Trail Talk

Five days later, I'm still digging dirt out from under my nails. Lovely, I know. Our "trek" through the Middle Fork wasteland all the way to Elk Mecca was quite arduous, at best. In fact, arduous is my new favorite word. We were Frodo on the endless trail to Mount Doom (Middle Fork? Middle Earth? Definite similarity...). Anyway... Dad, Jesse, and I headed to NM, meeting up with one of his hunting buddies and canine, infamous for their mountainous elk-tracking skills. Yes, their. Who knew a Jack Russell could be such a legend as well as a lover of beef jerky? This team is the real deal. I digress...

We spent the first night at the trucks as our road in was quite rocky and, shall we say, never-ending (merely the beginning). Finally struck out the next morning after searching for the "right" trail a good portion of the morning. Here's the crew, minus yours truly, on task:

Day 2 quickly turned into "not sure where we are" and "can't pick up a satellite" in the depths of this deep, dark canyon, followed by the horse-who-refused-to-go-up-the-mountain-I'm-not-sure-how-many-times... lost count of that as well as the number of time we crossed the knee-deep creek river. But then, I love me some good unexpected adventure, and as I mentioned in the previous post, hygiene went out the window the moment we started down the trail. Save the soot-infested creek (by-product of the fire), the scenery was absolutely beautiful, consolation that at least we felt like we were the only ones to have stepped foot in the area in the last 10 years. Good thing, or bad?! We finally ended up in a meadow that seemed to have no outlet, completely out of water and unable to drink from the creek. Perfect. After a bit of delirium (yes, seriously), we set up camp for the night, drank corn and green bean juice, and sent up thanks to whoever thought to pack the peach fruit cups. Life saver. No lie.

Anyway, the next morning was a successful attempt at water filtration. Here's what we were working with after a night of it sitting out to settle. (Only YOU Can Prevent Wildfires! Ironically, this one soot-creek was the result of lightning. Figures.)

Recharged, sorta, we found the right trail the next morning and made it fairly quickly to our originally intended camp spot. The afternoon/evening was spent eating (we finally had water to cook with), enjoying a rain storm, and scouting the area. Lots of elk and burn signs in this neck of the woods.

We packed out the next day, this time on the right trail and endured an eternal climb up out of the canyon bottom. It looked like this at the top.

And then we made it back, realizing that our first mistaken trail was within a half-mile of the truck; we just couldn't see it cause the grass was grown up so tall. Awesome. Sure can't complain about that view though! Another Gila adventure in the books.