Part Eighty Three

     December 23rd - 28th              Quemado, NM                              (Go to Pt 1)

Aside from studying the maps, preparations for this next section were minimal and the following morning I got an early start, walking several miles northwest of town to reach the Zuni Canyon.

The beginning of the canyon wasn’t much more than a gravel wash but as I wandered further west, the chasm grew deeper, with steep canyon sides and rock cliffs above.

The serpentine river-bottom was dry as melba toast with no year-round water source, so it was difficult to imagine there ever being enough water running through the canyon to carve a gouge this deep into the land.  Then I imagined what a torrential downpour might look like and multiplied that by several million years to come up with my theory of the canyon’s creation.

I was an uneducated geologist but that never hindered me from trying to figure out how the landscape was created.  I had seen some pretty crazy land features over the months and always there was the question of “How do you suppose that happened?”  Good trail food for thought.

Other than the novelty of the gorge, the day passed without note until I emerged from the southwestern end of the canyon mid to late afternoon to make camp along the edge of a lava bed.  The lava bed was a barren, alien looking place stacked with a chaos of sharp, lava rock that looked sinister and nearly impenetrable.

Click on the map for a larger image.

I was still working off of the 250 maps, and my map showed a spring somewhere out in the lava bed where, in fact, a faint path did lead into the volcanic rocks, which I followed.  I didn’t get very far, though, because the path was only discernable for maybe 100 yards before it disappeared into chaos.  At this point, finding the spring got tricky, tricky enough that I couldn’t find it.

I had wanted to replenish my water supply but since I still had another day’s worth in my pack, I didn’t spend as much time looking for the spring as I should have. Apparently, I preferred to sit around camp and read about Hobbits in fantasyland than find water.  Strange priorities, I know, but after Colorado, camping in New Mexico was great!  Warm afternoons, mild evenings, and starry nights listening to Radio made hanging out in camp fun again

Dawn opened-up with t-shirt weather, prompting an early start to the day under another vast, clear sky.  From the mouth of the Zuni Canyon, I spent the morning hiking through arid, open forest with little change until breaking out into the massive Malpias Lava Basin; an extraterrestrial sea of black lava rock covering something like 128,000 acres.  A prehistoric record of actual, scorched earth.

Click on the map for a larger image

I had reached the lava beds early in the afternoon and took a break for lunch. In my head, I was calculating through my water rations and starting to regret not having found that spring back at the canyon.  My next camp was out in the middle of no man’s land at a water hole shown on the map, but I wasn’t holding out a lot of confidence in finding water out there, and if I didn’t find water by days end, then what would my rations look like?

A two-track jeep trail ran along the western edge of the lava beds for several miles then veered away to head for a cone of earth resembling a giant pimple on the desert’s face.  I spent the last hours of the afternoon hiking toward that giant pimple where the Laguna Americana water hole was supposedly located.

I was nervous about finding the water stash but my bearing held true, bringing me right to the Americana depression where, lo and behold, I found a shallow, milky-green, mineral-laden pond.  The water wasn’t bad but tasted like it was a hundred years old.  That night I laid out under the stars, snug in my sleeping bag, listening to Radio and feeling oddly content in a lonely kind of way.
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In the morning, I lounged in my bag until the sun had things warmed-up a bit, then resumed my crossing of the North Plains.  The jeep trail continued on from Laguna Americana out into the plains, which I was following when I started to notice tire tracks running willy-nilly and it became fairly obvious that no roads were required out here, at all.

The way the tracks wandered, indicated people drove wherever they wanted, and they did so because there was absolutely nothing in the way.  The same was true for hiking, the jeep trails were convenient but cross-country was just as easy.
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I periodically consulted my 250 map for any reassurance it might have to offer and, for the first time on the entire trip, a 250,000 series map was finally being useful.  The land features were large enough and separated by enough distance to make the topography I was seeing out on the plains show up nicely on the map.

I followed jeep trails and wandered across the flats for hours and hours, eventually passing the Cerro Colorado Butte where I turned west in hope of locating another holding pond shown on the map. Later that afternoon, I sat around my camp pretty damned pleased with myself for having sniffed-out yet another watering hole in the middle of nowhere, Laguna Colorado.  A jeep trail had led me straight to it, but still…

Overnight the weather changed and in the morning it was cold with an adversarial wind in my face.  I returned to my lonely trek, having to remind myself that just a couple of weeks ago in Colorado, a little, cold wind hadn’t been such a big deal. Besides, I’d already wimped-out once on account of wind, I couldn’t let myself bail again.

The further south I went the more established the jeep trail became until it was finally a dirt road which, by late afternoon, had terminated at a county, gravel road.  My map had shown some sort of settlement called Techado along the county road but there wasn’t much at Techado.  I saw a few dwellings not far from the road but I was good on water for the night, so I didn’t go knocking on anybody’s door.

The weather did not improve overnight and, if anything, it was worse in the morning.  Dark clouds hung low to the ground and a windblown, sleet/snow-flurry mix came in waves.  I had a long day of road walking ahead of me to get down to Quemado where I hoped to pick-up some groceries and spend the night.

As the day wore on, I went between fretting about Quemado being a ghost town without even water to be had, to hoping I’d find a quaint, little Inn, like I had in Cuba.  The weather was hardly conducive to a lunch’n lounge or afternoon break’n bask, so I barely stopped during the day, arriving in Quemado around four in the afternoon.

Click on the map for a larger image

By now it was drizzling, and I was relieved to find there was actually something more to Quemado than a black dot on the map. There was a small market where I could resupply my food and a boarding house with nightly rates, cash, where I could spend the night out of the weather.  Down the street there was a beat-up restaurant/bar that I did not venture into.

I camped out at the boarding house that night and got up the next morning to incredibly, dreary weather that was still wet and cold.  I looked through the rain-streaked glass and finally said “Nah, I’m not going out in that.”  I was well into the third and last book of the Hobbit saga, “The Return of The King”, and opted out of hiking to spend the day in my room, cheering on the Hobbits.

Click on the map for a larger image

I stayed over in the boarding house a second night and the next morning I was again disappointed to see little improvement in the weather, but at least it wasn’t raining. I was anxious to get out of Quemado, so I went ahead and packed-up my stuff with the rain gear on top, leaving town under heavy, wet skies that had changed the road I was about to follow from dirt to mud.

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Go to Part 84

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The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

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