End of Trail/Homecoming

The trail ended for me June 10. I spent a couple days in town and a couple days taking the train back; I just started my new job as COO of Bellwether Coffee two days ago.

I didn't really want to leave, though. I wanted to see Lily, and for that matter I was excited about my new job. But the raw wilderness of New Mexico had done so much to settle my mind.


That's about all I have to say about that. Go to New Mexico. Eat chile. Be at peace.

Some deer need no headlights

June 10
I slept badly, as bugs big and little kept feeling the need to examine my face during the night. It had been so long since I'd slept at a low elevation to worry about bgs, I realized. Probably just as well that today was my last day, I really wasn't equipped to handle a mosquito hatch. But: No snow! I was below 10,000 feet and I was staying there all the way into Santa Fe. So much the better, as I had a good 35 miles or so to make before the end of the trail. And I was pretty committed to finishing that day, as I didn't have anything to make for dinner that night.
So I hauled myself upright, broke camp, and got hiking as quickly as I could. My progress was slowed by blowdowns, as a lot of treees killed by the fire had fallen over the trail and not yet been cleared. The blowdowns started as single trees to climb over, under, or around. Then there were pairs of trees that had come down together, increasing the complexity of the maneuvers needed to get past them. Then threes, then fours, then at some point I found myself in a multi-tree matrix that necessitated acting like I was trying out for American Ninja just to get forward a foot.
Maybe I shouldn'ta taken the shortcut, I grumbled to myself. I lost three hours of my morning, scraping and belly-crawl squeezing and flopping my way through the trees. As always, I reached that point were I realized my loyalty lay with the goal, not the path, and I started to chart the shortest possible path cross-country to the edge of the burned section.
Back out of that section, I had clear trail. This, my last day on the trail, was one of the only days I had where I had clear singletrack most of the day. The route dove down through my elevation by thousands of feet, thoughtlessly spending all the work it took me to climb the ridge at the other end. I passed an elderly couple eating lunch trailside with a crosscut saw resting nearby. Apparently they were engaged in the sisyphean task of clearing out the deadfalls; I thanked them for their work and moved on. At Horsethief Meadows, my alternate met up with the main trail and climbed up over a bluff, then down past Stewart Lake. I passed another, smaller lake, and glanced down at my map to see the name.
Spirit Lake. Huh. So that's where it is.
The trail passed a major trailhead and campground and continued, mostly down and mostly south, along mountain bike trails. Every biker I met stopped to allow me to pass; note the excellent etiquette! It got hotter the further I went, with the vegetation increasingly sere and sparse. I walked along a stream with a lot of trail runners, a couple of whom asked me where i was going or had been.They got treated to my explanation trailing off in the distance: "A 500-mile loop through Northern New Mexico..."
Because I didn't have the time. I was about 9 miles out and had about 2 hours of sunlight left. I started hustling. I started doing the math in my mind -- if I can hit four miles an hour, I'd get in just after 8:30, and if I could hit five miles an hour, I could get there by 8:40 or so, etc. But how was I going to hike 5 miles an hour?
I started using the "scout pace," a relic of my old Boy Scout training.The Scout pace is 100 paces at a run, 100 paces at a walk. Running with a pack, even if it's only 100 paces at a light jog, wasn't really what the doctor ordered after the last few days of strenuous travel. But with each passing mile, the roofs of Sante Fe got closer.
Now I switched to municipal trails, which got very steep, climbing up and over ridges and down into steep, narrow valleys. At the next trailhead, I got off the trails and switched to the roads. Heck, I'm not a purist, and I was losing light.
I waked the rest of the way into Santa Fe on the Hyde Park Road, a two-lane highway. There were cars, but the evening was nice, cool, and relatively quiet. I could smell someone cooking beef, and could hear a live band playing somewhere far off downtown. About two miles from the plaza, the end of my trip, I watched a very young buck step gingerly down into the road. He stopped dead when he saw me,and we spent the better part of a minute just regarding each other. I don;t think he quite knew what to make of me, and  wasn't going to voluntarily end my last communion with wildlife on this trip.
And then he looked up, his reverie over, and walked off the other side of the road.
It was full dark as I finally entered the streets of Santa Fe. I walked straight down to the plaza and had two very proper elderly women take my picture.

I was punch-drunk exhausted and wandered the square for another ten minutes. I was more than a little afraid that I had forgotten how to stop walking. A restaraunt appeared before my shell-shocked eyes and I went in. It was a fancy place catering to the tourist trade, and I bet I was the stinkiest dude they'd ever served a smothered burrito.

High Lonesome

June 9

I woke at first light and made myself coffee and breakfast burritos over a fire. Not the fastest way to break camp! And as much as I normally defend Spam and Amercian Cheese, I cannot really recommend building two back-to-back meals around them. The fake taste starts to shine through pretty badly. It was very picturesque and cowboy-like, though. I'd even made an impromptu grill out of some fence wire I found nearby. I think you could base a good country song on the metaphor of grilling over a barbed-wire grill. A great song would even reference Spam.

The snow along the trail started crisp, and I thought I might have an easier time of it than the day prior, but by 9 am I was falling through again. The snowpack was getting really rotten as the summer wound on -- this was far less reliable than the snow had been a week ago.
The morning became a race to get to the flanks of Jicarita Mountain. Named after a band of Apaches, this mountain was the beginning of 12 miles above treeline. While high altitudes are generally correlated with more snowpack, this relationship falls apart when you get above treeline. With no trees to shelter it from the wind and sun, the snow melts out much more quickly.
As it turned out, that was exactly what had happened. Below Jicarita and along the ridge connecting it with Trouble Peak, there was no snow. No real trail, either. Just cairns along the ridge and your own decision about how to cross the mix of jumbled rock and alpine tundra.
There were lots of animals -- two herds of bighorn and a herd of elk that must have been 100 strong, streaks of chocolate brown running just north of the ridgetop. I nodded to my elk guides, but I also carefully threaded my way between the herds. They may be inadvertently showing me the way, but I still do not desire a close encounter.

Beyond Trouble Peak (which looked easy to summit but who has the time), the trail continued right along the ridge, popping over unnamed summits. Open meadows and lakes accompanied my path on either side and I walked straight toward Chimayosos Peak, looming in the near distance. The trail, my twelve miles above treeline up, dipped down into a forested bowl on the southeast side of Truchas Peak.

