The sunrise tempted me to sit still and watch, but I couldn’t cover miles without walking. The day was an absolute gift of fascinating terrain. As I descended multiple mesa walls to the very dry river bottom of Arroyo Chico and climbed up the opposite side of equally tiered mesas, I passed through different vegetation zones.
Hookers evening primroses dotted one of the layered mesas; forests of cholla cactus filled another. I followed rock cairns as I fought the wind. In rock-less sandy areas, cairns changed to white-tipped stakes driven into the ground. On the far side of the dry riverbed, there were white sand verbena, and throughout the day I saw penstemon, phacelia, spectacle pod, short yuccas, claret cactus, and an orange mallow, much smaller in dry New Mexico than its California cousins on the PCT.
Besides the ever-present turkey vultures, I saw quail and an interesting bird with a call similar to a meadowlark. The tightly coiled rattlesnake was a little more exciting. No rattle was raised, its body tightly curled in the cold wind. He flicked his tongue at me as if to say, "Go away, it's too cold to bite you today." I took his picture and gave him a wide berth.
The main attraction was the rocks. The trail wound in, around, and steadily upward through all those wonderful walls of mesas. I was fascinated by wind-sculpted rock. An under layer of sandy rock had eroded first, leaving a harder cap on a column, as if it were a Corinthian column transplanted half way around the globe.
Pockets and holes in ledges of rock invited my imagination to see castles, lairs for wildlife, or the homes of some imaginary earlier, shorter human beings. Besides the fantasy-inspiring and ever-changing rocks, there were lovely grand views of Cabezon and other basaltic plugs in that beautiful, remote and interesting valley.
The weather wasn’t as beautiful. It wasn’t the day for solar power. By 10:00 big black clouds formed all over the grand valley. I could personally guarantee that some rain hit the valley floor in the afternoon. Hail, too. Some areas had a considerable downpour, and I was a little unnerved to hear rolling thunder directly overhead. I was walking in open areas with nothing higher than a juniper or two dotting the landscape. My main problem was the wind. It blew quite hard, usually from the side and occasionally head on. It takes energy to walk in high winds, and I didn't make very good time. When I reached the road by 6:30, TOB and David were waiting for me.
David worked at REI and had volunteered to ride along to the trail crossing, knowing exactly where it was, though he couldn’t clearly show it to us on any highway map. He was another long-distance hiker yearning for the trail, sharing tips about light-weight gear. I jumped in the car for a rest, to organize my gear from the resupply box, and to eat my dinner. My timing was good; it started to rain.
We chattered a mile a minute. I was happy to hear that TOB and Jan would be able to join me in the section past Cuba for some shorter mileage days.
Daylight wouldn’t last long, so I left my angels, David and TOB, heading out again into the wind. Just short of a mile, I found a sheltered spot for my tent at the side of a juniper. Although I could have done without the high winds, the day had far exceeded my expectations for beauty and interest, my favorite day in all of New Mexico.
Queen of the Universe
The next day, too, was beautiful, but tiredness affected my enthusiasm. I mentally sang songs to keep up my pace across the flat area before Deadman Peaks. After Deadman, I walked from mesa edge to mesa edge followed by even more trail along the tops of mesas, viewing Cabezon until I crossed to a different mesa's edge, overlooking a highway running toward Cuba.
Clouds built up, and I could see areas all around me drenched with thunderstorms and ahead, a striking mesa built in terraces of rock. As I trudged along among the rocks, sometimes walking on smooth, but not slippery, slabs of sandstone, a sudden impromptu waterfall cascaded from a ledge. It was pretty, but it was also indicative of the dangers of flash floods. Too tired to make a 15-mile-day, I didn’t make it to Jones Spring.
Stopping 2.5 miles short, finding a campsite wasn’t easy. I finally found a mostly flat, very sandy spot sheltered by junipers. The rain had lessened to just a few sprinkles, and I managed to get the tent up and me inside, still dry, a feat on wet sand. Wet sand also made stably staking the tent a challenge, even with big rocks piled on top of tent stakes. The wind gusting past the junipers battered the tent walls, and I had to reset my stakes more than once.
