Good Sight Mountains

Good Sight Mountains

Barrel cactus. West Potrillo Mountains in the distance

Pile of rocks in an alcove

Wall in the ravine

Florida Mountains in the distance

Nest in the cliff

Old juniper on north facing slope

Dry cascade I was able to walk up

 Yucca that was at least 25 feet tall

Cooke's Peak in the distance

I guess I was determined to get out to the Good Sight Mountains at least once before the weather warmed up. I feel obligated, but I'm not totally sure why, to  see the places that others don't want to see, or are just a little too hard to see. That's the Good Sights. Access to the western escarpment, really the only aspect of the range that's worth seeing is very limited especially if you want to approach from the west.   Access from the east and north is on tedious unmaintained roads, where you are never sure if they are just going to give out altogether, and the one I chose this particular day still left me back aways from the crest of the escarpment, so I ended trudging up and down hillsides and valleys of shin high rocks.

The wind was not good. I hadn't really looked into the weather that closely, and perhaps, if  I had seen it was going to be blowing a steady gale, I wouldn't have gone at all.The wind was cold too. The temperature probably got to the low sixties, but I never took my beanie off which I wore underneath my sombrero. Skies were blue. The sun bright.

Highlights of the trip:  Seeing three deer on the ridge and then seeing those deer down in a valley with cows and antelope. Exploring the breccia cliffs, boulders and alcoves, even though there wasn't much found in the end, they at least kept holding out potential for a good chunk of the hike. A hillside covered with small barrel cactus. This had not come up before. Some walls of unknown origin. A tiny bit of water in the bedrock of one little canyon. The tallest yuccas I've ever seen. A raptor's nest. A very tiny brown calf frolicking.

Artifacts located: a horseshoe (age unknown), a shell casing (20th century Russian ammo as I learned later), a sardine tin  and other rusty junk.A very dubious piece of pottery.  There was abundant  dark  chalcedony laying about in the flatlands below the cliffs, but they were just raw chunks, not projectile point debitage.

Lowlight of the day: the drab winter look in the drainages of a range in poor condition.