The trail immediately started getting elusive under snowpatches, but I was able to follow it all the way down to the side of Truchas Lake. From there on, things got a bit hairy. I lost the trail and followed a little game trail to a cliff beyond which most mere humans wouldn't want to proceed without ropes. I backed up, chose another route, and found trail again. I followed it high up onto a steep hillside, where it disappeared under steep, deep snow.
Traverses on steep, snowy slopes are about as much fun as an 8:59 am traffic jam on the Bay Bridge. Except that in this traffic jam, there is a slight possibility that the bridge will crumble underneath you and plunge you to the Bay below. Protecting the hikers from slipping down the face is what ice axes are for, and I had sent mine back days ago. Bummer. There's nothing to be done about it except go across or go back. This traverse wasn't long, and it wound me around to a more southern-facing section of trail, where the snow should have melted.
I went for it, carefully kicking each step into the snow and making as sure as I could be that it was solid. Light exploded all around me, bright sun from above and reflected from the snow below. Rocks, streams, and sky all dwindled to a little corner of my mind as I concentrated on each step: Kick Kick Kick One. Breathe. Kick Kick Kick Two. Breathe. Kick Kick Kick One. Breathe. Kick Kick Kick Two. Breathe.
When I finally grabbed a sapling on the far side, and I knew I'd made it, the sensory input that I'd been stalling all rushed in, and I stood to reflect on the surroundings, crowded with beauty and devoid of humans. I am so rich in these memories, I thought, in the mental remnants of millions of moments
and thousands of hours spent in these places. I ascribe all sorts of positive effects to my time in the wilderness; I tell people it's made me a much more well-adjusted person. But maybe I just do it for the straight, uncut joy of it. Maybe that's what humans need: More of this uncomplicated joy.
The trail found it's way back to the ridgeline and above treeline again, and cruised right past a mile of cliffs colorfully named the "Trailriders' Wall." It was late afternoon, and within the hour The trail sloped off to the south of the ridge and into the little bowl holding Pecos Baldy Lake. There were suddenly dozens of people around. Friday night, I realized.
I had a trail junction here with a choice: The recommended route followed river valleys down, and back up a bit, on it's way southwest to Santa Fe. The Horsethief Alternate was more direct, but spent more time in a burned-over section left from an intense fire in 2013. I chose Horsethief, reasoning that less live trees meant less snow cover, and silently passed the other campers by. I craved company, but not quite yet. I wanted to hike a few more miles. I'd be in Santa Fe soon enough.
The route headed up to a little notch in the west wall of the lake's basin. That wall turned out to be another harrowing, steep, snowy ascent. As soon as I could, I made my over to a little line of trees and used them to haul myself up the wall, hand over hand. It's never been boring on the NNML, I thought, using my arms as much as my legs to gain the pass.
Up and over the pass, the trail got faint. It wasn't under snow, mind you; now it was the faint track of an abandoned, or nearly abandoned, trail. It was getting dark, and I couldn't be bothered with how ominous that was for the rest of my trip. I collected water from a spring, found a place to lie down, and strong up the tarp one last time.

These'll Just Have to Do

June 8

Dawn was a wash of direct sunlight on my face; ridgetops are nice that way. As I was lacing up my shoes, I noticed that all the step-kicking seemed to have taken a pretty dire toll on my shoes' structural integrity: There were two-inch-long tears in the fabric above the instep on both shoes. I fretted for a moment but then figured there wasn't much to be done about at the moment anyway. I mean, as long as they didn't literally fall off my feet, I was better off just lacing, hoping, and hiking.
The road started to drop elevation pretty much immediately, and before long I was back down below snowline. Destroyed shoes or no, this made me enjoy life. Meadows and forests traded off, light and dark versions of the same color palette. The temperature rose as the mountains dropped, and midday found me sweating at the trailhead along a two-lane highway to Sipapu Ski Resort, my next (and last) supply stop.
It's a two-mile hitch along the highway into Sipapu. It was too nice a day to hitch, though. Hitching is such a bummer for me; you are very suddenly very dependent on others, literally begging on the roadside. And while catching a ride can be exhilarating (especially if you've been out there for a while), it can also be terrifying. I've had a couple rides with people very drunk, very tweaked out, or trying to modulate the two. And while these rides make for good stories, at the time the experience is just shitty. Your adventure is quickly reduced to an open question about whether you are going to escape this tawdry Subaru with your body intact.
So in I walked, head held high. To my left was the Rio Pueblo, rushing and well up onto the grass on its banks. Above was clear blue sky, and ahead the promise of a hamburger, beer, and enough food to power me into Santa Fe. Maybe they'd even have shoes, I mused.
The resort did, in fact, have shoes. They are apparently a dealer for Salomon. I'm not a huge fan of the company -- I wore their over-named 3D XT Pro Comp shoes for a while in 2008, and they hurt my feet after a while. Still, any port in a storm, right? So I sat in the back of their little resort store, diligently trying on every kind of Salomon they had in a size 11 and hoping no one was going to scold me for putting such nice new shoes on such rotten, foul-smelling feet. (They were pretty bad, to the point where the feet smelled a little like Nacho Cheese that had been left out in the sun for two long, like several years. Humid years.) The aforementioned 3D XT Pro Comps carried the day, and I wore them over to the grocery section to see what I'd be munching on for the next couple-three days.
That's where things kind of fell apart. They had cereal, but no dried milk. Tortillas, but no beans. No stove fuel. That was gong to present a problme, as I only had enough left to boil two pints of water. No sunscreen, but at least I had a pretty good hat. No peanut butter. No peanut butter. That almost literally never happens.
Basically, they had a few cans of green chile, a dozen eggs, two packets of ramen, a couple cans of mushrooms, some graham crackers, candy, Spam, and American "cheese." Lily says that I'm good at making meals out of whatever we have left over in our kitchen, but this was outside my scope. This was Iron Chef: Post-Apocalypse Already-Looted-Grocery-Store Scavenger Edition, and I needed about 3500 calories a day.
So let's see... We'll have breakfast burritos, eggs/"cheez"/spam/mushrooms/chiles for dinner. Then for breakfast, we'll have the exact same thing. Then for lunch, tortillas. After that, we'll have ramen, then some candy for breakfast (sure why not), then graham crackers, then graham crackers. If I needed another dinner, I'd have to eat my new shoes.
I loaded my gut up on as many calories as I could, jamming a double green chile burger and a pint of Sierra Nevada at the cafe. The woman behind the counter got excited, saying she was jazzed to have a hiker in her shop, although it could have just been that I was the only customer in the dim, wooden room. She checked out my maps, trying to see if she knew where my route was going to take me (she did not). Was I going to Spirit Lake, she asked?
Not sure, I responded.
Certainly I knew about Spirit Lake, though.
Not really. It's hard to explain to people on the outside: I pass a lot of lakes, and rarely look further than one day ahead of me in my maps. One of the ironies of spending so much time in the wilderness is that simple specific joys, like that a certain alpine lake, can get crowded out by the generally heightened presence of the sublime. The edges of specific moments and places wipe into each other without narrative, leaving a blurred imprint of the vast universe but no memory of its constituent parts.
My pack was so heavy leaving the resort -- damn canned food -- that the word "laden" kept occurring to me in non sequiter phrases: It's awfully hot in the sun. The donkey was laden with too much ore by the cruel miner. I wonder what kind of plant that is? Wlo could identify it, laden down with burdens as I am, is? Laden. So it as I walked back my two miles, head held significantly less high.
Still, it was a beautiful day, and I was entering the home stretch. And maybe this nest section would have less snow! I got off the highway and crossed a roaring Rio Pueblo at the Agua Piedra campground. Through the campgorund and up the gorge of Agua Piedra Creek I went. The trail chased the stream up therough forests, then open, swampy meadow, then, not four miles in, into a snowfield.
Crap.
No way to go but forward, though. I plunged on through snow, lost the trail entirely, and started to navigate by GPS again. I passed Los Esteros pond, listed as a "tea-brown" water source on my map, and it was entirely covered in snow. Another pole snapped when I slipped down a little snowbank,and I cussed a blue streak.
I gave up on the designated trail and started to look for elk tracks. I'd followed coyote, elk, and deer tracks on this trip, but elk made for the best pathfinders. They also posthole, you can see the three-foot-deep print, but not always. As such, they are always looking for the most stable snow, that which will carry them on its surface. That snow usually carries my weight too. Conversely, if they postholed through a opatch of snow, it;s good bet to leave that patch alone. The best part about elk is 90% of the time, they are trying to follow the same trail as you, and will lead you right to the trail as it leaves a snowfield on the far side.
An hour of following my elk guides led me to a gentle place to approach the ridge. After I'd gained it, I turned to climb along it, skirting snowfields by hiking the cliff's edge ridgetop in places. Almost half my hiking light was coming from an early-rising waxing moon when I finally got over Ripley Point and down to a saddle.
No stove fuel meant no stove, so I found an old fire ring and made just enough of a fire to roast spam and cook scrambled eggs, and settled in to make myself a dinner of breakfast burritos. The fire felt amazing, such a luxury, and I soaked in the sweet light and warmth before retiring to my bag and tarp.

