The Black Range of New Mexico is a North-South alignment of mountains along the Divide in the southern half of the State. The official CDT track, as sanctioned by the CDT Coalition, takes in this range, closely following the actual Divide. As many other mountain groups in the region, the Black Range is an island of woods in the middle of the New Mexican high desert, with peaks around 10K’, heavily forested with pine, aspen and oak trees. It is a remote area in an already far-off, sparsely populated region. For a typical CDT section breakdown reference, the Black Range would lie between commonly used milestones Pie Town to the north and Silver City to the south.
The most peculiar feature of the Black Range is how few thru-hikers go there. Most take instead the very popular Gila River alternate, a low level route that parallels the Divide to the west. There are a number of reasons for this: The Gila River Canyon is spectacular and it has abundant water, the only stretch of the CDT in New Mexico where that happens for any meaningful length of trail. Either North or Southbound, by the time you get to the Gila you’d have walked plenty or dry land and you’ll surely appreciate actual running water by your side. The Gila is also logistically easier, with one mid-way, on-trail resupply option and it is a shorter route than the Divide.
Yet the CDT is known for its variety of options in the effective route choice and thru-hikers seem to enjoy the scheme so there’s apparently a critical mass of users in every branch, no matter how wacky but this doesn’t seem to apply to the Black Range. In 2019, I knew of only one other hiker who took this way and it was a northbounder. If you take the CDT Water Report as a viable record of who hikes where, it’d look like I was the first thru-hiking southbounder in the Black Range since the report started gathering hiker info in, I believe, 2015.
There must be something more than the enticing Gila to explain this. I believe it’s the lack of information about the area that creates this vicious circle where no thru-hiker goes because of the uncertainty so there’s no hiker feedback to help fill the information void and, unlike other areas with alternatives, this is a long one, it’s about a full week of hiking in what feels like a blank in the thru-hiking map.
A key aspect to the info issue is the water availability, something you don’t mess around with. Scarce information should be no big issue in probably any other aspect, you can hike sketchy trails and that should be fine, you can hitch sketchy rides and that’s part of the fun and route finding is not even a potential problem anymore since everybody goes digital but water remains that key piece of info you treasure and do worry about, more so in the south, more even so in the fall. Researching the Water Report and finding no input for October feels like hiking into the abyss.
As of 2019, there were no documented resupply options either along the Black Range route.
I think the Black Range deserves more attention than it gets and I’d like hikers to see it as an option, hence this text. I also feel prompted to tell the story for the sake of itself. It feels to me as the most special bit of my trip on the CDT so I’ll allow myself to brag about it. As for a real, hopefully useful resource, there’s now also some Black Range water info input, both in the Water Report and the Guthook App, dated October 2019.
Decision making
I had planned to hike the Gila myself. As I was taking a break in Pie Town, I kept thinking that except for a couple of short, few mile stretches in Montana and Wyoming, I had hiked the whole of the official CDT route and that it’d be nice to do it all and complete the actual 3000K+ miles. It’d probably be a once in a lifetime chance and I started playing with the idea by trying to gather information about the Black Range branch. It turned difficult but I was lucky I met a fellow traveler (not a thru-hiker) in Pie Town who knew the area, helped fill the information gaps and provided some encouragement. It looked possible.
I still wasn’t sure. Taking the Black Range meant, in a way, going for the unknown compared to the perceived security of knowing what to expect in the Gila River. I left Pie Town with provisions to take me through the river route but barely enough for the longer mountain route. It felt like I had already taken a decision.
Out of Pie Town, I kept to the main route through yet another lightly traveled section that turned out very rough and energy draining, taking me longer to cover than I’d had expected. If I still had any intentions of going for the Black Range, it seemed the trail had taken the decision for me and it was against. I was tired and I was tired of being tired. When I got to the relevant junction, I headed for the Gila branch, still with a good, non-binding reason: a much needed spring a few minutes down the path. By then, it was nearly dark. I filled bottles to the brim, hiked on for another half hour and made camp.
