SF2T- Day 8 (Return to trail)

Cappuccino and I were on the road at 5:15 a.m. Starbucks in hand. Driving north through the dark with scant traffic I was disappointed that Cappy couldn’t hike with me. Her new dog is not ready to be left behind for several days, so Cappuccino is staying home with Ellie while I complete the hike.

We drive up past Santa Fe passing the 15,000 acre Frijoles Fire just north of the city. The SF2T is actually closed near Santa Fe now, due to that fire. It is burning near the Ski Area that Cappy and I hiked through on our second day on this trail back in June. Sad to think the fire may scorch that area of the trail.

Today, we work our way up small roads through the forested foothills headed toward Sipapu Resort. Fortunately the smoke from the fire is not drifting northeast where I will be starting this morning. We get to the Resort and then drive a few more miles east to the Trailhead. The sky is clear and the temperature is about 56°.

I don a yellow light wind jacket against the cool morning and bid Cappuccino farewell. I turn and face the mountain and start hiking up the trail. I’m carrying a 30 lb pack of which one third is 5 liters of water. I am hoping I will find some water along the way, but that is not guaranteed.

The trail rises slowly at first through thick pine and aspen forest. A hundred yards in I step across a tiny rivulet of a stream running over the trail. A hopeful sign. After a mile I’m on some kind of bench with a meadow and it is fairly flat for several hundred yards. The stream that runs at the edge of the meadow, which the guidebook calls reliable, is dry. This is not a good sign. The SF2T takes a right and starts to climb in a serious way. It goes up about 1,100 ft in a mile!! Over a 20% grade and tops out at 10,100 ft of elevation. It takes me over an hour to hike that one mile. This is some of the steepest hiking I’ve ever done.

Thankfully it lays back a bit near the top and eventually comes to a fork. The old trail follows a contour and the newer one keeps going up. I picked the old trail and plunge off into another thick woods.

With the exception of the little rivulet near the beginning, every other water source in the guidebook so far has been bone dry. So I was surprised as I navigated the contour on the old trail to come upon a nice little running stream. One not even in the guidebook. I filled my empty bottle and moved on.

The old trail ended at old Forest Road 442. The next 11 miles would be along this road. A relatively level road in reasonable repair, 442 was easy to walk and I made good time. As to traffic, in the 5 1/2 hours I walked that road, there was one guy on an ATV that passed me going the other way.

Road 442 eventually ended at road 439 where it crossed Rio Grande del Rancho, a pretty good little flowing creek. I had hiked about 15 miles to this point and only had 3 more miles to go. The first mile was a steady grade and not bad. More than half of the second mile was an old washed out rock filled ditch of a jeep road that went up at a 22% grade!!! And all at 10,000 ft. Even though the last mile was nearly flat, it was a very hard end to the day.