Mr. Bill and an Oh No Moment

June 7
Breakfast at the Elkhorn Lodge is served at 7. When I entered the dining room, I found one of the owners and several hired men starting their days on coffee and frosted flakes. I grabbed a share of both for myself and sat down next to Mr. Bill.
The crew was going to go out to the stable and put the owners' other business -- trail rides on the surrounding National Forest land -- into commission. The workers looked like working horsemen often do: Skinny, taciturn, and maybe in need of clean laundry. Who was I to judge on any of those three criteria? They kept to their food, only glancing up from their coffee to a TV playing the Today show from time to time. Mr. Bill was of a more open cast of mind, however. He invited me to sit next to him and introduced me to his two small dogs, Bubbles and Oreo. Bubbles immediately jumped into my lap and fell asleep; two of the other three bigger dogs in the room took turns coming over to pay me their respects. The last one remained aloof on a couch, so I walked over. Turns out he was not so much aloof as blind with age.
And Mr. Bill was the kind of older gentleman who would keep a small pack of good-tempered dogs. You kind of got the feeling he was a good egg. He sent a hired hand up to my room to clean it,and I mentioned there were beers left in the fridge. He smiled and told his guy to "stick the beers in the cooler, y'a'l can drink them later." He then told me how he and his wife, who the hired men called Miss Nancy, had built this hotel to their own specifications in the '80s. They'd been doing the trail rides that whole time as well. It was good life, he explained.
A local news show came on, and the anchor noted that car thefts were up in Albuquerque; Mr. Bill sighed and remarked that there were far too many murders these days, too. Older people are of course inclined toward lamentations about the sad state of modern affairs, but as such complaints go, his was pretty hard to disagree with. Yeah, I suppose there are too many murders these days.
A quarter of an hour later the rest of breakfast showed up when I was handed a paper plate loaded with toast, sausage, and scrambled eggs cooked in the sausage grease. Miss Nancy follwed the plates out and sat down to chat with me. We talked about the land, the wide-open elk pasture I'd just walked through, the way ahead. We discussed calving elk, and the need to give them space. And we talked about the people in New Mexico.
"The thing you have to understand is that these are wilderness people around here," she said. "They don't see the wilderness as something separate from their lives, they see it as part of their lives." The words rang true, and exemplify what I love about New Mexico society. If Californians are ready at the drop of a hat to mount an expedition into the country, a lot of New Mexicans seem to already be living in pretty close contact with it as a matter of daily routine.
A bid the crew goodbye as they were climbing into pickups to head out to the stables. Pack on, a gut full of Folgers, and a bluebird sky above, I was totally ready to get lost and hike half a mile in the wrong direction as I tried to find my way out of town. Back on the route, which here was a series of municipal trails, I came across two young mule deer bucks, antlers in spring velvet, grazing in a strip meadow. They were completely at ease with my presence, just idly observing me as they munched the fresh green grass.The route then wound up into the mountains, following roads and utility right-of-ways until it finally found a single-track trail that looked like it saw a lot of mountain bike use. That trail climbed up along forested ridges and down past cows lolling in meadowed pastures.
It finally found some jeep roads and got a bit more serious about climbing. Snow patches started to appear, as did some pretty substantial clouds. I was thinking about the lightning along the highway the day prior, and hoped we weren't going to do that again.
It was cool and overcast as I approached Cerro Vista, the local high point. Snow now obscured most of the trail, such that I missed an easy road junction. That road, which headed right up to the summit, was totally snowed in, so I treated it as an optional ad mostly just directed myself to the summit via GPS and compass.

Cerro Vista and bad weather

I was almost to the top when it started raining. The first flash of lightning was essentially simultaneously with my attainment of the summit ridge. Tree cover was sparse up there, so I decided to duck into a little stand of firs just off the ridge. I ended up spending three hours there, most of them crouched into the lightning safety position as cell after cell rolled over the ridge. Every time I poked my head out of my cramped, freezing crouch, I was scared back in by a very, very bright flash and a very, very close clap of thunder.
Evening was encroaching when I finally felt like it was safe to start down the trail again. Even then, there were some pretty terrifying lightning strikes happening, so I bombed off the ridge and into a maze-like network of logging roads in a valley to the north of the ridge. I walked a mile or two on those roads, most of flooding with snowmelt and the day's rain. As the light started to get dim, I realized I was going to need to strike out cross-country straight up the side of a steep ridge to regain the trail. Like 2,000 feet of elevation gain in a mile.
So I kick-stepped myself up a couple thousand feet, treating the snowpack like a ladder. Ten steps, rest, repeat. Every quarter mile, I'd cross a logging road and check to make sure it didn't miraculously hook up with my ridgetop route further down the line, which it did not.
I got up onto the ridge at twilight's end. I cruised the trailside for a flat-ish snow-free spot to lay down on, and around 9:30, I found one. Up with the tarp, down with me.

Not going out like that

June 6

I sprang out of bed at 6 am -- sleep matters, it turns out -- and then realized the only restaurant in town that served breakfast opened at 8. The Kaw-Lija Diner, named after the catchy and casually racist Hank Williams tune, did not rise with the sun. I guess it's a better name for a restaurant than I'm So Lonesome I Could Die.

So I caught up some writing, especially the reviews of camp coffee I've been making for Liz "Snorkel" Thomas (check her out). Checked out the news, where the Trump junta was idly contemplating hanging improbably named whistleblower Reality Winner from a lamppost. 

Yeah, I guess if you don't believe your government is going to mount a robust response to the hacking of voter registration, it makes sense to leak. I get the motivation.

I pushed it aside and walked to the diner, where I  ate a Spanish omelette and a cinnamon roll so hard it bent the knife when I tried to cut it. Paid out, I went back to the hotel, got the kit together, and started walking.

The trail took me along Eagle Nest Lake's shore, which smelled vaguely of sewage. The smell got less intense after I passed the actual sewage treatment center, which looked like a big lagoon along the shore of the lake. 

Some pretty threatening clouds were forming up over my old pal Wheeler Peak, which crowned the eastern side of the valley through which I walked. There wasn't too much I could do, so I kept hiking. It started to rain, and I realized that when you are on an exposed ridge in a storm, you can bomb off the side. If you're on a long, exposed roadwalk, all you can do is get struck.

Oh man, that is not how I want to go, I thought.

 

And this did 1:30 pm find me cowering inside a privy along the Lake View Trail. I watched forks of lightning hitting flat valley-bottom ground, not too far from where I'd been. There is nothing dignified about crouching in the portico of a pit toilet, but it beats getting electrocuted on a roadway while trucks with the last Tapout stickers in existence cruise past you.

The storm eventually passed, and I made haste toward the town of Angel Fire. I picked up my last maps for the trip at the post office, got a room, and bought groceries. A good meal at the local brewpub, a warm bed, and about four more days of hiking.

