Flipping through the hiking book from Kelly and Julie, I hit upon heading out to the Pecos Wilderness. It covers a lot of the land in the Sangre de Cristo range around here, so by hiking up in the ski basin, we'd been there. But there are some other nice areas outside of Pecos, and the book said "About 40 miles northeast of Santa Fe." At the local driving speed, how long could that take?
Sure, the drive to Pecos was, like, 20 minutes. The next 20 miles took probably about another 50. Leaving the town, it didn't take too long to get into the winding, twisting roads through the Santa Fe National Forest. A beautiful trip, to be sure. The last couple miles were on a one-lane road to the trailhead (at least it was paved).
We got a late start anyway, and then the drive was much longer than anticipated. But we stuck with our plan and headed out on the Cave Creek trail. It didn't seem likely that we'd hike the whole thing before dark, but the trail is just out and back, so we figured we'd just turn around when we felt halfway done.
The trail follows the Pecos River — a creek, really, at that point — along and up and down through a mostly evergreen forest. The sun was skirting along the edge of a neighboring ridge, and when we were out in it, it was pretty nice (probably mid 40s).
As we dropped down closer to the river, we were in shadow, where it was cold enough for there to be ice on the water.
Eventually, we came to the river crossing.
After making it across, decided that this should've been our turning point. So we crossed back over, had some turkey/blue cheese/apple sandwiches, and headed back home.
(click to open a larger image)
We'll be back where there's more time and more sun.
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