Apache (Gila) National Forest - Mangas Mountains hikes.

 

Aspens in El Toro Canyon

Caballeriza Canyon

 The one CDT marker on a large oak tree.

CDT Trail

We did these two hikes over my two week fall break in late September and early October. The first one we drove in on the east side of the range using the Alamocito Road off of NM 12. This initially good road (FR 11) gets very rough after it forks near Alamocito Spring and even rougher still as it goes deeper onto forest service land. We found out a few days later that we had damaged our oil pan at one of several very rocky spots where  it crosses the intermittent stream (North Fork Alamocito Creek) it follows. We saw a cluster of buck deer, elk and coatimundi while still driving on a little inholding of private land within the forest where a spring has the stream flowing nicely for about a 1/4 mile or so. We got to our trailhead past Tordcha Tank parked and then began hiking up an abandoned road (FR 4014H) which for most of our hike seemed more drivable than the road that had got us there. This canyon is call El Toro Canyon on maps. Our destination was Oak Spring. It was a nice hike for the most part. There were some decent aspen stands downstream from the "spring" which may actually be submerged in the impoundment there or just upstream from it (in which case it was dry at this time of year). 

Unfortunately we were a bit too early and the trees were only showing the barest beginnings of their fall color. It still was a bit warmer than I would want given it was the last week of September and Oak Spring is at an elevation of 8400 feet, but that's just how things are much of the time these days.

Abandoned hunting blind at Oak Spring

 The second hike started off of FR 13 which follows Caballeriza Canyon before going over a divide and ascending to Slaughter Mesa. Initially I drove past the where the CDT trail meets the road. There was just a plain wooden post on the south side and no other indicator. When I got to FR 5, I knew I had missed it and did short backtrack and parked. The trail descends steeply to the canyon bottom here, and there are several large downed trees that obscure the tread as well.  We were doing a loop and would use the CDT as our return leg but to start we headed up the along the stream which although it could be considered "flowing" here was mostly mud due to the heavy trampling by elk and livestock. I didn't take a picture. Sights like that make me sad. In such a dry forest any water should be treated as especially precious and more should be done to keep it running.  We followed the cow path past a huge spreading oak, and then around the tank. 

I could see a cinder block structure which I assumed was built over the spring. The area around it was fenced, but in several places the posts and wire were laying on the ground. We turned to the south and began using an old road for hiking.

 

When it went up on the sunny hillside, we stayed in the shade of the valley. Eventually we crossed over back to the east and found the tread of the CDT which would take us north and back. The trail through this section has no signs or blazes and probably doesn't see a lot use, but the tread was easy to follow. After climbing on a mostly straight line to the top of a low ridge, it made a couple of switchbacks to bring us back down to Caballeriza Canyon. We walked downstream for bit to a second dry tank, before returning up the hill to the road and the truck.  It was another very warm day, so it was another short but sweet hike.

CDT Trail

Horse Mountain Wilderness Study Area - Nance, Log Canyons ( Loop Hike)

 

We started out Sunday morning (8/31/24) from the WSA access in Teepee Ranch heading west over the hill and then finding a very old road down into the next canyon. From there, we contoured around the next ridge down into Nance Canyon ( the only other named canyon on Horse Mountain). Nance was similar to many of the canyons we have hiked on the north side with large widely spaced ponderosas, on grassy benches along the sides of the stream course. There were deciduous oaks too. Nance was a little different than the others in that it had a fairly wide gravel streambed that looked geared to handle a decent amount of surface flow at certain times of the year. It was dry at the time of our visit.

 It was a delightful, cool, late summer morning with the shadows getting longer that tell of approaching fall. Western bluebirds and nuthatches were in the trees. Abert's squirrels scurried away  from our approach. 

A green hummingbird fed at bright red flowers, utterly unfazed by our presence less than three feet away It definitely felt like a slice of New Mexico paradise. As we ascended the canyon, we eventually hooked with the old road invisible perhaps to the untrained eye as it now was covered in wildflowers.

