Part 3 is continued hiking of the White Mountains Wilderness Crest Trail and summiting Nogal Peak plus visiting springs, exploring natural history and, everyone's favorite: losing our trail and backtracking!
To review, the White Mountains Wilderness is part of the Sacramento Mountains and is about 50,000 acres within the 1.1 million acre Lincoln National Forest with the highest peak of Sierra Blanca at 11,973 feet above sea level (the summit of Sierra Blanca is actually just inside the Mescalerao Apache reservation and requires a permit to access).
As Jennifer noted in previous related posts, this range is typified by relatively high precipitation and relatively cool temperatures. As people who pay attention to obscure things such as soil - this is exciting. Very generally speaking, cool and moist is one way to get thick, dark topsoil. Another way is dominance of grasses. This area has both but it's a bit of an chicken-and-egg question: which came first, the grassland or the thick topsoil? People that study this stuff could have a week-long conference on the subject and leave in disagreement so I (Steve) will give my opinion, just for fun. I think it's a bit of both! In any event, it's cool to be on the top of a 10,000 foot mountain pass in New Mexico (commonly known to be "dry") and be walking through a lush grassland and along a trail that, where eroded, reveals thick dark topsoil up to one's knees. This is the stuff of eastern tall grass prairie fame. The take-home: learn as much as you can then prepare to be surprised!
Back to the scenery. We found a sweet base-camp on a narrow ridge that jutted out from the range westward towards the Tularosa Basin with views of lower foothills, the basin, lava flows, the San Andreas Mountains and, just beyond that, the famous Rio Grande rift valley that splits New Mexico down the middle and was a conduit for territorial explorers to reach and found the second oldest city in the U.S., Santa Fe, in 1607.
Our base-camp was amist the junipers on the narrow grassy ridge (near the center of the pic):
Preparing for a cool night by absorbing the last splendid rays of sun for the day:
Feet need warmth too!:
A final bit of time to contemplate our fortune for being able to be out here:
Camp:
The next morning we ate breakfast while enjoying views to the west and...
...to the east, into the interior of the wilderness.
We also got lucky and saw elk and heard their "bugling":
Our destination for today: Nogal Peak.
A short distance into today's hike brought us to a spring that was not flowing at a high rate so we explored around a bit for something better but, having found none, decided to...
....make a tiny rock dam and allow the trickle of water to impound to the extent that we could filter from it. "Necessity is the mother of invention," they say.
Soon we had splendid views of Nogal Peak. At just under 10,000 feet, it would get us high enough to take in expansive views of the region, we hoped.
Our route took us through whimsicle copses of oak...
...near wonderful wildflowers (desert trumpet here)...
...within view of horned lizards...
...past nectaring butterflies...
...ever-upwards, we were rewarded with expansive views to the east...
...and motivating glimpses of our quest:
By the time we'd reached the top of Nogal Peak, more clouds were quickly forming but we were able to take in a 360 degree panorama of epic SW US scenery.
We didn't want to leave...never do...but we had to because we don't belong here, except to visit.
But we were happy to find cool plants at every turn (Apache plume here)...
...take in wonderful views of earth and sky....
...break for tea!...
...observe nature's relationships....
...experience fall colors...
...and feel the gratification of a goal achieved and the intense exercise we got for free!
On our last day we had a grand plan to take a "short-cut" and see some different county. Well, as you might suspect, that got us quite a bit more unanticipated exercise not only from hiking back and forth looking for obscured trails but, after giving that up, back-tracking back up to the Crest Trail and hiking all the the back the way we came, including the 6 miles down Three Rivers Canyon. These things happen!
It did give us the opportunity so see some things we'd missed (due to clouds) on the way in:
The exceedingly pleasant rounded, grass-covered peaks, ridges and valleys that typify this range...
...sunshine!...
...and iconic groves of conifer and aspen...
This sort of experience gives us much opportunity to be grateful for our health and ability to physically visit such great natural places and also for the vision of those who conceived of protected wilderness and those who care for it on our behalf.
NM is a wonderful state with all kinds of terrain I've always enjoyed each time I've been there...you are right surprises around each corner!! AND there all kinds of cool birds there too!!
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