Pickett Spring Canyon - Gila National Forest

 

I've had this one in back pocket for awhile now. When my wife wanted to go to the Black Range a couple of Sundays ago, I thought it would be good time to use it. First, though, I wanted to see the situation with FR 522. We got off of  NM 152 and drove a short ways to a large parking area and then headed out on foot walking past the Forest Service work center with an old trailer with broken windows, crushed metal culverts, a couple of ATVs and other junk lining the well maintained road. The small house there was drab stuccoed cinder block,  and looked liked it was yanked out of  30's or 40's neighborhood in T or C.  It had various large antennas sticking out it, which probably, don't serve any purpose anymore, but who knows, the Forest Service has been a bit slow to get with the times. There were stables too, but we didn't see any animals about. After passing by I'm not totally sure the area is even used anymore.

 We continued uphill on the road. There was no shade and it was quite warm for February. The wind picked up and I felt a tinge of dread for the beginning of the drying season here in southwestern New Mexico. After less than a mile we came to a locked gate with a camera. This is what I had expected (there was sign early on indicating this as well), just not quite this soon. When  I checked on Google Earth, Topo Maps and On-X , I could tell that this gate is at least a quarter mile from where the actual boundary of the private property inholding is.  I feel a little rant coming on. I get that perhaps whoever lives on that inholding doesn't want people driving to 10 feet  from their front door, but what I don't get is the Forest Service (who seem to be maintaining the road that is essentially their driveway quite nicely), has not bothered to figure out a bypass route for this road which used to be a through route all the way to Tierra Blanca Creek (where they did put in very rough bypass). Well, maybe someday. Lately it seems, I'm very tired of the inaccessibility of large swaths of Gila Forest land in the southern Black Range that is locked up on the fringes or blocked within forest boundary by  private property.  I don't understand how it came to be  that there is no established  right of way to use the roads in or along Trujillo Creek,  Upper Berrenda Creek, Taylor Creek, Macho Canyon, Gavilan Canyon, Donahue and Sheppard Canyon to access National Forest property. I am to some extent part of a similar problem with my meager property that borders the BLM lands on Horse Mountain. My subdivision, Teepee Ranch, and other private parcels limit access to much of the north side of the mountain. But, the total  BLM parcel here is small, around 10,000 acres, and the public access on the SW side is a reasonable alternative because the distances for hunters or backpackers are small. In the southern Black Range the acreage unavailable to all but the  hardiest backpacker or hunter is more on the order of 30,000 to 50,000. Okay,  I'm done.

So it was on to Pickett Spring Canyon near Kingston, which by the way is looking very settled and somewhat prosperous (gentrified?) nowadays. There were two false starts one the right where we followed a fence line that took us up high above the canyon to nowhere in particular, and then a second where we followed  another "trail" that took us high above the canyon on the left which was not where we wanted to be: on a treacherous ledge baking in the warm sun. So we went back and followed the stream bed trail which frequently was the stream bed. Pickett Spring Canyon is a very narrow drainage with the closed- in feel further emphasized by a thick growth of short piñons, junipers and other shrubs. Water eventually appeared which looked more like a thickened ooze of iron minerals. I'm not sure if this is the natural "spring" or what, but it was hard to keep our idiot dogs from trying to drink from it even as disgusting as it looked. We had our picnic a little farther downstream (past the orange muck) and continued on. The canyon finally opened a bit and there were traces of old roads here and there. We found the developed spring piping clean water into metal tub (of course the dogs had no interest in that) went a little an open gate in a dilapidated  fence, but I'm not sure if that was it because in very narrow canyons like this my On-X app doesn't work. Not the greatest hikes, but there are worse ways to spend a Sunday.