In the Elk Lodge

June 5

I slept poorly. A bright moon, occasional flashes of lightning, and the unexpected advent of mosquito season all conspired to have me up most of the night. When day broke, a cacophony of birds was augmented by a pack of coyotes and an elk bugle and I was like, okay, I get it, it's time to wake up. Sheesh.

The trail, here a dirt road, was a sodden mess. Squishfoot in full effect. But the surrounding landscape was amazing. The relatively narrow canyon gave over to a mile-broad meadow valley, carpeted in plush bunchgrasses and wildflowers. Hawks cried in the trees, flocks of redwing blackbirds chattered at me, and a bright sun overhead. 

And the elk were everywhere. I counted the herd in the valley until I hit around 70 and then gave up. They would spook as I walked up, but then, I was spooked too. As I've mentioned, mama elk in calving season can be very... zealous in the protection of their young. And yup, sure enough, I could see baby elk and yearling elk moving with their matriarchs. 

Our mutual fear set up a situation in which we were both unwillingly herding each other. They would run away from me, but would unfortunately run toward the head of the valley, in my direction of travel. I would then make a wide, sweeping detour to get around the herd; I detoured over a mile from my designated route to skirt the trees at the valley's edges trying to get around them. In fives or dozens they'd prance past me, down-valley, heads held high. But there were always some in front, and more than once a big cow shadowed me, just 100 feet on my left flank, watching. 

And thus was it with a little sadness and a lot of relief that I finally reached the head of the valley. I knew I'd come to the edge, because I found a barbed wire fence that told me not to cross upon pain of prosecution. I didn't, instead skirting the fence as it climbed steeply, super steeply up and over a couple ridges. I finally walked across a fence, unmarked this time, and made my way on abandoned logging roads to Mills Pond. This was almost certainly on somebody's property, but it was also on my route, and I needed some water. So I filtered a few liters, gave the place a furtive look, and got out as quick as I could, climbing toward Mt Baldy.

Observant readers will remember that just the day prior I had climbed Baldy Mountain. But this, Mt. Baldy, is a totally different peak of a much more prominent alpine nature. Also, it's on the Philmont Boy Scout ranch, where in 1988 I had my first relavatory backpacking experience. It is a sure sign we live in a patriarchy that two such peaks in such close proximity were both names after a vanity injury for aging dudes. I mean, one could have  been named Mt Babybutt, Mt Smooth, or just Mt Amazing, but no, both are essentially Mt Past His Prime.

My climb followed an old jeep road, now long since abandoned. Soon enough it was choked with small pines on the left tread and snowbanks on the rights. The snow was totally rotten, my feet pushing all the way through with each step. But, you know, there was only one way forward, and that was up. I gained the summit ridge in forest about the same time I heard the day's first thunder. 

Crap, I thought. I'm above treeline for miles today.

Still, ever hopeful, I plowed on up to the we of treeline. And my luck served me well: Jus as I reached the wide-open expanses of alpine tundra that would take me over Mt. Baldy and down to the town of Eagle Nest, there was a break in the weather!

I stepped out onto the tundra like it was a frozen lake in spring. Yes, the sky above was blue, but there was an awful lot of grey and black around me. I skitttered across grass and scree as quick as I could, and soon enough I was right at the foot of the peak.

The map said go up and over, where a low-altitude alternate beckoned. I checked out the sky. The sky, in turn, looked at me and asked me if I felt lucky.

Well do ya, punk? Do ya?

I did not. Something about discretion and valor, and how guys who know how to read maps live longer. I sketched out a moderately doable route that would link up with the alternate and took a jeep trail off the ridge that moment. I was immediately back in forest and relative safety. Any regrets I may have had on not sumitting were softened by the loud, consistent thunder that started up behind me. Screw that, I thought. 

Which is not say that it was all smooth sailing. My jeep road faithfully followed its mapped route for about half a mile, then experienced the joys of independence and started going in a totally new, unmapped direction. I responded by traversing across a wicked steep slope cross country, coming across an abandoned mineshaft in the doing. Totes routine, right?

 

An hour of hard buahwacking later, Inwas back on the route, which is to say I was bushwacking down a drainage my map suggested I bushwhacked down. But I t was green and beautiful, and there were plenty of game trails. 

Then, suddenly, there was an old Wedgewood stove and a metal box of a building. It looked a bit like the trailers sheep herders use, which themselves look a bit like covered wagons. But this one hadn't been used in a long, long time.

 

That was just the beginning. As I walked further down the drainage, I saw all sorts of evidence of failed human occupation. There were a lot of old mining contraptions, including an excavator that looked like it might start if you tried. There were sluice boxes still in place in the creek. And then there was the ruin of an old brick building, vaguely church-like, crumbling in the sun at the edge of a meadow.

 

I kept on walking. More mining stuff, all looking like it had been left at shift's end in 1970 and then never touched again. It was awesome and creepy.

The route left the drainage, much to my regret, and started a tour of old defunct logging roads. I suspect I wasn't always on public land, ahem,  but I didn't see anyone and sure didn't disturb anything. Below me on a grassy plain, I could see Eagle Nest, my goal. The trail took me there, stitching roads together with short hops of cross-country, culminating in a mile-long trip down a brushy dry creek bottom. 

The creek crossed under a highway and I climbed up through thorns to the road. Three miles of road walk later, I was walking through Eagle Nest. I saw a hotel and bar built in the nineteenth century, asked about prices, and moved in when I realized it was cheaper than the Econolodge. Meal, laundry, and shower, and then to an crumpled mess on the bed. Underslept and overworked, I barely made it under the covers.

Hair Club for Mountains I

June 4 

The good single track I'd been so enjoying the day before gave way to snow within half an hour of leaving camp.

Snow. More slow, wet, challenging snow.

I 'be been thinking a lot about this lately: I'm

about two weeks to a month early to this trail. This Is mostly because of the big snow year. But as a question of preference, I'll carry water through a desert over postholing through snow. Deserts are easy -- just carry more water. But this constant snow challenge is unpredictable, both in the immediate and medium terms. With every step, snow is unpredictable because it may Kenny's not hold your weight. The mental and physical energy of bracing yourself to fall through the snow's crust like it's a trap door is exhausting. But snow also means you naught slow down to a mile an hour, making it hard to know how far you can make it in a day.

I navigated up the drainage through forested snowfields, then through exposed ones. As I approached the ridge, above treeline now, I saw a cleft in a rock face and just decided to climb it hand over hand. At this point, a little light rock climbing was preferable to that snow.

 

The ridge was alpine tundra, half-covered in snow. I layered up for warmth, wind stripping all my heat away, and walked across the wide open spaces. The ridge opened into a Mesa, then narrowed into a knife edge, then opened again.

I smelled elk, and then saw them. Before I could help it, I'd scared a new mama elk away from her baby, young enough that it couldn't follow and stayed on the ground. A year or two ago Lily and I were charged by a cow elk trying to defend the herd's babies, so I gave the whole tableau a wide berth.

The trail dove off the side of the ridge into a bowl holding that same thick, deep, wet snow, not even softer in the day's heat. The bowl also held Heart Lake, a half-frozen glacial lake.

 

Just past the lake was Baldy Cabin, a stout little shack in good repair. I took a long look and the Pork and Beans in the cupboard but figured someone else needed it more than me. And J had so, so much food. I munched a Monster Size Slim Jim in what I hoped was a contemplative pose and struck out to get back up and out of the snowed-in bowl. 

The trail was visible under patches for about half a mile, then disappeared entirely. I have up on following it's route and just struck off cross-country to regain the ridge. It's something g I've been doing a lot of on this trip: Just figuring out where I need to be and walking there however I want. 

