SF2T- Day 2
After an uneventful night, I woke up about 5 a.m. and heard Cappuccino rustling around in her hammock, so it was time to rise and shine. We were packed and fed by 6 and walked out of camp shortly thereafter.
Walking up the trail through the forest not far from our campsite, we encountered two young women from Amarillo who we camped in a meadow. They were just getting out of their tents. They said they were doing the SF2T trail, too, and had just started yesterday like we did. We bid them safe travels and hiked on.
Our task for the day was to try and get as far up the trail as we could before the predicted thunderstorms started at noon. There was not a cloud in the sky this morning, but we were not wanting to tempt fate. We moved right along up an easy grade as the sun climbed. We were holding down about 2.5 mph for the first hour, a blistering pace for us. By the second hour we had settled into a 2 mph pace. Still a fast pace. We were climbing the whole time and sometimes it was pretty steep. We did get slowed down substantially over the third hour as we hit almost a mile of what seemed like vertical trail. We had hoped to make the ski lodge area by 9, but it was 9:45 by the time we walked the last of the 6.5 miles to the ski area parking lot from our campsite.
After a short break and a snack, we entered the Pecos Wilderness to finish out the last 6 miles to our camp spot for tonight. It was 10 a.m. The very steep terrain continued, but we finally crested the ridge we have been climbing for the last two days. Then it was mostly downhill on a very rocky trail. Picking our way along the trail required a lot of concentration. Numerous day hikers were coming and going along the path, and most people had a dog or two.
The clouds were building now that it was late morning, but we kept going. Both Cappy and I were getting pretty tired as we had been pushing our pace all morning. Finally, about 12:30PM we got to a place to camp. There were several good hammock sites and a little unnamed tributary of the Rio Nambe nearby. Perched in a pleasant forest at 10,600 feet, we got set up and called it a day. We had beaten the predicted thunderstorms, and it was time to take a nap.
The clouds did close in and it looked threatening, but no storms materialized. In fact, other than a few raindrops after dinner, there was no rain at all today.
Until tomorrow safe travels and happy trails…
If the storms had come, would you have covered yourself somehow (how?) and rocked in your hammock? Rocky terrain is my least favorite kind of hiking. Give me a nice rhythm-catching sandstone trail. Congrats on pushing through all morning.
It is always nicer to set up in the dry as opposed to in the rain. Also, as you know, rain in the mountains often comes with lightning, a situation we had on the first day. We both have rain jackets and pants and we both carry an umbrella for rain or sun, so we can hike in rain without much problem. If nearby lightning is involved, we would hunker down and may have deploy a tarp (but probably not hammocks) if it looked like it would be especially heavy or prolonged.
As to rocky trail, I agree, I’m not a fan. Most of this trail was probably a dirt tread when it was laid out But this trail gets a fair amount of horse traffic and that causes faster erosion of the dirt, leaving only the rocks. I look at it as all part of the adventure. Tiny puzzles to be solved. Where do you place your next step? And the next? etc…But it does take about 95% of my attention to walk the rocky trail to avoid a stumble.