Elk Canyon ( Forest Trail 253D ) - Lincoln National Forest

 Our second destination of our 4 day weekend camping trip was Elk Canyon, also located in the remote southeast corner of the Sacramento District of the Lincoln National Forest. The previous day we had walked a section of Forest Road 253 ( Lick Ridge Road ) and decided it wouldn't be too bad to use to access our trail, despite  the warnings from Lynn Melton's Sacramento RD website about how abominable this road is.
 Well, we should have remembered that sections of forest and desert roads up on the tops of mesas and ridges throughout New Mexico are always more benign that their traverses through stream valleys and climbing hillsides. FR 253 started off okay, but fairly quickly the ruts, protruding boulders and lingering mud began. This road had the complete spectrum of poor conditions whereas most others we encounter have one or two. The best thing that could be said about it was that it wasn't exceptionally narrow.
 At one point we stopped and long contemplated a particularly bad section of ruts, but then continued on only to encounter an even longer more horrendous set shortly thereafter. We drove up off the road to a level area near a corral and tank. As we considered what to do next, a couple with a  two cute dogs in a high clearance side by side ATV were approaching very slowly and severely off camber down the miserable stretch that had us stopped and wondering what our next move should be. I chatted with them briefly, opening with the comment " this is the worst road in the forest." They could only nod and say" it doesn't get any better."  They also informed us we were very close to our trailhead. We decided to  drive just bit further, following some tire tracks in the grass  on the mercifully flat terrain beside the road, with a very narrow passage between the water tank and the drop-off to the treacherous  road bed below thrown in for good measure. Where the tracks led back onto the road we pulled up a little farther and parked.
 It was only short walk to the turn off for FR 253X, another road that Lynn Melton warns about on her website, although we noticed that, excepting for some easily removable debris, the short section we walked on was much  better than FR 253.

 Okay, enough of all that. The Elk Canyon trail( an old timber road) initially had us climbing but then descended into the valley for some easy walking through park-like stands of well spaced pines.  At our first rest stop, my wife realized she had dropped the printed hiking directions ( from Ms. Melton's website of course).  I backtracked to find them because I remembered there was some maneuvering in the last mile or so. I traveled back a little farther than I thought I would need to, but there they were white on the  greened over roadway.

Eventually the trail climbs on the south side and well above the rocky stream bottom. At about two miles from the trailhead, there was a berm across trail in the direction we were going. We quickly realized the trail was making left turn and now was following a small tributary to the south.
 

Soon afterwards we sat down at a crossing of the dry creek, a nice spot for a rest. After starting again we  came to a junction in the trail, where we made another hard left, which meant for short ways the trail was actually going in the opposite direction from the first two miles of the hike. It was more narrow now as well and we were in a steady climb to reach the ridge top as the trail  curved back around and brought us to the upper trailhead. It had been a bit warm for a while, and after turning around, we rested again to help cool our pups off.

 We set a good pace, now going downhill, and after eating our lunch, we made good time back to the trailhead on FR 253X. We noticed on the road walking back to the car that the problem with the most horrendous section FR 253 is that for about 4/10 of a  mile or so, the road is now the stream course for Elk Canyon, with run-off and floods  running through it year after year.  We now made one of the slowest 2 mile drives in the Lincoln back to the Piñon Draw Road ( FR 183). This is a nice hike for cooler months. We ended up hiking about 7 miles roundtrip with the extra road-walking.   There may be( but probably not) better access( as in better road conditions) to the upper trailhead from the upper portion of  FR 183 and ridge top section of FR 253, but that involves a lot more  potentially very slow driving.