Back on the ridge, I crossed over Baldy Mountain, momentarily above treeline, and the started to make my way back down through the snow. There were hours of taking a heading, plunge-stepping through snowbanks and downed trees in that general direction, and then checking the GPS. 

Finally, below 10,000 feet, the snow abated and I followed the Gold Creek drainage, half on trail and half cross-country. There were various abandoned mine remnants, and the graffiti carved into the trees dates back to the 1930s.

The trail bottomed out at Cabresto Creek, and I turned right into a dirt road. My stress level dropped as I realized I'd be walking on a nice, smooth road the rest of the day. I walked up stream, trading Cabresto Creek for Bitter Creek, then following Comanche Creek into a beautiful valley overhung with cliffs. 

Well after dark, I passed an abandoned hunting lodge, now left open to the rats and teenagers. I poked my head in and but did not linger. I'm not overly superstitious, but I also don't make a habit of nocturnal loitering in abandoned lodges with massive stone fireplaces in remote mountain valleys. Because it's incredibly creepy, that's why. Now I was in the position of needing a place to sleep, but all of the flat land being occupied by an archetypal haunted lodge. 

I climbed up onto a ridge and found a flattish spot in the pines. As I fell asleep, I could see lightning illumination the sky further down the valley.

Elephants and porcupines

June 3 

The trail takes the road out of town, past vacation houses and RV parks along the river. Pretty soon I was up on  utility roads along the right side of the road, past the sewage treatment plant. Then an old officially-signed dirt-bike track started to take me up the side of a ridge through dry, open ponderosa forest.

There hadn't been any dirt bikes on that trail in a while -- lots of downed trees barred the way. I was pretty suprised; in California, there is such an appetite for motorcycle trails that someone would have cleaned it up. Maybe they've got better places to ride out here, I thought.

That first part of the day would certainly have been easier on a dirt bike. The trail climbed relentlessly over loose rocks and soil, up over 2000 feet. At the top was Elephant Rock, a series of 15' tall jutting blades of yellow rock.

 

I got just enough time to think "nifty" to myself before the trail drops precipitously off the other side of the ridge, just as far down as I had climbed up.

The trail hit valley bottom and bounced up onto another ridge, this one much greener. Several SUVs with Texas plates passed me, and in an hour I saw why: A largish man-made alpine lake with good camping. Good fishing, too, from the lurking shadows of trout I could make out. 

I pried myself away and continued up a stream valley. It was some of the first really nice single-track trail I'd seen on the Loop -- most other places that should have had great trail had been under snow. There were even other hikers here! Green, shady forests with meadows letting in the light. I spotted some movement off to my left and was surprised to see a porcupine.

 

I hiked through twilight and into ful dark before setting up my tarp right by the stream on a bed of pine needles.

Red River rest

June 2

Another breakfast, another smothered breakfast burrito. Green chile is such a flexible term that it seems to be meaningless. This morning's was in the camp where they believe it's sausage gravy with diced green chile suspended in it. Tasty, but odd.

By the time I hit the sidewalk out the restaurant, the bright morning sky was already beginning to be dotted with clouds, and the wind was picking up. I stopped into an outfitter and got a balaclava and a cheapo low-quality down vest on summer clearance. I'd no appetite for sleeping cold again, and the trail was going up high in this next hitch.

In the grocery store, enthusiasm wrestled caution and won. I walked out with a lot more food than I needed, a direct reaction to having walked into town with literally only peanuts to eat. 

Outside, I sat on the ubiquitous unoccupied bench that all grocery stores seem to feature. Field stripping my food -- removing excess packaging and sometimes repackage in ziplock -- I convinced myself to give up a couple things. Wouldn't be needing all ten packets of oatmeal from that box, after all. When I'd got my kit together, I tossed the garbage and stood there with a little box of extra food. What to do with it? 

An older woman walked by with what looked like her grandson, and I asked her is she wanted the food. I was pretty sure it would weird her out; the unintended implication might be that she needed charity.

But no. She looked at me, accepted it, and thanked me. "You just have extra and want to find someone who can use it," she said. Exactly, I replied.

By this time it was early afternoon the white fluffy clouds had turned into leaden hammer-of-the-gods clouds, When they broke into a sudden downpour of pea-sized hail, I did the brave thing and got a hotel for the night. I spent the rest of my day soaking in the hot tub and watching baseball. 

When night cane, I walked down to the bar to see a live rockabilly band in color-coordinated outfits play to an audience of ten, including the lone, hula-hooping dancer. I'm not too much of a dancer, but even if I had been, she was kind of taking all the oxygen from the room. I walked back to bed.

One of those days

June 1

I ate rare flank steak and eggs for breakfast (included with my one-per center mega-room) and packed up. Today was Wheeler Peak, the highest point on my trail (and the highest point in the state). It was going to be an alpine day, I knew.

Per my usual habit, I took the wrong road out of town, climbing a good 800 feet up the wrong mountain. I backtracked and followed a maze of dirt roads up a drainage toward Williams Lake, passing weird little houses and condo build sites along the way.

 

As soon as the road stopped and the trail began, everything was snow again. Hmm. I climbed up past the lake, and up steeply through forest. Wheeler Peak wasn't far -- just a few miles -- but it was still thousands of feet up from me.

I cleared treeline and saw steep snowfields above. Okay, on with the crampons and up I go. It was hard going, very steep and pretty darn cold. The elevation and elevation gain had me stopping every thirty teps or so. But the visual rewards were intense, as Wheeler Peak to my left was balanced by the high, snowy ridge to my right.

 

Podcasts are a very important part of my mental health when I hike. Probably my favorite is the Trail Show, which is a pretty hilarious podcast in which a bunch of long-distance hikers, friends of mine, get plastered on beer and talk about hiking. I was merrily listening to D-low talk about a trail in Peru he had hiked like ten years ago when they got to their "mailbag" segment. To my utter disbelief, my sweet Lily had sent in an on-the-dedication to me. Her letter stated that she would be on a research vessel and I would be hiking, so she wanted to use this podcast to say she loved me. It was the sweetest thing, and gave me the strength to keep plowing up the hill. P-mags, D-low, POD and Disco; Thank you! Lily: Thank you! Everyone: Listen to the Trail Show and GET ON THE TRAIL!

With fresh legs, I passed a group of young college-age men. No word of a lie, my pride loved the fact that I could blow them away. I kick-stepped my way up to the summit ridge, actually trying to stay on snow, as my crampons made it so easy to navigate. It was early, and the day was cold, so the snow was still nice and firm. Good snow.

After hitting the summit ridge, it was just a quick, breathless jaunt up to the summit proper. A group of state high point Peak naggers was there and took my picture. I took a lol at the weather that was starting to form and thought it'd be prudent to get the hell back down off the rock before any lightning storms found me. Man, lightning at elevation is terrifying!

 

The route took me further along the summit ridge, picking my way between unfortunately rotten snowfields on the eastern side of the ridge and rocky cliffs on the western. I eventually bombed off to the west and through a little basin. On the far side, I attained a little grassy ridge and spotted something moving about 100 yards away. Hey, I thought, those deer look odd.

They're not deer, I realized. They're bighorn sheep, including one really majestic ram.

