Little tesuque creek bone dry 9/21 (This was before several days of heavy rain. It's running fast now, 10/4)
Big Tesuque creek was flowing wonderfully & deliciously on 9/21
Winsor/Borrego/Tesuque Creek Field campsite was in great condition 9/21
Water-South of Norski was flowing well on 9/22
Water-Rio en Medio was flowing strong on 9/22
Water- Nambe Creek. Beautiful water on 9/22
Skyline /Windsor split campground is in great shape
Panchela Campground 9/23. Completely closed no camp host no water except for the creek, flowing strong and delicious. Bathrooms were locked. Garbage was available.
Santa Barbara campground 9/25. Campground close at 9/20, but there was a camp host and the bathrooms and water near camp host were open, trash bin just before water and pit toilet.
Does the office in Santa Fe have a hiker box? Most people will be going back through Santa fe and can drop fuel canisters etc. Also, people who are starting could pop in and grab something (like fuel) from the hiker box
9/25-At the Wooden Bench waypoint before you climb up to La Cueva Lake. The trail here is very deeply washed out into a deep ‘V’ and in extremely rough shape for the first half of this climb. Possibly been like this for a while but likely due to there being no switchbacks and worsened by the immense rainfall over the last few days. We saw a bull elk in La Cueva field right near the bench.
9/25 La Cueva Lake camp area was in good condition. Pretty spot to camp. I water was shallow brown and muddy
9/26- there were two really good flowing creeks .2 before the waypoint Ojitos Maes Rill. They were about hundred yards within each other. Your two rill waypoints also had water.
9/26-water connector rill before Fish Gate was flowing great
9/26-Fishgate. Great water and great flat places to pitch tents, my best nights sleep on trail. Campsite was clean, weird it’s right on the the trail though 🤷
9/27-water Forest Road 438 seep 1: there is water here, but it’s minuscule and very hard to collect even with my flexible cup. I actually dropped my pack here and walked back to the better water 150 200 yards prior to this. Easy to collect out of the right side of the road where it goes under the road and waterfalls out of the culvert. There’s actually 23 spots prior to this way point where I could’ve gotten water about 200 yards prior to this way point.
9/27-Water Rio Chiquito Alt. Your waypoint for this is too far trail-north. We had to backtrack slightly (not a big deal) to fill up. See photo 👇 So the water is accessible before turning up Drake Canyon not past the turn like your waypoint has it. This is about 200 yards before your waypoint and accessible at one of those pullouts/drive-in camping spots off to the left
