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?