The following morning I wasn’t feeling well emotionally. Deep inside I knew what it was: I really wanted to hike the Black Range and not doing it felt like resignation. The Divide trail was still a stone throw to the east, I checked the map and saw a connecting track just minutes ahead of my position. I made a quick mental summary of my provisions and the length of the mountain route to realize I’d need to hike like mad if I didn’t want to run out. I didn’t know if the actual trail quality would allow such high mileages and the previous days had already offered examples on the contrary. From the junction, I would need 2.5 to 3 additional days with no sure water sources and I had 4 liters on my back. When I got to the crossroads, I took a look to the line of hills marking the Divide on my left and tried to not think further when I took that way.
It was a bold decision and all I knew was it’d be a difficult 3 days ahead but I didn’t know how much. At that point I actually preferred to not know. What follows is a little story about the toughest days of my trip on the Continental Divide Trail.
Approach
Once on the Divide, I verified it wasn’t gonna be easy, the trail was between very rough and non-existent and for long stretches I had only the sparsely placed tree blazes and signs to find the way. I was hiking through open woods, not too bad walking and actually very entertaining if you could take your time but that wasn’t my case and the slow progress was getting me increasingly concerned.
I tried to not worry too much. The going was rough but beautiful along a forested crest area of low hills. The forest shade helped with the mid-day sun and I tried to save my water as much as possible in case I couldn’t find any more, so much that I had a terrible last hour before I arrived at one of two critical points in the route, the one place where I expected to find water that day. Coming down from the trail, I could see the hand-pumped well and I knew I would survive fine for at least another day.
I took a long break, ate as much as I could and drank well beyond. It was at that very place where I had as much water as I could swallow. After that, there was still two nights and only one potential source where I could reasonably expect to find water again before I hit NM Highway 59. I filled bottles to max capacity, about 6 liters, and hiked on.
I was still only approaching the Black Range proper in a course due east that was taking me progressively off the trees and onto hilly, dry grassland. It was very solitary, actually the most solitary I had felt on the whole trip. From the hilltop course I could see huge extensions of empty grassland with only some mildly greening hills in the distance. There was no real trail underfoot and only the occasional cairn or post would show I was following something. If there was one place on the whole CDT where I wouldn’t have expected to meet anybody, it was here.
I extended the day’s hiking as much as I could and camped in the dark among scattered, small trees, trying to hide from the wind. The night was cold in strong contrast with the heat of the day. That’s New Mexico in a short sentence. I had just hiked 34.7 miles, the longest day on my entire trip.
Desert Grassland
I would still be hiking east for the whole day, hopefully hitting the northern end of the Black Range by day’s end. Before that, I had plenty of shade-less hiking and the need for yet one more water source around late afternoon/early evening that would save my life one final time.
The route took me down from the hills to the desert grassland below where I met dirt tracks and, oddly enough, parked vehicles and a camping party, still in their tents. I was tempted to ask them for water to top my bottles again but decided against. At that point, all I wanted to do was to hike on and apparently I was getting used to bold decisions.
During the rest of the morning, I was on a wide, dirt track that took me up into the hills and the pine trees again. Not only that, I went by a few cattle water tanks with actual liquid in them even though you’d be weary of actually calling it water. These tanks are dug out depressions the size of a big pond to a small lake, very common all along New Mexico and The Basin in Wyoming, they’re there for the cattle. The water is not only dirty looking but there’s commonly cow pies all over the place and sometimes you can see the actual cows peeing or shitting in the water when they’re around. Hikers drink this sometimes and survive. I can say I did some planning effort to avoid cattle pond water all along the trip. In this particular instance, given the uncertainty about finding anything else, I would have got water in these ponds but I went along them all in the morning when I still had plenty left. I decided to trust my luck to a promising source I’d met much later in the day. If there was no water there, I’d be in trouble though.
