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.