In the morning dropping down to Jones Spring, I picked up water for the rest of the day. The water looked clear, and I used the Steripen, (I ALWAYS treat my water) but it tasted vaguely soapy. I was glad I usually drank it with flavoring, tea or Cytomax.
Following a long flat section of sagebrush, the next mesa was formidable. It was only a 300-foot elevation gain up Mesa Portales, but the trail wound beside massive gray rock formations, down and up gullies of loose, sliding dirt, up very steep switchbacks, and over a few places that required hands as well as feet, handholds and footsteps carved in sandstone for a few steps.
The afternoon trail wasn’t as exciting, sandy paths on mesa’s edges with great views. Imagine walking laboriously over dry sandy beaches. Finally reaching the hard-packed dirt road, my feet didn't like that much either. I was tired. I was too far behind schedule and too tired to complete five miles of road walk into Cuba. I just hoped to reach the highway and hitch a ride. I would have to pick up the skipped section another year. While 13 miles was doable, 18 wasn’t.
Finding shade, I sat to give my feet a rest and have a snack before the last push to the highway. Across the open valley, I watched a dump truck go down a parallel road. After a short while the dump truck came back on the road near me.
The driver got out and politely introduced himself as David Cordoba. He’d helped hikers in the past and told me a wonderful tale about bringing hot water and a tub for a bath to an Englishman on the trail a few years ago. He keeps his eye out for hikers, giving water or rides if needed. David was a gem. I could tell he thought he might be threatening to a lone woman hiker, as he told me those tales at a polite, reserved distance. I appreciated his thoughtfulness and loved his stories.
Hearing my plan to walk to the highway and hitch a ride into Cuba, he offered to take my pack, dump his last load of dirt, (he was working for BLM on a land-reclamation project) and wait for me at the highway. So I walked the last mile free and easy with just my poles. And I got to ride in a dump truck, which was way cool. Dump trucks are very tall, and the cab in which I sat as queen of the universe towered above the cars that passed us.
For my delightful day in Cuba, I had a large room with TV, microwave, refrigerator, and a very comfortable bed. The Korean woman at the motel was especially helpful with filling any of my needs, giving me soap for laundry and driving me to the laundromat, where I met the cousin of my dump truck chauffeur.
Mostly, I ate. For lunch I had half a rotisserie chicken, half a can of green beans, half a cantaloupe and three cinnamon rolls, and I didn’t feel overly full. Dinner was the same, with the substitution of a pint of ice cream for a cinnamon roll, and the addition of a bottle of chocolate milk. Hiker hunger is an amazing thing.
Company
The evening was made perfect when Gail, the Washington State hiker whom I’d met on the AT near Screw Auger Falls in Maine, checked in. She was a couple years younger than me, a much stronger hiker, and the first hiker besides TOB I’d seen on the trail since the Gila River.
TOB and Jan drove up from Albuquerque, and we headed out of Cuba together. Gail would catch up with us in another day. After hiking alone for so long, it felt like a party. The day was beautiful, and we were happy chattering together.
Road walking was faster than trail for old ladies. (TOB and I were the old ladies, Jan considerably younger.) The last two miles went more slowly as we gained elevation, the weather clouding up with big black clouds and rumbling thunder. We donned rain gear, and the raindrops stopped, but we didn't complain. Reaching the trailhead, we found water with plenty of time to set up camp, take baths, and
wash socks. It was so very nice to have company.
On a beautiful blue-sky morning, we wound our way up Rito de Los Pinos, a cheerful, bubbling stream with pools and waterfalls. New Mexico continually amazed me with its great variety of terrain and vegetation. I’d walked through the Chihuahua desert in the south, climbed a 10,000-foot mountain, forded the beautiful Gila River hundreds of times, walked high grasslands, seen mesas with wind and water-sculpted rock, and now found mountains not dissimilar from those in Colorado or Washington State.
I’d walked over paved roads, dirt roads, cross country scrub, graded trail, and trail unseen, sand and rock, sandstone and granite, high desert, and now, lush, well-watered mountains. All that, and I’d skipped part of New Mexico in its mid-section to await for me the next year.
