Dark, Thousand Mile Canyons - Lincoln National Forest

Revisited a couple of place in the Sacramento Mountains over the last few weeks. Looking for peaceful and uncrowded hike near Cloudcroft  on a Sunday last month proved to be a little elusive. I first thought of the little Sleepy Grass trail (FT 11) just outside of town, but the trailhead on  US 82 was packed. We then went over to Zinker Canyon (FT 5660) off of NM 244, but no sooner had we gotten out of the truck when we were greeted by some very loud gun fire. Listening to that was not what we had in mind at all. So, we proceeded out to the trail-less Dark Canyon. It was a warm day and  the canyon only provides intermittent shade, but the springs were all flowing which helped out our dogs quite a bit. Sad to  say a large oak that sat in the middle of canyon had been completely ripped out of the ground in some recent  windstorm, but other than that things remained pretty much the same as when I hiked there several years ago. We turned around at the piped spring which made for a four mile round trip trek. It was perfect place for the calm retreat into the forest. Perhaps there were more spots like it that day, because coming back we could see that most of the people visiting the area were lining up at the Texas Barbecue Restaurant.
 On Labor Day, we went out to Thousand Mile Canyon(FT 9216), which I calculated was far enough away from Cloudcroft to avoid any lingering  crowds. I was right. We only met two ATV riders on 3 or so mile hike from the bottom to the top and back again. This is a nice hike in warmer weather ( although it was only in the 60's that day) because unlike many of the hikes in the Sacramentos it is not through open meadows, but rather shaded  with firs, pines  and aspens almost it's  entire length.