This documents the first time I did the thru-hike back in 2018. It was an eleven-day, 118-mile thru hike / backpacking trip from the Santa Fe Ski Basin to Taos Plaza. These pages include detailed Garmin GPS and Gaia GPS trail maps, ample photographs, and information about water sources and camp sites.
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…
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…
This is my favorite picture of the through hike. We got up at first light. I started doing my morning routine – dress, pack up bedding, tidy up inside, find gear for breakfast. The bear bag was right where I left it, and we had a nice breakfast up on the little hill. Watched the…
Once again, we woke up undisturbed. And deeply grateful for the rest. I believe I gave us an extra hour of sleep. We needed it. So I did the usual pack-up and breakfast routine. We ate breakfast right next to the tent, as I often do. There’s no need to be 100-200 ft away, like…
I woke up just a bit before dawn – right around 5am or so. Put the headlamp on to begin pulling things together. Riley dislikes the head lamp, but we had a long way to go, and I wanted to get into camp early enough (like by five or better) to wash and maybe even…
Woke up before dawn – just barely. Did my usual morning thing, where I lie in my sleeping bag and snooze, checking the time every 305 minutes or so, reviewing the day, thinking about packing up the tent, making a gratitude list. We’re safe We’ve got water There was water across from Drake Canyon The…
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