Grants, NM
I’m in Grants, NM and enjoying a lovely time with the trail angels Carole and Hugo–who also amazingly cache water throughout this area for thirsty hikers!
When we finally dragged ourselves away from the pleasant Circle A, we found the roadwalk down to Cuba was pleasant with friendly dogs following us. One dog even leapt over a cattle guard to keep up. Yogi mentions Cuba being a bit run down, but perhaps because the weather wasn’t the best, we found it quite nice. We ate two meals a piece at Brunos Mexican restauraunt, which had a surprisingly very nice atmosphere inside.
The roadwalk afterwards was rain, snow, wind, and cars zooming by. We were supercold, like Colorado cold. I used my umbrella to block out the freezing rain, and got bummed when a fast driving truck with a trailer zoomed by and turned my umbrella inside-out! As soon as we got onto the dirt road, things were great and we warmed up. The new foot trail was beautifully routed with so many cool geologic features. I wanted my sister the geologist to be there to tell me everything that was going on. We saw petrified wood, and crazy melted lava…rocks of bright red and green and purple. Absolutely amazing.
The next days were relatively warmer. Foottrail was good and mostly uneventful. We failed to follow Jley’s route/roadwalk and followed CDT signs on foottrail instead, which was a cool route with a lot of elevation gain. We lost it after a while, and bushwhacked back to the road.
Soon, we crossed onto Forest Service land, and it was all roadwalking. I find it fitting that the BLM has footpath built on every mile of it, and the second we crossed onto Forest Service land, the trail becomes roadwalking. But, that was fine, since I can read while roadwalking! And we met several kind hunters who chatted with us and knew about the trail.
We followed CDT signs again before American Tank thinking it was Jleys’ alternate. After walking maybe 5 miles on it, we realized that it wasn’t, and that we had no idea where it went. We saw Jley’s comment: “Don’t follow the CDT signed trail as it won’t have water for a very long time.” Uh oh. We bushwacked over to the trail for several miles, up and down over steep, snowy slopes with bear footprints.
FYI–ever since we entered NM, I’ve been dreading Mt. Taylor. At 11,300 feet, Taylor is the highest point in NM and I kept imagining something like the San Juans, or even the San Pedros. I had even been contemplating taking the official route just to avoid the summit, which I imagined was snowy and frightening. We were seeing snow patches at 7,000 feet–what was 11,300 going to look like? Afterall, it is pretty much November.
The day into Grants, we woke before daylight, and walked by headlamp. We saw what appeared to be a pack of wild horses and elk–the first we’ve seen in NM. The roadwalk was so pleasant all the way up Mt. Taylor. The snow wasn’t bad–or often wasn’t even there in the open areas (more snow in areas under trees). The footpath to the top of Taylor had quite a bit of snow as it was under trees and was slower walking, but as soon as we summitted, the snow was gone. And really, Taylor was nothing close to being like the San Pedros or San Juans. It was quite nice. Pleasant walking down Taylor with more reading. And now, we’re having a pleasant time with the Mumms. Again, NM is really proving itself to be just a pleasant, enjoyable state.
