Black Range Walkabout - Gila National Forest

The intended hike was the upper reaches of Bull Trap Canyon( see my blog from October, 2017 for more details).  As is sometimes the case, I was somewhat less than diligent about re-checking all information gathered from a visit to Lower Bull Trap a couple of years ago.Instead I was relying on memory, which although is still  mostly reliable, is definitely not the steel trap it once was.

 Strolling along in the closed Lower Gallinas Campground. I was easily distracted by the beauty of how nature is reclaiming this spot. The road is now almost completely a single track path through waist high grasses. Willows and alders are taking hold on the rocky stream banks, and the creek always seems to have a least a little flow through the several bends before the road ends and it plunges into a bouldery box where there is a small waterfall.

 Hoping in my heart, that the Forest Service, never decides to re-open it, I realized, and then panicked because I hadn't been paying any mind to how far I had walked. Not remembering my landmark ( a giant old juniper in the old roadway, actually the second of two, the one I wanted being on the south side after the stream crossing), I hastily decided that I had arrived and began hiking up the canyon immediately on my left. I commenced to scramble and climb over bedrock, and then slipped and slid up the loose canyon sides looking for the trail. Up and up. I had a pretty good idea I was in the wrong canyon because  I couldn't find the obvious trail, but by the time I knew it for a fact I had gone too far up to head back down and start over again. Did I mention it was hot? And dry. Cotton balls in your mouth dry.

Luckily a side draw appeared on the west, and I though it would be convenient to scoot over that way in the direction of the canyon with the trail. It was easy walking and soon I came to a barbed wire fence with orange metal posts ( which I did have memory of), the thing was, I was, to my thinking on the wrong side  of it. Hmmm. I saw gate in the fence too, but it wasn't the gate I remembered.

 On the other side of a little saddle I now came to another rocky little canyon. Thinking I still needed to go up more and over to get to Bull Trap. I headed upstream. It was a pleasant walk, through unburnt forest. The stream even had bit of water, which was good for wetting my hat and shirt on this blistering day.  I saw a frog. I heard a larger animal but never saw it. It seem that most animals in forest hunker down on hot days like this, when only idiot humans would dare be out and about.

The longer I kept following  canyon, the more  the creeping suspicion that I  was heading the wrong direction grew. I finally got to the very head and then climbed up on a completely burned over hill where madrone, silktassel, and oak brush was now filling in between the blackened snags.  I could feel the sun burning my skin in real time. Vultures circled. They seemed to have hope in their eyes.I looked down the far side and knew the steep gully before me was  definitely not the way into Bull Trap, unless I was much farther to the west, which seemed impossible. I climbed to a slightly higher summit of the burned over hill, and quickly spied the lookout tower of Hillsboro Peak. I looked down and saw the road ( NM 152). I rotated and saw Sawyers Peak. I had my bearings, sort of. I decided to head back down the canyon ( thinking it would take me back to Gallinas Creek) and call it day.

 I was enjoying the walk very much, now that I knew my plans were officially scuttled. I came across an old concrete dam where the water trickled over the top. I found an old shovel ( well, just the metal blade) nearby in a perfect little camping spot. I went through a gate in the fence I had encountered earlier. I had to bypass a really narrow section, thick with brush, by climbing up the hillside on my right. Coming down I saw some willows and and the confluence of the canyon I'd been in, with a wide canyon ( that was not Gallinas) with well spaced mature ponderosas.

 I remembered this place, I was in  . .  . Bull Trap!  I knew there was a stone dam just short ways downstream. I went to check just to be sure. Son of a bitch. There it was. 

 I'd been in a north branch of Bull Trap ever since I'd crossed that unassuming little saddle hours ago. I checked the time. Not much left if I wanted to stay on schedule, but I walked up the main Bull Trap for a few minutes and turned around when I saw a rocky passage just ahead. I easily found the trail going back up to the fence and the other saddle with the other gate and then easily found the good trail that took me back down to Lower Gallinas.

 I was exhausted and dehydrated. It had been way too hot for hike in the forest. I sat on the bank of Gallinas and purified a liter of water and then drank it. Further on, near the culvert which I had walked under from the parking on Dry Gallinas ( beware, novice campers are using the culvert for their bathroom needs as evidenced by several lengths of toilet paper),  I sat on the bank again to regroup and then I was on my way back to my desert home where the temperature had peaked at 107.