 
It was a scene of great peace and dignity. I felt like I was being rewarded for being out there; I felt like I was winning. Snow, summit, bighorn, I wondered what else was going to happen today. It seemed like one of those days I have every few years in the mountains, days with so many events packed into one revolution of the earth that it stretches credulity. I had a day like that in 2011, on the CDT, when I herded elk down a valley, saw grizzly bears mating, and then almost got swept away during a river crossing. What's next?

Next, it turned out, was the thunderstorm that had been flirting with me for the better part of the day. To my relief, it hit when I was under forest cover. To my dismay, that forest cover held 100% snow cover as well. To my further dismay, the storm dumped hail on me for a full hour. Much of my afternoon was spent slogging my way through a trackless forest, hail in my face, deafening thunder and pee-your-pants lightning in the air above. 

The storm passed as I approached a pass into the next drainage. What, my goodness, what will be next?

Next was a super-steep sketchy descent into the Goose Creek drainage. The trail, which I am sure was nicely switchbacked, was hidden under a snowfield too steep for me to safely navigate. I took a few minutes to plan a route down, during which time a coyote came out of some bushes in the basin below. He looked up at me with a pretty clear "what the hell do you think you are doing?" pose and then trotted off down the drainage. Hey, Mr. Coyotr, I really don't know. At this point, I am just along for the ride.

I plunge-stepped down through some scree until I judged the snowslope to be safe enough to glissade (read: slide on my butt) down. Down in the basin, I looked for a trail and found none. Maybe there's a trail in the upper Goose Creek basin, but damned if I could find it.

The descent down the drainage was more cross-country through the snow. I was now bone-tired, and every deadfall and brushy obstacle seemed to sap another pint of my reserves. Below 10,000 feet, the snow started to clear, but I still couldn't find the trail. I'd find trail, but it would rapidly become clear that it had been abandoned, perhaps some remnant of earlier days. I eventually just roughed it out cross-country next to the creek, or even by walking down the creek itself. Heck, my feet weren't going to get any wetter.

And then, finally, a gloriously clear tread appeared. My mind released a hold of stress I hadn't even known it was carrying: I was going to make it down. The land became deeply fragrant with the smell of spring, of wet earth and fresh wood.

The trail bottomed out on the road into Red River, a little ski town. I walked into town, ate a steak, and got a room. Only 23 miles. Or, you know, a lifetime's worth of work and memories.

Real snow

May 31

There's nowhere to get a good hearty breakfast in Questa, but there is a gas station where a surly old man will give you a guilt trip for taking the last breakfast burrito in the warmer, and isn't that just as good? I sat at a veteran's memorial and munched my burrito, pondering all the men from Questa who'd died in Vietnam. It was a very good place, Questa, but it was nota large or affluent-seeming village. Many of the houses were falling down, and there were cattle grazing in several fields within the town. What a cost it must have been, I thought, to lose those members of the community.

The route out of town was the road out of town, Highway 38. I pounded down the pavement through a light drizzle. The weather just wouldn't cooperate. This is supposed to be a dry time of year, but I'd either gotten or been threatened by moisture pretty much every day. I stopped at a campground and had a cup of coffee, using supplies sent to me by Liz "Snorkel" Thomas, a long-distance hiker, writer, and friend. (She's doing a piece on coffee while camping, and I'm her field reviewer.) After making coffee, drinking it, and writing a fiercely negative review, I moved down the road.

It took a long, long time. I passed several signs of the closed molybdenum mine, including a creepy tower perched on the side of the canyon.

 

Haunted castle, anyone?

I finally reached the trailhead for the Columbine trail, and started up a beautiful canyon. 

Different ranges have different feels, a different sense of what for lack of a better term I guess I would call terroir. Yes, that sounds really stuck up. But the mix of air temperature, soil, vegetation and elevation I creates a distinct feeling in every mountain range I have ever been in. This range felt like the Trinity Alpa, my all-time favorite range. Couldn't tell you just why. But it was beautiful. The creek rushed by, the aspen's fresh leaves, and little pocket meadows brightened the forest. 

Then the snow started. First isolated snow banks, the snow coverage on most of the ground, then I was just walking in snow. It was slow going, and steep. I got out my crampons and strapped them on; half an hour later, I had to use my ice axe during a sketchy traverse. 

Huh, this is real snow, I thought. I tried not to think about what that meant for the rest of my hike, which will frequently get above 12,000 feet.It took me forever, but I finally topped out on a pass between the Columbine and Gavilan drainages. Downhill was easier, as I could plunge-step my way down the banks. Still, it was twilight when I finally landed back on the road. I hiked down the road into the Taos Ski Village, and realized that my whole day of hiking had only gotten me around 15 miles. That's not so auspicious, I thought.

But the Loco Moco at the ski village was great, and I got an absurdly nice room for what seemed an absurdly low rate in a hotel at the village. Like there's-a-candleholder-in-the-jacuzzi-bathtub nice. It was all kind of lost on me, though, as I passed out to a dead exhausted sleep.

Rio Redux

May 30

I was thoroughly refreshed after a good night's  sleep among the juniper. The morning took me along the base of big hills. Ahead, I could see the Sangre de Cristos looming. I could see sunlight reflecting off the roofs of Questa, the town I'd be resupllying in that evening. 

What I could not see was the Rio Grande, as it was hidden deep within its canyon. Today I'd cross the Rio for the second time, and the prospect had me pretty nervous. The first crossing had been challenging but doable, but it had been further downstream, where the river is wide and deep. My concern was that it would be rapids here. If I couldn't cross, I'd have to hike an extra 17 miles to get to a bridge, and then 17 miles back to the trail.At the rim, past a confusing sign ordering me to read my special trout-water proclamation, I peered down. Some rapids, yes. A stretch of pretty flat water too. Hmm. I polled my inner danger barometer, and found that today, adventure was a winner. Let's do this!

 

I picked my way down to the river, avoiding some poison oak along the banks. There was a nice fifty-foot stretch of fast but flat water; that would have to be enough to get me across. I found a nice sunny spot, assembled my paddle, inflated my raft, and tossed my pack inside. A couple deep breaths and then Inwas out into the current.

Getting out into the middle of the river was easy, as the current drew me in. Getting to the other side took a bit longer, but it worked. By gum, it worked! I kind of can't believe my crazy packraft plan actually panned out.

 

I started to pick my way downstream, as my map showed a trail up out of the canyon in less than a mile. But the travel along the canyon bottom was rough, very brushy, so I just climbed up to the rim. 

Quick political aside: This canyon and the surrounding land is all a National Monument. The Rio Grande del Norte Monument is, in fact, one of the monuments that our current minority-rule junta has said they want to open to development. If you are reading this, please go and comment that you'd like this natural gem to retain its protection! The danger is real with this administration. They have made it abundantly clear that they do not give a rats ass about conserving our natural heritage. They may not care about public comment, either, but we can at least try. Opening this to development would not bring lots of jobs; there's abundant grazing all around it, and with the closing of a nearby molybdenum mine, the resource extraction industry has just given up on this land. It's just a sop to the paramilitary Bundy dickheads.

Ahem, where were we? Right, up on the eastern rim of the canyon. I followed the rim for a mile or so, then picked up a dirt road into the hills. I tried the door of an odd little brick building at the side of the road, and it opened. Inside was a water spigot. I felt a little like a cat burglar, except I was not at all sneaky and I was just stealing water. 

The road turned into a trail, and the trail took me up over a ridge and down into Questa. I rolled into town, nabbed a mean green chile burger at the Wildcat's Den, and got a room. Laundry, shower, grocery resupply and feeding took up the rest of the day. After dark, I walked over to the Stop n Go, a convenience store-cum-bar, and played a couple racks of pool by myself. In case you're ever there: The copy of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk in the jukebox doesn't work.

