Margo called this morning and said she would not be hiking with me on the fourth segment of the Rim Trail between Cloudcroft and Sunspot. No problem. Seg 4 is only 1.2 miles. I can hike it, turn around and retrace my steps, then drive over to Osha or a trestle trail and top off somewhere in the neighborhood of a five-mile hike.
Ohhh, a couple of fresh mountain apples sounded like the perfect hiking snack. I whipped in to Cadwaller’s Fruit Stand. Payment is on the honor system. I found two small Gala apples and three small pears. Time to calculate the price. Apples $2 a pound. Pears $1.75 pound. That’s $3.75 for a pound of each. But I get only half a pound each so I shoved $2 in the slot of the heavy metal money box bolted to a post. I pushed an apple into the pack and the remainder in the little ice chest.
I gawked at the foliage just beginning to turn and missed Parking 3 so when I came upon Parking 4 I told myself, “What the heck. So hike from 4 to 3 and back to 4. It’s backwards. So what. It’s still hiking the distance.” Rim Trail hiking purists can disagree.
It’s cool but not as cold as some of the afternoons after a monsoon rain. Tight leggings under loose leggings was too much. I slipped out of the tight leggings. Long sleeved tee over short tee should be good.
I’m using only the MountainSmith backpack today. Feel kinda naked without my waist pack. No chance of rain so I pulled the rain pants and jacket from the backpack. Nice weight savings which I immediately negated by sliding my handgun in the pack. I attached the scrawny waist belt on the pack and slid on the stuff I like close at hand: bear spray, fixed blade, GPS, and pouch for my phone and reading glasses.
Donned my gear and set off down the trail. It’s pretty darn muddy. Ding, ding, ding. I saw the moisture on the highway and didn’t put two and two together. It rained last night. Flipped open the trekking poles for better balance. Less than 100 yards in it felt like my shoes weren’t getting traction. Looked at a sole. The Altra lugs, which aren’t very deep, are filled with mud. I decided hiking isn’t safe for me today and turned around. By the time I’d gotten back to the truck I’d gained a half inch of extra mud. Used a stick to scrape the soles but they weren’t clean enough. I changed out of the muddy Altras back into my athletic shoes so I don’t muck up the floor mats.
Now what? I headed back for Cloudcroft watching for moisture on the road. Splotches of it all the way into CC. So all the trails around here are too muddy. I bought pastries at a local bakery and headed over to La Posada Encantada Trailhead parking lot. Two guys in a large truck were positioning two sets of antlers in the bed. I wandered over to see the racks. Small. The trade off is the meat will be a lot more tender. The problem with killing two elk at the same time is that they have to pack out a lot of weight. I bet each of them was wishing their buddy hadn’t gotten an elk.
The parking lot seems a bit bad vibie after seeing skinned heads so I drove down Pumphouse to my usual spot. I quickly set up the table and while heating water for a cup o’ hot tea I set up the rocker chair and cozified my items around me. A little bit of classical music. A good book. I’m reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I began the audiobook, downloaded free from the local library, but I’m very, very, very much a visual learner. Felt I was missing a lot. I needed a slower pace. So I downloaded the ebook but early on realized the book was going to take me longer than the amount of time the library allows. So I purchased a used hard-backed copy. Now I can progress at my own speed. I’m finding it a slow read because I stop to think about what I’ve read, and I find myself going back over sections. I’m 38 pages in and it’s already given me a lot to think about. Then there are the days I don’t read at all because I don’t feel like putting in the mental energy.
I’m bundled up nicely, reading, sipping hot tea and eating a cheese danish. Ya think I’d be happy. Nope. I promised my body a long hike and it demanded I fulfill my promise. But, but, but… I’m all settled in here. Don’t care. Gotta walk. You promised.
It’s 69 degrees which means it’s 79 in High Rolls and 89 in the Basin. It’s already hot. Where do you think we are going to hike? I see my body giving my brain ‘that look’. Okay, a High Rolls trail. I poured my warm tea in the empty nalgene bottle, packed camp and headed down.
I pulled into the Bridal Veil Falls and Grand View parking area I’ve mentioned before. It’s 11 am and it’s warm. I’ll make this a fast ‘un. I set a good pace. It has rained here but not much. I find our shoe prints from Saturday. Two miles in I get that weird pain on top of my left foot like I got on the Perk Canyon Trail. I’m almost at two miles. Didn’t bring spare shoes. Four miles was my target so I turned back. About a mile back I wondered. Could it be the way I was tying my shoe laces? Since the shoes are a tad bit too big I thread the laces for extra locking (in a later post).
I loosened the shoe laces and had no pain on the way back. I sweated through my shirt and rolled up my leggings as far as I could. The truck said 90. A bit too hot to hike a trail with limited shade. My body didn’t care. It was happy. Now what? I was tempted to drop by a friends house and walk a mile long trail Margo named the Elk Trail. Nah, it’s going to get hotter.
I headed for home.
Trekking Tess 