SF2T- Post Script-4

Sunday, Aug 23rd – Level picked me up at Cappuccino’s house in the morning, and we headed up to Sipapu Resort, where I would be starting the trail tomorrow. After about a 3-hour drive, we took the Old High Road to Taos and got off on Forest Rd 440. This road was a pretty good gravel road heading straight where I needed to go. Level’s RAV4 was having no problems. If the road held out for 10 miles, we would be able to cache water along the trail. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The nice gravel road turned into a mud-heavied, rutted mess at 5 miles. We were reluctant to push on, so we turned around and went back out to the highway.

Back out on the highway, we drove north to another Forest Road number 437. This turned out to be a narrow, but okay dirt road, at least for the first mile. However, every obstacle we overcame made it less enticing as we would have to negotiate these same problems on the way back out. We needed to go 5 miles in on this road to get near the trail. After a little over a mile, we decided to turn back. Doing a multi-point turn on the narrow road finally got us pointed back in the right direction, and we drove back to the highway. However, I did note that the stream running by the road had water in it, which was a good sign as that will be the same creek I will encounter further upstream on the trail.

Level and I drove the last few miles into Taos and had a great lunch and continued the great conversation we had been enjoying the whole trip. So it was never a wasted trip.