’re so tiny they’re almost invisible <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View down into the junction of the three forks <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Another <\/a>
Another meadow lake, with an inviting farmstead <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Back on the highway, the first turnoff I tried was at a pass between Alpine and Luna. It was a forest road I’d always wondered about, that claimed to lead to a fire lookout. It turned out to be one of those actually scary mountain roads \u2013 steep, twisty, rocky and deeply eroded, and strictly one-lane, with a deadly dropoff at the edge. The trail I was optimistically looking for was probably impassable \u2013 maps showed it crossed a large burn scar, and it hadn’t been maintained since the big wildfire \u2013 and the trailhead was almost 6 miles back on this road. The road went up, and down, and around, very slowly, and the first couple of miles took me 10 minutes, so I found a wide spot in a bend and turned around. Then I encountered a big truck coming up, and had to back uphill to the turnaround place to let them pass.<\/p>\n

\"Returning <\/a>
Returning down the scary forest road <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View north to Escudilla <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The next possible hikes were off a prominent backcountry road between Reserve and Glenwood, and would be my first exploration of the legendary Blue Range Primitive Area and Wilderness. I’d always wanted to explore this area, but it was simultaneously too close to and too far from home to be convenient.<\/p>\n

It was a glorious day, like my first day of hiking. This area was a couple thousand feet lower than the alpine region I’d just left, with parklike pinyon, juniper, and occasional ponderosa over rolling hills at the foot of higher ridges and mountains in the near distance. I had two trails to choose from. The first was represented by an unnamed kiosk and had clear tread that beckoned up a shallow canyon. But from the map it looked too easy and didn’t seem to offer views.<\/p>\n

The next trail was listed as “cleared” by a trail crew two years earlier, and appeared to climb a low ridge for a mile or two. There was no real trailhead \u2013 I was looking carefully at the roadside as I drove slowly along, and just happened to notice one of those little “hiker” icons on a post at an overgrown turnout. There was no tread leading inward, only the vague, overgrown suggestion of an opening through the parklike forest. But when I took a few steps past the signpost, I glimpsed a faded wilderness sign on a pinyon pine far ahead. So I figured I would gear up and check it out.<\/p>\n

It was well past lunchtime, and I decided to not only make a sandwich \u2013 utilizing my new cooler as a table \u2013 but to drink a beer as well, breaking my usual habit of not drinking until the evening. Nothing says vacation like drinking in midday, and especially before a hike!<\/p>\n

This trail turned out to be mostly forgettable. No one besides trespass cattle had used it in ages, and the surface was my most hated local footing \u2013 a mix of embedded and loose volcanic cobbles that is maddening and dangerous to walk on. Marked frequently by cairns, the route climbed the ridge at a generally shallow grade, mostly exposed so despite the mild temperature I was sweating pretty bad. But I was determined to get as high as I could, in hope of some kind of view.<\/p>\n

The main attraction of that view turned out to be behind me \u2013 the peak with the fire lookout at the end of that scary road I’d given up on the way here. It was about 5 miles away to the northwest, and was a pretty mountain with a complex mosaic of rocky slopes, forest, and meadows.<\/p>\n

Marked only by its cairns, my route drifted in and out of a cleared corridor through the open scrub forest, suggesting that in some distant past there might’ve been a wagon trail. The path completely ended in dense chaparral at the top of the ridge, after only a couple of miles of hiking.<\/p>\n

When trail workers reported this trail “cleared” two years ago, it was obvious that all they meant was that they’d checked it to the chaparral on top \u2013 there’d been no clearing required. And it seemed that nobody but me even cared.<\/p>\n

\"Beer <\/a>
Beer with lunch? Why not <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"My <\/a>
My fancy new cooler <\/div> <\/div>
\"Is <\/a>
Is this really a trail? <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"It <\/a>
It must be, because that tiny pale speck at the bottom of the pine trunk in the center is a wilderness boundary marker <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_1549\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Yep, <\/a>
Yep, that’s a trail… <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Most <\/a>
Most of the surface is like this – a nightmare to walk on <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_1569\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View of Saddle Mountain <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Fire <\/a>
Fire lookout atop Saddle Mountain <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"More <\/a>
More rocky trail <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"View <\/a>
View east from trail’s end on top of ridge. Those are the mountains I usually hike. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

On the way down I lost the trail at one point, where a false cairn beckoned me onto a game trail down a side drainage. After wasting 5 minutes on that sidetrack, I dismantled the fraudulent cairn and found the right track to continue back to my vehicle. By my standards it hadn’t been much of a hike, but at least I’d set foot in a new wilderness area and seen some new mountains.<\/p>\n

\"Another <\/a>
Another view west to Saddle Mountain <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"More <\/a>
More of that hellish trail surface <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Even <\/a>
Even here there are mushrooms! <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

I had a pleasant drive home as usual \u2013 apart from the minivan driver who wanted to race down the twistiest part of the highway, tailgating me dangerously, finally passing only to slow down in front of me on the straight part of the road as he drifted back and forth across the center line, probably texting on his smart phone. By that point I was relaxed enough not to care.<\/p>\n

My home is always first and foremost a studio, an office, a workspace, so the only way I can take a break from work is to get away from home. This trip had been my first getaway \u2013 my first vacation \u2013 in almost two years. And it had been over two years since I’d visited those mountains. So on the drive home I was re-evaluating my relationship with that place, and my attitude toward it.<\/p>\n

One problem I can see is that it has kind of an awkward combination of extreme beauty and overwhelming recreational culture. It’s kind of like a huge national park in which the visitors are widely dispersed instead of concentrated like they are in, for example, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n

Despite its huge size, the area has historically far fewer hiking trails than the national forest in my backyard, and after the 2011 wildfire, only the half dozen most popular and easily accessed of those trails have been maintained. So all the hikers are concentrated on those few trails, none of which is particularly challenging. The trails in the large, rugged wilderness area at the south of the range have been abandoned and are essentially impassable, because that was the origin of the wildfire.<\/p>\n

So for me, as a hiker looking for challenges and new discoveries, the area actually doesn’t seem to offer much.<\/p>\n

But since the northern half of the range consists of those vast grassy meadows divided by hills and ridges with relatively open mixed-conifer forest, it suddenly occurred to me that off-trail hiking might be the solution. Maybe in the future I should just ignore the limited trail network and set off across country. I’m not sure how feasible that would really be, but it’s worth trying…<\/p>\n

\"Heading <\/a>
Heading home <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_1613\" <\/a> <\/div>
\"IMG_1615\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous: Part 3 Short Hike on a Poor Trail Sunday was departure day, but I didn’t want to just race back home. I didn’t want to leave at all, and I’d considered staying an extra night, but back home, the city was resurfacing the street where my house is located during the coming week, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,144,49,83,4,154,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2021-trips","category-gila","category-hikes","category-regions","category-road-trips","category-san-francisco-mountains","category-southwest-new-mexico"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_1549.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17943,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17939\/revisions\/17943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}