The route climbed over a line of grassy, golden hills, leaving the last trees behind. It was wide, desolate and incredibly beautiful with expansive views in all directions. Checking the map I can see this crest is called Pelona Mountain, where pelona is Spanish for bald, you get the picture. Once again there was barely any tread in the ground with the distant cairns and posts to show the way, rough underfoot despite the apparent smoothness and I concentrated on the most efficient progress I could get.
Down from the Pelona, the terrain doesn’t let me see where I’m going but a map check reveals it all: a large expanse of desert grassland plains that I need to cross before I meet a line of big hills at the far end: that’s the Black Range at last! And shortly after I get my first visual:
The plains remind me a lot to The Basin in Wyoming: sandy ground, scattered lumps of low, dry grass and a maze of dirt tracks. Same as in The Basin, I can spot wild horses and an antelope herd.
I walk along a few more cattle water tanks but they’re all dry in this area. It doesn’t surprise me anymore to know there can be cows in such parched areas after crossing similar land all along the route and particularly in the Wyoming Basin but I still wonder what the hell they eat. I guess they compensate the sparse vegetation for an extremely low density of animals. As for what they drink, I have it clearer because it’s actually the same water I’m aiming for and my well being depends on: right in the middle of this desert there’s North Garcia Mill.
Mills are common along the CDT in southern New Mexico. It’s the same stuff you can see in the Westerns, pumping water from the underground onto a tank accessible to the cattle. Many of them are not in working order anymore, with solar panels taking the place even though the actual mill remains are often still there. Whatever the pumping means, they’re a common resource for thru-hikers and their working status is a key piece of information. The North Garcia Mill has only a handful of user input in the App, all comments are positive but all belong to the spring time, none for mid October.
If I don’t find water in North Garcia, I’ll be in trouble. As long as I’m following a wide track, there might be vehicles and I’d stop one to ask for water but I can’t even imagine that happening. My only alternative plan is Road 163, a dirt but numbered track that I’d cross at the end of the day, just before reaching the mountains, where there might be some actual chance of traffic. There are a few other possible sources later, cattle tanks and seasonal streams, but they appear less reliable than North Garcia.
Nothing is too encouraging so I save my water as much as possible and as I approach the mill I’m tired, thirsty, hungry and finger crossing. I spot the structure in the distance so at least it’s there but I couldn’t say yet if it spins at all. As I get closer, I can see cows in the area and then I’m relieved: if cows gather there, it must be for the water.
The mill actually works, it spins noisily whenever there’s a breeze, pumping out to a huge metal tank. So that means water, food and shade, the latter only for the 7′ high tank wall. I didn’t have much time to relax but I did relax, physical and emotionally. Finding water in North Garcia meant I could pack enough to get myself to NM Highway 59 the following day so I was virtually through the first half of my little adventure. There was only some tough walking left but that was happily on me alone. It was victory and it felt great.
No time for celebrations yet though, I needed to resume the hiking as soon as possible. Now that the water was not an issue anymore, my target shifted to making it to the highway as early as possible the following day. This was important: I was aiming for a road in the middle of nowhere with a dead-end on the west side and only a tiny village off the foothills to the east. I had food and water to get there but not much else and it was key that I could find transportation to town. Highway 59 was not even documented anywhere on the CDT resources and I had no idea how much traffic I could expect but guessed very little to maybe none. It was a real concern and the sooner I could make it the better chance I’d have.
Yet this concern was far less worrying than the water had been for the last two days and I felt relieved, much happier, almost elated. I hiked with energy and confidence through the endless, scorched grassland trying to make it to the trees before dark where I’d sleep much better in all accounts. The grassland can be very windy and, once the sun is out, very cold.
I hiked into the dark but didn’t make it to the trees. It wasn’t the coldest temperature I recorded but it was the coldest feeling night of the trip and the Trailstar was frozen over the next morning, yet I once again packed before sunrise for one final push that would make all the work and despair worth it.