 We had been hoping to use it to get us to the saddle at the top of Log Canyon, but got a little sidetracked by a well traveled trail. It was all good anyway, though, as we came upon  a giant rock tower we had never seen before on the sparsely vegetated ridgetop where several branches of the major canyons of Horse Mountain come to meet. 

We ended up following another road remnant which got us to an eastern branch of Log Canyon, but not to the saddle with the drinker and the branch with the road that the descends to the main canyon. No worries though we just slowly made our way down this roadless branch ( passing one enormous Douglas-fir as we did)  where the sight of rusty old drinking trough let me know we would soon be back on the old road in Log Canyon.

It was warming up quite a bit on this last leg. We had been out almost 4 hours even though this loop was probably just a little over 5 miles. 

Cibola National Forest - Goat Spring Pueblo

 

Rubble pile. Short arm of the L. Bear Mountains behind.

Isolated rubble block. Magdalena Mountains in the distance.

Looking towards the spring area. Borrow pit (?) depression

Pueblo rubble. Ladron Mountain (Sierra Ladrones) in the distance.

It had been a cloudy, rainy weekend, (the monsoon having arrived just a bit early in the last week of June) and I was hoping the clouds would hold out long enough for us visit the Goat Spring Pueblo site on our way back from the cabin at Horse Mountain.They did. Sort of. When we go to the site it was in the mid-seventies. It was a very short walk from where we parked, our footsteps crunchy on the extremely parched weeds, rocks and soil ( the rains had not made it to this locale on the east side of the Bear Mountains). 

The main body of the pueblo is an L shape. There is also a detached block on the south side. There appeared to be a kiva-like depression interior to the L, and a another depression (perhaps a borrow pit) exterior on the west  side.The rubble pile of un-shaped stones was several feet high but room blocks were not easily distinguishable on the ground (though they are there on Google Earth). It may have had a second story. 

We wondered around looking for examples of pottery, but this site was pretty stingy. The best spot to find any to look at was around a large rodent burrow.  I would have like to have walked the arroyo to the spring, upstream and to the west of the ruin (although I suspect it might be dry nowadays), but the sun came out, the temperatures rose rapidly and we made an early exit from our exploring.

Two large and one small ceramic sherds, plus and obsidian flake.

Gila National Forest - Apache Creek Interpretive Trail, FT 16

prickly poppy

 We went out to this site a couple of weeks ago (7/3/24). It's a lower elevation hike for the area so it was already getting to be a bit too warm. I'm sure it is too hot right now. The sign for the site, right at the intersection of the primitive road (4177 R) and the well maintained  FR 94, was completely obscured by a huge section of a huge ponderosa pine that had fallen across the road to the parking area.  At first I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to just start walking down the road because I didn't want lengthen the hike any with the morning warming up rapidly and me with two black scottie dogs. Another section of the tree had fallen the other way which seemed to block going around the rather considerable stump. Looking closer though, it seemed that we could just squeeze the 4Runner in between the standing snag and the fallen section, which it what we did. 

 After parking we started to the left where the trail quickly got rough and steep. Luckily, our older dogs seemed up for the adventure, although they didn't quite understand all the switchbacks.

Soon we were at the  cliff face where the trail leveled out and the scrub live oaks provided welcome shade. It was mostly easy walking that had a sweet cozy feel as we looked for petroglyphs and listened (but didn't hear any) for snakes.

The rock art here isn't the best, certainly not in league of the site along the Tularosa River that we visited last year.  There isn't a whole lot of it either so you have to keep your eyes peeled if you want to see what's there. Just as I was wondering why the all of the petroglyphs were on the cliff faces and not on any of the abundant broken-off boulders, we came upon two marvelously clear ancient spirals on a large gray angular rock. Unfortunately, immediately adjacent, were someone's painstakingly scratched initials of a much more recent vintage.

 There were lovely views of the pine clad mountains the grassy valleys from up top. The descent offered a little more shade than the ascent. All in all it was a nice, but very short, hike. If you go in the summer, get there as early as you can.