Yesterday's Hike

Dave came down from ABQ to go on the hike. Like me, he wants to be fit and healthy again. We headed out and parked at the Water Canyon picnic area. From there it is about one mile to the trail head. The hike up Copper went amazingly better for me this week. Last week I required two hammock breaks on the ascent. Yesterday I blew through where I'd taken the first hammock break with no trouble. When I got to where I'd taken the second hammock break I could have kept going, but it seemed like an ok time to stop, so we took a hammock break there.

We pushed on and made it to the fork in the trail that we had encountered the previous week. Past that, we found another fork in the trail. The second fork we found was the fork marked on the map, so my distance guesses for the previous trip where short by maybe half a mile. I have no idea what the first fork is now. It is a real fork, with blazes and maintained trails, but there are no signs. Perhaps we shall have to hike it to find out where it goes.

I still felt good, so we moved on through the fork heading up towards trail 8. The final climb out of Copper Canyon was a bit brutal, but eventually we reached a point where we could look up and see sky instead of just seeing more mountain. One up on the ridge it was a wonderful treeless and grassy meadow with rock cairns to guide the way. We headed back roughly parallel to the trail we'd come up on trail 8, under the assumption that was the trail that would take us to the Langmuir road. It cut through the trees South of South Baldy. We encountered some hikers along the trail, and I asked them where the trail we were on went too. The guy feigned ignorance at knowing where he was, but did admit the trail we were on was in fact the trail we thought it was, and we were quite close to the end.

At the road, we headed down to the top of trail 11. At trail 11 I admired the tire tracks left through the meadow by people driving around in the grass, and then we showed my map to two hikers who were unable to locate the trail they were looking for. The trip down trail 11 was brutal. I'd felt pretty good up until this point, but I hadn't taken enough water, and I hadn't been adequately drinking the water I did have with me. Trail 11 is steep and hot. The sun was unrelenting. By the bottom of the trail I was seriously considering just collapsing.

Eventually we emerged onto the road. I was beat. And there was still a bit of road hiking to do. I hiked for a while, but eventually had to stop. I think we were still a mile or a mile and a half from the car. The people we had encountered on trail 8 came down the mountain, and I asked for a ride. They gave us one, which was good. All total, the GPS recorded about 15km of hiking and about 1150m of elevation gain.
The narrow canyon in the upper part of Copper played havoc with the GPS though, so it was probably a longer hike than that.

Back at my car I finished off the last sips of water I had, and drove to Socorro. At home I didn't really have any food. And I was so tired that I felt like I was on the verge of collapse. I'd taken food on the hike, and eaten it, but apparently it wasn't enough to keep me going. I ended up seeking out a ride to the Asian Gardens. Their soup is made from broth, and that kind of soup has always made me feel better after strenuous activity. All the other soups in town are thickened bowls of glop with more stuff in them then liquid, and that isn't fulfilling. The soup made me feel like I was dying anymore, which is good.

I'm sore today. And sunburned. The pictures aren't offloaded yet. Sometime today for sure.