Climbing into San Pedro Park, which got 35 inches of rain a year, flowers were blooming: lupine, white and purple violets, red columbine, white and yellow marsh marigolds, valerian and others whose names I didn’t know. Passing beautiful meadows after Rito de Los Pinos, we walked along the Rio Puerco.
As skies changed to threatening clouds and the temperature dropped, I wore my fleece, and we put on pack coves and raingear, catching up with Gail, who had passed us early in the morning. Camping a mile or so before our destination, Gail had already hung her hammock. (Gail, and a number of other long-distance hikers prefer hammocks to camping on the ground in a tent.)
We were over 10,000 feet, with snow patches along the trail, when we were confronted with a very large meadow whose recently melted snow had left a sloppy marsh. TOB and I had very cold and wet feet in the ankle-deep water of the meadow though Jan managed to keep dry with high Goretex boots.
Passing Rio Vacas, we went up the hill and into the trees. It started to rain and sleet just as we were setting up our tents next to snow banks. It would be a cold night.
The weather forecast was for sunny mornings with thunderstorms in the afternoon, but we woke to the sound of thunder, 34 degrees inside the tent with ice on the outside. After we started walking, snow pellets the size of peas began to fall. I sang Walking in a Winter Wonderland as the ground was coated white. Thunder followed lightning within a count of two or three as we walked through high open meadows.
Then we misplaced the trail or the trail misplaced us, and we walked in a very large circle always making right-hand turns. But the GPS said we were to the left of the trail. Huh? The second time around, we took more time and found the correct trail. I felt a little better about losing the trail when I read Wolf's description admitting the area was confusing. I also figured out we had indeed made right turns, but from the wrong trail which was left from the right trail. I thought I knew my right from my left.
When the sun eventually came out, we had a long break while TOB and Jan cooked a late breakfast, and we dried out tents and sleeping bags. The day proceeded with more clouds, more thunder, more rain, and some dry times, too. Our destination was by a bubbling brook, a couple thousand feet lower than the night before, but it was still pretty cold. We hoped the next day would bring sunshine.
It was 37 degrees, and our shoes were still wet when we woke up. Leaving first in search of sun, I found some not far down the trail. Standing in the sunshine warmed my feet, and TOB and Jan caught up and enjoyed the sun, too.
TOB left us at the road as she had planned. She would make her way to the highway, hitch back to Cuba and meet us again around a few mountains before Ghost Ranch. Jan, a strong hiker 20 years younger, hiked with me. Happy to find Fuerte Spring had water, we watered up and found a lovely meadow for our tents. Dinner over, we snuggled down listening to an owl talk to its friends.
Frost coated our tents in the morning, and it was 35 inside. By the time we dried tents and bags in the sun, we didn't start walking until after 9:00. Our trail left the road in lots of blown-down trees and proceeded to disappear. We knew where we were, on a particularly steep-sided gulley with trail on one side and road on the other. We couldn’t see either.
Bushwhacking on steep slopes, we finally found the trail, which again became obscure, and finally, we found the road. All that effort would have been completely unnecessary if we had stayed on the road instead of trying to follow the trail. We were very frustrated and had wasted a lot of time and energy.
Finding the real trail to Ojitos Canyon, I was happy to reach Skull Bridge, though on very sore feet. I seemed to be trying for a case of plantar fasciitis on my left foot and scrambling up and down steep slopes chasing illusive trail had not helped. Although it had been fun to hike with Jan, I was very glad to be horizontal in my tent. Even at low elevations, it was cold in the morning, but the sun was on us before we left our campsite, walking the road along the Chama River.
Oops. I realized I’d given TOB the wrong road directions. But just as we sat down for mid-morning break, TOB drove by, cleverly having put together clues from the hike itinerary, finding us even without good directions. Jan was happy to see her, and so was I as I could then slack pack even if I lost my trail companion to the comforts of a car.
They drove by Gail up ahead and came back to tell me directions for the walk to Ghost Ranch. The cross-country section turned out to be much more pleasant than expected, carpets of daisies on the desert floor and many mariposa lilies, when I topped a rise and had lunch looking at the multicolored mesa cliffs near Ghost Ranch.
