I’ve been toying with the idea of extending the thru hike so it’s more even for at least two years. Like “ski basin to ski basin”, or “plaza to plaza”. I started with ski basin to ski basin (“basin to basin”), probably because the Taos Ski Basin is gorgeous, and just a good place to…
The fire is out. Maybe not by strict definition, but it’s out enough to say that. The monsoons arrived early this year. The rain started falling last week, about 10 days ago. I was in New Hampshire helping my mom recover from a broken hip and got to talk to my husband, who was in…
The fire has slowed considerably. It’s still burning, but as of this morning the fire crews have got it 65% contained. We also have rain in the forecast, for a second week in a row: Despite the forecasts from last week, we got very little actual rain – 0.04 inches per NOAA’s three-day history tool….
The fire has slowed, but it is still working it’s way west. Here’s yesterday’s progression map: This is the scale of it now: Evacuations are ordered for the north part of Pecos – everything on Rt 63 north of the monastery. So Holy Ghost, Tres Lagunas, El Macho and Lower La Posada in the Pecos…
As you probably know, the Hermit’s Peak / Calf Canyon fire is sweeping up the eastern flank of the mountains between Santa Fe to Taos. It may well reach all the way from Las Vegas to Angel Fire within a week. It shows no signs of stopping. There is no rain forecast for at least…
Finally got an escape day to get out and try to find American Spring. It’s on the Taos side of the hike, about 4 miles from the El Nogal trailhead according to the maps. Where the maps (and Gaia GPS’s “USFS 2016” map) say American Spring is supposed to be is on the right side…
This website documents an 11-day backpacking trip from the Santa Fe Ski Basin over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Taos Plaza. To my knowledge, a Santa Fe to Taos hike over the mountains has not been done before. Though of course Santa Fe is very old, and I find it highly unlikely no one…
There are many reasons why I did the thru-hike. The first was just the adventure of it. The thrill of finding a way through. Of trying to do something that was not guaranteed, that was not already documented and reviewed and established. I did it because it’s fun to connect trails and trailheads in a…
Something looms over this whole project. It shaped how I did the through hike, and when I did it. I saw it in the trees while I was walking and in the lack of snow the winter prior. I watched it on TV during the fires in California. 40% of the people in my country…
Day 1: After an awful lot of preparation, we were finally ready to go. “We” being me and Riley, pictured below. My boyfriend drove us up to the basin and dropped us off around 10am. There wasn’t a whole lot of ceremony to it – we wanted to get going. The trail starts off…
Note: *Don’t* do what I did here. We should have stopped at Horsethief Meadow and stayed there for the night. Instead we pressed on because I was trying to shorten the trip by a day. We woke up a little late the next morning at Lake Katherine. One of the larger groups – about…
SUMMARY: This was a really short day. We made it up the backside of East Pecos Baldy then down into the lake basin. I did actually try to keep going – that’s the little spur you see going off away from the lake, heading N/NE. But about half a mile along I realized I was…
The day I finally got to see the Trailrider’s Wall. I woke up feeling about 200% better than I had felt waking up the day before. We ate our usual breakfast, treated all the water I could carry (the 100oz bladder plus the Nalgene, plus about a liter and a half I drank just before…
The long way down. I so wish I had photos of this to show you. But my phone was totally dead by the time I woke up. Thankfully, the Garmin Inreach still had about 25% power, so I was able to turn it on every 30 minutes or so to track most of our way…
This is the first day of the second leg of the through hike (from Santa Barbara Campground to Taos Plaza), if you do the hike in two segments of five and six days each. Here’s the view of the Santa Barbara campground. There is free parking near the entrance. In this photo, you can see…
We woke up unscathed by the storm. And woke up fairly late, especially compared to other mornings. This was the latest wake up and the latest time we broke camp for the whole trip. I believe we finally got off around 10am. I enjoyed three cups of coffee, and I tried to get the sub…
