White Mountain Wilderness, Lincoln National Forest - Water Canyon ( FT 53), Crest Trail ( FT 25)

  I had been wanting to hike the Water Canyon Trail ( FT 53 ) for a couple of years now. I had been speculating that it was the stream I had heard some vague stories about that had a good perennial flow and may have even had a small fishing pond at one time. When looking at the streams on the west side of the White Mountain Wilderness, it definitely looks like the best one to have at least some water ( besides Three Rivers, of course ), and the name would seem to confirm it.
 A Word About " Water Canyons"
 There are many stream courses named " Water Canyon " in New Mexico, all named many years ago when our parched state was a little more moist. Nowadays, the name can mean several things. What it doesn't  guarantee is year round water. Still, after having found North Seco Creek doing so nicely in this most parched time of year a few weeks ago,  I was optimistic.
  On with the hiking story.
Well, the veil of smoke from fires burning in the Gila, the San Mateos and in Arizona, that hung over the mountains and the Tularosa Valley as I drove out dampened my enthusiasm. I got to the trailhead  at a small pass between the Tanbark and Nogal Canyon drainages in good time ( 2 hours 45 minutes ) and was off on the Crest Trail in a flash.  I had been out here many years ago, either before we moved to New Mexico or very shortly after making our home here. We only hiked a short ways back then, but I did remember the crooked little deciduous oaks that shade the trail. They must be pretty slow growing, because they didn't seem that much bigger a week ago.



 When views opened up, I looked off to the south to get my first views of the ridges, peaks and canyons that had been burnt over by the  Little Bear Fire just little more than 8 years ago. The trail is well designed as it curves around the south side of Nogal Peak with a little elevation change, and I was quickly at the intersection on the crest with the Skull Springs ( FT 41) and the Water Canyon (FT 53) trails.


 Down I went. The tread was easily visible at first, but then began the first of several sections where the oak brush made it all but invisible. Luckily it was still there down at my feet, so the walking was still pretty easy. A switchback brought  me down from the pines and grasses to a thicket of large twisting oaks at the very head the stream.


A second one brought me to a crossing where the trail began to follow the ( dry) stream through a grove of aged locust trees.   Two bull elk threw me some backward glances as they moseyed up the opposite hillside.
The gradient is pretty high here so I  knew I was in for slow going on the way back up. Occasionally the trail tread would evaporate, or there would be several elk paths to confuse things slightly. This section was more problematic on the way back up when I got off on an elk path which was much more heavily traveled than the Forest Service trail. Luckily I realized my mistake pretty quickly, and was back on the trail in a few minutes.
 Soon I was hitting the big timber near the confluence with the northern branch of Water Canyon.
 This had been my planned turnaround point. I figured if there wasn't water here or just downstream, the creek most likely didn't carry any. It was dry. I had made such good time going downhill, however, that I figured I could explore a little further. The canyon leveled out a bit, and I encountered a muddy spring, that, though it was not flowing, was a good sign.
I was just about to give up on finding any water, when ahead of me was a very shady section of canyon bottom, canopied over with oaks, box elder, locust and a few maples, that caught my eye. Sure enough, the stream came to life, where springs seeped out of the black soil. The water trickled over stones and branches and now I was willing to follow along as long as it flowed.

 My happiness was twisted a bit when the garish sight of abandoned camping gear (tent, pad, sleeping bag and water jugs) appeared on the opposite bank.
 I decided I would check it out more closely on the return, then I continued to see how far the water would continue. It wasn't much, and all told this section probably only flowed a  quarter of a mile, if that.  Seeing the dry cobbles was my cue to turn around. I don't know if it pops up again further downstream, but I was nearing  where the canyon exits its forested confines anyway.

The campsite contained no human remains, which was nice. My theory was that someone backpacked down from the top like I did, and then decided to seriously lighten their load for the return trip back up. By the  condition of the stuff, it had to have been fairly recently too.
 I re-wet my hat and shirt in the cold water. I filled a liter bottle for purifying if I needed it and began the trudge back up to the crest, 2000 feet above and 2 miles beyond where I stood. It was slow going. What had taken me and an hour and ten minutes to descend, took ( with lunch, water breaks and the aforementioned bit of mis-navigation) two hours and twenty minutes to ascend.
 The return leg on the Crest Trail went quite fast. Even with the unexpected five minutes of conversation with an outgoing hiker, the two miles only took 45 minutes. I can't really say I  would recommend this hike.  Lynn Melton's fantastic PDF document about the Smokey Bear RD trails  http://lincoln-nf-trails.org/Trails/Smokey_Bear/SB-pdf-main.html , has information about accessing the trail from the bottom which may be more sensible.