The Black Range at last
I climbed onto the hills in deep relief as I went back into the woods. The trail was very rough, slow going and the only stream bed I crossed was bone dry but none of that felt like a show-stopper anymore. It was still hard work, trying to push as fast as possible, no breaks, just hike and make no route-finding mistakes.
At some point, the almost non-existent trail became a rough but mostly clear, wide track with bike tire prints that followed the hill crest. I could feel the proximity of the trailhead. At 4 PM, I got to the pavement.
Highway 59
When I spotted Highway 59 on the map during my planning and saw it dying to oblivion just west of the CDT crossing, I wouldn’t even expect it to be paved. It is not uncommon to find numbered roads with a dirt surface in these outback regions. 59 turned out a very decent highway but solitary as heck. How long until a vehicle showed up?
It was about an hour and a half. Not much if you think all that it had taken to get there but an unnerving 1.5 h nonetheless. I always approach the hitch-hiking humbly and try to avoid any sense of entitlement, making it clear to myself that it should be the driver’s decision to take me or not. I made an exception this time. When I saw the car approaching from the west, I jumped to the middle of the road and waved my arms as if I was in the middle of the Gobi.
I couldn’t be luckier I met this young rancher and mountain guide. When I apologized for the aggressive hitch strategy, he said he perfectly understood and there was no way he would leave me stranded there. If not before, it was then that I felt that all the hard work was paying back.
With no information in the trail resources about town options from this road, I had been studying maps to see what was available and digging on the internet to find out what I’d find there. There was Winston, a tiny village just off the mountains with apparently no more services than a small store. Further away there was the oddly named Truth or Consequences, a much bigger place but a hell of a distance away. I asked Montana, that was the driver’s name, about my options. He offered to stop in Winston and give me a few minutes to ask around and see if it was viable, then take me to T or C if not.
Winston was minimal but there was indeed a general store not much smaller than others I had successfully used along the trip. The owners offered me camping on the lawn by the church and there was even a restaurant in town. In normal circumstances, it’d have been a perfect stay but I decided I was too worn out, physically and emotionally, and that I needed otherwise non-essential stuff like a shower, a laundry run or a WiFi to call home. I went back to the car and asked Montana to take me to Truth or Consequences, fully aware that going back to the trail might not be easy but I decided to live on the moment and leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.
Truth or Consequences
This is a full-serviced, much bigger town, off the Interstate motorway on its way to the state capital Albuquerque. Montana briefs me about it during the additional half hour drive enough for me to see it’s gonna be a tough place to move around without a car and we agree the outskirts mall is gonna be my best bet. There are motels, restaurants and a supermarket, all within a 5 minute walking distance. I share with my driver my concerns about hitching back to the trail, he says there’s usually not much traffic heading my way but there’s hunting season opening the following day and there’ll be hunters driving up to the mountains.
– I’m going back tomorrow midday. Hitch from that access ramp over there, I’ll watch out for you in case you haven’t been successful.
You can’t be amazed enough about the kindness of strangers.
With that reassurance, I can finally relax. Shower, laundry, hefty dinner and a comfy motel room to crash and reminisce the hardest week of my trip on the Continental Divide Trail.
Adventure was this
I take it easy the following morning and park myself in the motorway access ramp by 10 AM with no expectations and no hurry to get a ride. I’m too far from the trail but my experience with hitch-hiking is that it always works eventually.
The dark side of my previous day driver’s offer is that the only way I have to take it on is to be there. I wouldn’t expect him until midday but after that I won’t dare to move so I don’t risk missing him. And it is after midday and a couple hours where no single car had stopped that I realize how important it’ll be to not miss Montana if he ever shows up.
It’s already 2 PM and after 4 full hours nothing’s happened. I’d be fine paying for my transport but this is the empty quarter of North America and there’s no public transport anywhere, not to mention a remote trailhead in the mountains. I’ve tried Uber but there are no drivers in town. I realize it’s not gonna be easy and I start to regret my decision of coming down this far from the trail. It’s then that a young couple of urban backpackers join the hitch-hiking party, they tell me they’re trying to get to Albuquerque, which should be a much easier target than Winston and the CDT, and they’ve been stranded there for 2 days already! If not earlier, it is then that I start to reconsider my strategy, shifting the hitch-hiking location to the local road, possibly hiking the 7 miles to the junction after which all traffic would go my way.
