Good Sight Mountains Walkabout

 David Soules
1957-2021

The explorer at a corner marker placed by the USGS survey

This hike mostly covered ground I've been over from a hike back in December (see Goodsight Well Canyon blog), and another hike I did several years ago (see Good Sight Mountains blog January 2018). As always there were new things to find even in familiar places, but we hiked up a new (for all of us) canyon as well. It was short but sweet. I explored  a huge alcove in its lower reaches right before it empties out into the vast flatlands on the west side of the range. Upstream were cliffs and the enormous boulders they've calved, and on these same north facing slopes were pockets of small soapberry trees.

Yours truly is the tiny figure between the boulders

Clumps of soapberry trees beneath the cliffs

We headed toward a very narrow, rocky passage and found a little water from last week's snows in a small pool and then climbed through, up to a saddle in the hills.

 After splitting up with my companions I ended up having a hard fall on the loose cobbles weathering out of the cement-like matrix of the conglomerate rock. I had wanted to explore an alcove I had left for another day back in 2017, but when I met up with the very stoutly constructed metal-posted barbed wire fence, which even had fence posts strung along the bottom, my desire cooled rapidly. Tired and bruised as I was, I couldn't wrap mind around the added degree of difficulty this fence was presenting. I've gotten through it before but that was at the beginning of a hike and on relatively flat ground, which I guess I could've backtracked to. I was done. It will be left again for another day, or never. 

MUCH THANKS to  David and Nancy Soules for the photos for this blog. I left camera at home and phone in the truck.

NOTE: As always be respectful when passing through any parcels of private land in the Good Sight Mountains. Also, it's a nice idea to have a New Mexico State Trust Lands recreation permit as there is quite a bit of state land mixed in with the BLM out here.