A day in the wasteland

May 29

I woke after a bad night's sleep. There had been a rock right there where my hipbone met the ground, which is the biggest pea for this little princess. I ate, packed up, and dragged my ass along the route.

I followed the canyon for another few miles, walking along the rim or occasionally dropping g down into it for a quarter mile. A huge solo mountain, also named San Antonio, loomed ahead of me. At its base, I tacked right and started a pretty vigorous cross-country climb right up it's side. A couple thousand feet higher, I crested a saddle on the summit ridge and dropped down the other side, stopping to collect water from a spring bubbling out of the ground. A dirt road appeared and I took it, all the way down into the plains on the other side of the mountain. As I approached the bottom, I passed several signs telling me I had just been trespassing. My map showed it all as public property...

Once down on the plains, I started a long hike through a flat, almost featureless sagebrush plain. My landmarks, usually a solar well or stock trough water source, were few and far between. So were stretches of two-track road. I gave up trying to follow the map's route and just took bearings toward the next checkpoint.

In the middle of the day, and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I came across thirty cows at a trough.

 

I kept going. The hours dribbled into the past, and I began to wonder if I was going to camp in this wasteland place. Pretty windy, and I wouldn't want to be stuck there in a thunderstorm, I thought. I picked up the pace.

Slowly, a couple hills began to appear in the distance. The sun was setting behind me as I got close to them. They had trees, and trees meant some shelter from the wind. It was with immense gratitude that I found a copse of junipers in the last light of the day. They formed a little hollow, carpeted with their needles and fragrant with their berries. I put out my ground cloth, made dinner, and passed out.

Just because you're bearanoid

May 28

Because I'd camped right on the ridge, the sun hit my tarp right at dawn. I was treated to a light display as the frost on the grass and my bag reflected crystalline. Time to make the donuts!

It was still a few miles to the Brazos Ridge Overlook and my reunion with the NNML, but they came easier. The snow and mud was frozen hard, keeping my footing secure and my feet dry. I hit the overlook by ten and gave a quick yip of joy. That had been a hard approach to the trail!

Back on the route, I rambled cross country along a ridge of frozen forests and meadows. The ground became really rocky, and then, at a high point in the ridge, I saw that someone had made a little tower out of the rocks.

 

But who and why? I mean, this is a remote spot -- an unnamed high spot on an remote, roadless, trailless ridge. It would have taken a lot of time to build that thing! Was it some artifact of Native American culture? A marker for the border of a ranch? A prank? Even more impressive, in terms of difficulty of construction, was the hole next to the tower.

 

Kind of a perfect metaphor for these mountains, I thought: The ridges lol impressive from afar, but the canyons blow you away once you're up close.

The route took me down the ridge and then through groves of aspen towards the head of a valley. As I lost elevation, everything got very green. It was nice hiking through the open forest, but my spider-sense started to tingle -- I had no visibility through the trees, and the forest felt very, very beary. Like a likely place to see a bear. 

I popped my earbuds out and started yelling my "hey bears," feeling kind of dumb for doing so. I mean, seeing a bear is mostly a matter of probability. I'd been in bear country for most of the trip. For that matter, I spent all last summer in bear country when hiking the PCT. But I hadn't actually seen one in a couple years. Meh, I'm just being bearanoid, I thought. Up ahead I could see the vivid green of the valley's meadow floor.

And then, up ahead, I saw a bear. Like not quite far enough away for comfort, either. It hadn't spotted or scented me, so I used the opportunity to back up another 30 feet or so. Then I yelled as loud as I could to alert the big guy -- and this was a pretty big bear, almost true black in color -- to my presence. 

It looked up at me, paused, and started to amble towards me.

This was not, I thought, a positive development. They're supposed to run away when you yell at them, you see. It's modern wilderness etiquette. The expression "my blood ran cold" really seems cliched until you've experienced it; but as my system flooded with adrenaline, I felt pretty icy. The bear went out of sight in a little depression in the slope, and I scooted off to the right as quick as I could, tossing glances behind my shoulder as I went. I circled around the head of the valley, spooking four or five elk in the process (thinking "cool guys, majesty of elk in nature, blah blah blah, will be impressed later, currently in flight or fight moment and unable to experience the sublime"). 

I never spotted the bear again. As the adrenaline wore off, it was replaced with elation. Man, nothing makes you feel alive like walking up on a bear! It's like fifteen roller coasters at once. I mean, I would have preferred to see it from a bit further off, but now that it was behind me, I was walking on clouds.

The sweetness of being alive was enhanced by the landscape as I walked down the valley. Rich green grasses were dotted with wildflowers and shaded by rock outcroppings and cliffs along the canyonside. I started to see people: a couple camping with their dog, several fishermen. It's Memorial Day weekend, I realized, and there's a trailhead nearby.

The route took me back down to an intersection with my old friend Road 87, which I'd been following or shadowing for days. Brett's map had me dive down into another canyon, flowing it as it became a tributary of the Rio San Antonio.

Rio, huh. I reflected on what a pain the Rio Pino had been. I didn't really want to face another sketchy river crossing. I gauged my risk-friendliness in the wake of my bear-enhanced morning and found it quite low. Maybe I'd take the road! I checked the maps and saw that I could hike down to a crossing of the San Antonio at the bottom of the range, where my route started to lead across a broad plain. Earbuds in, podcast on, and I was off.

There were a lot of people in pickups, driving the road for fun. Five or six miles in, I was hailed by an older guy solo car camping; he then started walking next to me.

He told me he had been an avid backpacker, and that he had "always liked hikers," he said. Probably harmless, I thought, but that phrasing was also really creepy. I didn't know what to do with him -- I hadn't asked him to walk with me, and I didn't really know what sort of conversation to strike up. There was something a bit too keen in his expression.

Bears may be terrifying, but it's the humans that are dangerous, I thought. I picked up the pace and he finally stopped.

Creepy!

Down at the base of the range, I crossed the San Antonio on a bridge, spying a beaver in a pool nearby. I followed the road until my route  veered off to the left, following the river's canyon. I passed an old farm, solitary in a meadow.

 

As light faded, I started to hunt for a campsite along the canyon rim. I kept passing up reasonable sites hoping for a bodacious one, with the predictable result that at 9 pm, I was kicking cow shit out of the way in the dark to make myself a spot in the brush to crash.

The Osier Narrow-Gauge Blues

May 27

One more morning in Chama, a town now visibly stirring into life. There were new places to eat breakfast, because restaurants were reopening after their 7-month hibernation. I tried the smothered breakfast burrito at the Boxcar Cafe -- good, but no match for the coffee shop in Jemez Springs. I think I'm becoming a connoisseur of such things.

I squared everything away in my pack, tucking the packraft and paddles down into the furthest recesses, and crossed the street from The Hotel to the train station.

Money for sale. Huh. 

The station was a bustling hub. A crowd munched free donuts and observed blessings for the train both Catholic and Native American. Thereupon followed a rendition of the national anthem that was heartfelt but atonal to the point of being artistically relevant as a modern composition. For once, Ramon was nowhere in sight.

I chilled out by a CDT Coalition booth staffed by a young woman named Cloud, their Gateway Community... Outreach Coordinator? Something like that. She confided to me that she was actually looking forward to an event in Rawlings, Wyoming, later that summer.

"They draw all these squares on a field and then put a cow out there. If the cow shits on your square, you win," she explained. I could see how that would be exciting, I agreed.