Tough Old Broad and Jan were a joy to hike with, and I sadly said good-bye as they drove away in the morning, also providing transportation to civilization for Snores, a young thru hiker. And Snores provided me with jerky from his resupply box when I found mine had gone bad. Amazing how things seemed to work out, although not always as planned.
I spent much of my zero day with Gail talking trail and sharing old Girl Scout stories. She loaned me her emergency beacon, hopefully NOT to use during my last stretch. She was also getting off trail at Ghost Ranch but would begin again in July from Rawlins, Wyoming, coming south through Colorado. Our paths could cross again in the fall. I then went into panic mode discovering my Steripen charging cord was missing, and I didn’t have enough iodine left to make it all the way to Cumbres. Gail helped me out again by giving me her Aqua Mira drops. Saved again.
Chapter 33 Northern New Mexico
After walking cross-country on a steep hillside north of Ghost Ranch, two thru hikers, Greg from Prudhoe Bay and Clermont from France, passed me. Walk the trail and see the world—or at least people from all over the globe.
Flowers of the day were stands of delightful wild blue Iris. Groves of pinion pine had been replaced by groves of aspen. Unfortunately, sitting under the aspen for dinner wasn’t a good plan as tent caterpillars dropped annoyingly from infested branches on and around me all the time I was eating.
I briefly saw Greg and Clermont again before they quickly outdistanced me. Seems 70-year-old ladies do not walk as fast as 20 or 30 somethings with testosterone. Following the trail on old, sometimes quite obscure, roads through beautiful, expansive high-mountain meadows punctuated with aspen and scrub oak, I was impressed with the green. More green than I’d seen in all the rest of New Mexico.
Green was accompanied by the yellow of dandelions. Yep, the same dandelions that grow in your lawn. In the wild, dandelions on the hillsides made lovely yellow carpets. Larkspur and iris added blue and purple to the palette. Pink bitterroot grew in the roadways, and the day ended with yellow glacier lilies in the old road and on the hillsides. I walked between 9,000 and 10,300 feet and camped by an open meadow.
In the cold morning, I stayed in bed and watched the sky lighten with a pink glow as the sun came up, the sun’s rays hitting the tent and warming it within 20 minutes. My hands were not even cold packing up.
Soon after leaving my campsite, I saw three elk. My trail meandered up and down and around the mountains, sometimes beside snow, sometimes beside flowers. Lunch was in an emerald-green meadow with a bubbling stream.
Reaching Rio Vallecito shortly after 6:00, I had plenty of time to bathe a
nd have a needed wash of undies, bra, shirt, and socks. Lying in the darkness of the tent, I listened to the river that would be my morning ford, the log bridge, tipped by a spring flood, lay at an unwalkable 45-degree angle.
After my ford, the trail warmed me by presenting me a thousand feet of elevation gain rather quickly, the second thousand feet more gradually but steadily up. I walked through beautiful mountains with rolling hills, green meadows, aspen, fir, ponderosa pine and spruce.
Reaching Hopewell Lake I was greeted by Sara, the camp host. She had my resupply box and graciously gave me fresh water, an avocado, and a Clementine while my dinner hydrated. Although there was no cell service, she arranged to get a message out for me. I was a day ahead of schedule and hoped my pickup driver could meet me a day early. I had accumulated extra trail bars I didn’t want to carry, so I left them for Sara to enjoy.
Three elk crossed the trail as I went up Jawbone Mountain to camp at 10,100 feet, among Glacier lilies and violets. It was too cold for a bath, but I managed a quick wipe down for legs and feet. My feet received priority care, even in the cold.
No early sun shone on me, and both tent and bag were dewy wet. But “What ya gonna do?” I packed up anyway. The day was almost all trail, the first part technically road, but sometimes so faint no track showed. After good water above Jawbone tank, I came to large, open meadows set at right angles to each other, with snow on mountain ranges around them.
I prefer western trails to the AT for the wide-open spaces and grand views. I suppose that is why I like the desert, too. Although I wouldn’t have liked the desert in summer heat. Walking the length of each meadow added pleasant miles. Walking on roads through woods was nice, too, but my aching body parts distracted me there. Walking through open country, gazing great distances, kept my eyes feasting, and my aching body parts diminished in importance.
Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76 Page 29
