Our First Overnight Trip

July 20, 2005 My girlfriend and I got up around 8 am and drove south to Belen. It was pretty easy finding our way until we hit the center of town. We guessed on what turn to take off the main road, then a short while later, we missed North Navajo Road and had to take what we guessed to be South Navajo Road. We drove north after intersecting Trigo Springs Road and had some unfriendly encounters with cattle that seemed unthreatened by my car. We didn’t arrive at the trailhead until 11 am. The trail was tricky and disappeared here and there, but we managed to keep going up the canyon and found our way back onto the trail. The flower beds were gorgeous but we didn’t enjoy them too long because of the massive numbers of bees. It seemed to take forever to get to the spring because the canyon meanders and snakes over and over so we lost track of how far we had gone. The spring was a little disappointing in terms of size and consistent flow, but it looked pretty cool and we could tell how violent it could get during storms. The section after the spring was a little difficult and required a lot of patience because it would get steep again around the corner when we though it would level out. We couldn’t find the second spring that was supposed to be in the forested part of the upper canyon. We took our time covering this part of the trek and had enough gas to get us to through the steep climb to the crest without a break or breather. It was around 5 pm when we made it to the ridge. We took the crest trail south to set up camp first and eat, and then we went for the summit as the thunderstorms began to form to the north. We tagged the summit when the lightning began to strike the peaks several miles to the north. We booked it back to the camp under a small flurry of rain. We ate our food and brushed our teeth a couple of minutes before the hard rain came. We sat in the tent until the rain stopped and the sun began to set. We watched it for 15 minutes or so and then went to bed. Unable to sleep because of the unexpected heat in the air, we stayed up talking and watched the full moon rise over the plains in the east. July 21, 2005 We got up around 8:30 am and packed it all up for the climb down. We had used 5 of our 6 liters of water the day before, so we had nothing to spare for a trip along the crest or back to the summit. We blazed the trail on the way down with only one food break at the spring. We got back to the car at 11 am as the heat began to build in the atmosphere.