 

The call came to board, and I swung up into my car with my pack. It was, and I know what a little boy this makes me seem, so cool. Brass luggage racks, wooden floors, the iron railings on the walkways between cars -- the evidence of craftsmanship and work was everywhere on that thing. We started moving and I went back to the open-air gondola car, waving to the people parked along roadsides to snap pictures or just gawk. There were a lot of those people!

The valley spilled out to our right as we climbed, spewing great gouts of coal ash and smoke. We passed Cumbres Pass, then rolled down to the valley of the Rio Pino. It was wide, deep and fast.

 

This was a matter of more than intellectual concern to me, as I had to cross that river when I got to Osier, my stop. As such, the rest of the ride was -- for me -- a pretty anxious affair, lots of peering into the canyon and asking myself if I felt lucky. I'd need luck to ford that river, the luck of a great wide shallow ford, or a downed tree, or a long stretch of water flat enough to use the packraft.

At Osier, an old train stop that's now just a cafeteria in the middle of the wilderness, we were served meatloaf with instant gravy and powdered mashed potatoes. It wasn't great, but it beat a lot of airplane meals I've had, and there was coffee. I tanked up, looked for someone to say goodbye to,and  was met with the disinterested stares of about 100 fellow passengers idly wondering where exactly I thought I was going with that backpack. I trudged away from the dining hall down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill, I was confronted by the Pino -- just as fast, deep and rough as I could have feared. A mere twenty feet on the other side lay my access trail, and just six miles up it, the Loop itself. But I wasn't going to be able to get across those twenty feet. I glanced up at an ATV rider on a bluff above the river. He slowly shook his head no, and I followed suit. This time, the preferred route would not go.That put me back on the railroad tracks to Cumbres Pass, and then up the same road I'd hiked down. So much for shortcuts. It wasn't crazy far -- like ten miles -- but it was already into the afternoon. And I'd be hiking it this time, not riding it. 

 

Well, if it needs doing, then one must do it, I thought, and started walking back along the train tracks. I wasn't sure that my spontaneous rail-to-trail conversion was exactly legal, so I tried to keep just off the tracks proper. That, plus I didn't want to get smushed by a charming mechanical anachronism. I had to step well off the tracks twice to let trains pass, in fact. The passengers treated me pretty much like any other megafauna -- they pointed me out to their spouses and took pictures.

Couple hours later, I finally crossed the Pino on a low railroad trestle on a large meadow. From there I hoofed it cross-country back to the road and then hustled back to my trailhead. It was then back up through Apache Canyon and onto the ridge on Forest Service Road 87, topping out as the sun set. It got very cold, as evenings at 10,000 feet usually do, and I found a little stand of pines to set my tarp up in. I hadn't even quite made it back to the Loop, I thought. Nothing to be done for it, I reflected, except get a good night's sleep.

Chama interlude

May 24-26

I woke up in a quaint little railroad-themed hotel in the not-very-quaint little railroad-themed town of Chama. I popped my shoes on and stepped out into a bright, cool morning to get some breakfast. On the street, I turned back to look at my hotel.

The Hotel, it was labeled. Beneath that, in smaller type, was an advertisement:

Money For Sale!

What, I wondered, would you buy money with? Money, one suspects. If so, then wouldn't it be a barter of same for same? And in any transaction where you are buying money and both parties are using the same currency, isn't one person the obvious loser? Like if I buy a dollar for eighty cents, I'm pretty clearly making a sucker out of the seller.

Mysteries!

Turns out the railroad that can take me back to the trailhead isn't running until Saturday morning, so I either had to hitch back out to Cumbres Pass and hike 17 miles back in to the NNML, or wait a few days. I consulted my two childhood friends, Dan and James, over Facebook Messenger.

Dan: "If it means a chance to ride on a narrow-gauge railroad, I think it's a no-brainer."

James: "Try to find some paperbacks."

They know me so well.

So it is that I stayed three days in Chama. Onthe first day I took care of my gear -- I picked up my packraft at the Post Office, as the next stretch of trail includes the second crossing of the Rio. I mended my down jacket and a glove that had a busted zipper and swam, respectively. I bought my food for the next leg and packed it up while watching Gunsmoke and Bonanza on TV. 

I ran into the hikers I'd passed earlier -- Snow, Thunder, Tennesteve and Fun Size, and we walked through town together. Thunder stopped us as we walked past my hotel to ponder how money could be for sale, then we got fudge. It felt so damn good to be around other people again. 

I excused myself to eat and catch up on my blog, then met them again for a drink that evening. At the bar was a stout little man I'd seen the day prior when I first got to town and ate a meal. He'd introduced himself as Ramon -- "people call me Rambo" -- and I'd decided that he looked more like a Ramon to me. 

I nodded to him, he blinked, and then he ignored me and went back to his succession of Michelob Ultras.

We finished our drinks and left.

***

Day two, I met more hikers at the local restaurant/bar/hotel -- seems like there were quite a few CDT northbounders collecting in town. Everyone discussed their snow strategies: Snowshoes and ice axe? Snow and Thunder were getting skis sent in. Fun Size was looking at an alternate route. I saw one guy putting on his backpack and his game face to hitch out: axe, crampons, snowshoes and grim determination all lashed in place. Fortune favors the brave, buddy! 

I spent most of the day writing blog entries and doing gear repair. My down jacket's zipper was broken, and my gloves had busted a seam, so I applied about a yard of dental floss and the whip stitch to bring everything back up to snuff. My gloves now looked they belonged to a crust pink with OCD, but they would hold. 

In the evening, I grabbed a burger and a beer at the bar next door to the hotel. Of course Ramon was there, chasing Crown Royal with Ultras. This time, he was a bit more loquacious. He didn't remember me, but he did engage with me, telling me that the Raiders belong in Las Vegas, which he considered the best city on Earth. He had been a wild young general contractor with many girlfriends and a penchant for fast living, he confided. 

He had a pal at the bar, an older Hispanic gentleman. The gentleman bought me a beer, and then I returned the favor, and then we were both pretty loquacious ourselves. He had a narrative of uncontrollable immigration that I found fascinating.

"Now, I got nothing against them," he said. "Many of them are friends. But we have so damn many moving in, we're losing our culture, our sense of who we are. And they take all the jobs." I nodded. 

"Yes," he said. "We've always had white people here. But now there are just too many of them."

I love New Mexico.

***

Friday, last day in town, and I was ready to get out. I checked through my gear again, then finally followed Dan and James' advice and got a paperback, some old detective novel from the 40s they were throwing away at the library. It was a good way to while away a day, and it occurred to me that I couldn't remember the last time I'd intentionally "wasted" a day on a non-productive, non-active kind of leisure. It was harder to do than I would have guessed; my brain kept prodding me to weed the garden or something.

In the evening, I walked down to the other end of town to check out a classic rock cover band at the town's second bar and restaurant. Two guys kind of wheezed their way through some Boston and Doors numbers, I had a second dinner and some beers. And I of course smiled to Ramon, who was obviously in attendance, this time in a humorously oversized cowboy hat (but still the same sleeveless shirt). He had once again forgotten me, and just responded with that mole-like blink of his. In retrospect, think he may have been a leprechaun, or maybe a duende.

I settled the tab, buying Ramon a drink before I went. It's good policy to have leprechauns on your side. I walked back through a bitter cold, starlight night, and climbed into bed.

Money for sale, I thought as I drifted off. What can it mean?