Aldo Leopold Wilderness, Gila National Forest - North Seco Creek Box

Butterfly milkweed

  IMPORTANT UPDATE ( Nov., 2024): Although this hike was within the Black Fire,  recent satellite imagery shows that North Fork Seco Creek ( at least the portion containing this hike) was NOT significantly burned as with South Fork Palomas Creek 

    I've been wanting to get to the North Seco Box ever since I got a copy of Bill Cunningham and Polly Burke's " Hiking the Aldo Leopold Wilderness" way back in the early 2000's. We got close one Autumn, probably a mile away, about 10 years ago.
Sometimes, a calm comes over me and I realize there's nothing holding me back from the thing I want to do, and  I do it. That doesn't mean it will be convenient or super easy. It just means it's going to happen. I've so many places I want to go, all within a (sometimes long) day trip that many times it's just hard to decide which one to do. Interests, priorities, and schedules shift which rearranges the queue over and over, but the most important factors that frequently rule the choice are accessibility, difficulty, duration and season.
  The North Seco Box has none (or perhaps only one) of these in its favor right now. It's nearly a three hour drive from Las Cruces to the trailhead, with the last 3 or so miles past Hermosa on a rotten coda to the now mostly well maintained Forest Road 157, where the going is tortuously slow right up to the dead end at the locked blue gate past which  the last mile or so (seemingly in better shape, but perhaps because it's not driven on anymore) has to be walked down to the creek.

So much for convenient accessibility. It's not a difficult hike.There is little elevation gain or loss, excepting the road walking down to the creek, and the trudge back up to the parking at the end of the day. It is long walk though, somewhere around 10 miles round trip which took about six hours including lunch, a few rests and copious picture taking. It's just a long day of both driving and hiking.
 I have time off, and time on my hands in the summer, but this hike, which tops out at an elevation just under 7,000 feet is not really summertime hike. I started just after 9 and the day warmed up quickly in the wide east facing valley. Trying to keep a steady 3 mph pace on the way didn't help either. Still, I was never  really uncomfortable, although I did dip my hat in the stream occasionally and wet my shirt a couple of times on the way back.
All that being said, the reasons I did go, became crystal clear, the day before I went. I wanted a place where almost no one goes (I like it best when I can't find a single picture of a destination on the internet. If there's too many I lose interest), and even it's anything like the boxes of (the similarly massively inconvenient) South Fork Palomas Creek or Sapillo Creek, or the trips to the waterfalls in East and West Curtis Canyons,  all of  which I've visited  in the past four years, then I knew the magic would be worth it.
 The creek was dry at the road crossing, but Davis Well's solar powered pump was filling two small ponds with water. I walked west on the road, hoping perhaps to see some ancient pottery between the dried grass, but being fooled too many times by rocks that had a maddeningly uncanny similarity to ceramics I've found in the past.

 One of the things I noticed right away is that cattle are not here, and by the end of my day, seeing the remarkable recovery this place has undergone, I came to the conclusion, that it would a sin to let them back on. About mile west of the Davis Windmill the stream  begins to get more and more shaded with mature alders, narrowleaf cottonwoods, box elder and oaks and lo and behold the stream came to life with a few inches of amber water trickling through the pale stones.

 Further on, in burnt over sections,  beyond the wilderness boundary at Sawmill Well, young alder growth was crowding the banks, keeping things shaded enough for at least some flow, albeit with a couple intermittent dry stretches, all the way to the box.

 It had seemed so easy and I had made such good time, I could hardly believe I was entering the narrowest section of the canyon, where  on the north, gigantic formations of red and tan volcanic rocks grew at the top of  steep, nearly bare hillsides.

On the south, straight gray cliffs like book spines went up a hundred feet and more. Spruces, pines, alders and firs craned and stretched toward  the sky trying to rise above them.

Directly in front of me, however, the jungle of willows, and the dark passage ( even with sun almost directly overhead) began which I had to push through for next  half mile or so. I didn't mind. At my feet the creek was  at a modest gush, with pools, some of which there was absolutely no practical choice but to wade through, up to two feet deep where tadpoles wriggled away at my approach.  I paused for thought as I did when I visited the Sapillo Box a couple of years, ago:  these same passages might be waist deep or higher  early in the spring. So, maybe the driest time of the year isn't such a bad choice after all.



Eventually I got to the mouth of Long Canyon on the south side, beyond which, North Seco entered an open, well burnt over section, which would not have been much fun to walk through at the noon hour, and was happily beyond the scope of my plans for this day.
  I turned back around  and ate my lunch sitting on gray bedrock eroded to appear as the pages of a book, with perfect views of perfect bends in the creek both up and down stream.  As I looked around at the quiet stream, green trees, I had the feeling I was somewhere else in the Gila, or New Mexico, or the west. Or maybe it just felt like a different time, before all the drought and fires. It was over too soon. I made my way back more slowly now, shaking hands with the grandfather trees, and saying hello to the stellar's jays who came to check me out. I purified some extra water.

Back at Davis Well I walked around the ponds, frogs leaping into the water at my every step, then down to the old corral and loading chute, and then down a little further to a small clearing.Walking back up old FR 893,  a fox, or maybe even a coyote, most likely after getting a drink at the well, bounded through the brush in front of me. I didn't want to leave.