All that new plan would be for the following day anyway, as I stand it’s only 3 hours of daylight left. I plan to keep my position until dark, still hoping for something to happen, then get a room for the night and go for a fresh start after dawn.
It’s 4 PM, I haven’t moved for 6 hours straight and then, for the first time in the day, something happens: a car stops! I can’t recognize the vehicle but I do remember the driver and it’s Montana. “You’re late!”, I joke, deeply relieved that I was finally gonna get out of town and grateful to my benefactor.
Adventure was this, I reckon. Not necessarily glamorous.
The Black Range again
This is not over. I’m still in uncharted territory, actually most of the Black Range proper still lies ahead and I basically face the same main issue with the uncertainty about trail conditions and, above all, water availability. Montana is also able to help with this, he’s a hunting guide in the area, knows the mountains well and gives me some hints about what to expect. I have identified a few key water sources that look promising and are evenly spaced enough to get me through. All things considered, I feel much more confident now than I did on the previous stage.
Montana leaves me at the trail crossing wishing me good luck and I can’t be more grateful for all he’s done for me. Meeting people like him is one of the best things on a trip like this. Meeting people turns out one of the key aspects of a wilderness-oriented trip.
It’s 5.30 PM and I don’t have much daylight left. It’s 4-5 days for this stage, always depending on trail conditions and I resume the hiking right away, fingers crossed for the water thing.
The route goes across beautiful, open pine woods on its way up along the divide crest. The trail is often indistinct but good enough for easy following. I’m relaxed and happy, some fine moments that define the very reason I’m doing this thru-hiking thing. I hike until dark and make camp in the welcoming woods.
Deep into the mountains
The following morning I go through the first key milestone in this stage, the junction to a spring. I don’t need the water yet but I need to find out what I can expect so I drop the pack and hike a steep .3 miles down from the crest to find a wonderful, piped spring of cold, crystal clear water slowly pouring into a trough:
I top bottles but mostly I top the reassurance dial, there’s water in the Black Range in October! Only problem is most of the route is on the crest and the water is to be found farther down but that’s a minor price to pay for the most precious thing in one’s life.
Further down the way there’s a water tank. This one is in the form of a closed, fiberglass container. It has some water too, accessible through an open panel. It tastes a bit funky but other than that and the million floaties, the water is clean.
I have no idea about the purpose of this tank, it doesn’t seem accessible to cattle, but I top bottles again so I can keep lugging close to 7 liters around.
Only 4 miles later, the route leaves the crest briefly but enough to take a shallow, headwaters gully where I find this beauty:
It was stagnant but clean. It’s the first time I find (formerly) running water since I took the Black Range route. This feels so good. Everything is beautiful and I’m a heavily loaded and happy hiker.
The trail goes back to the crest and keeps getting higher, steeper and the vegetation changes with small size oak and aspen taking the place of pine in the slopes. This is very special as I finally get to see the fall colors. I missed them in Colorado as it was still too early in the season and I finally get my autumn fix.
Not everything is perfect. Another new trail companion is not as welcome, the honey locust. This is a damn thorny, low bush capable of real carnage to a hiker’s legs. The trail is overgrown with it and to make things worse the honey locust often hides among stunted aspen, which has a very similar appearance so it becomes difficult to know if you’ll be able to slide through the next thicket or you’ll get stuck again.
It was stressful to try to push through this stuff at thru-hiker speed but it was also a good sign that an overgrown, thorny trail and the slow progress was my main problem at the time.
I started missing the pine woods badly when the sun set and I still had to find a place to camp with no flat spots in sight but once again these were old, familiar problems. I noticed a potentially flat grove in the distance, pressed on and found the only fine spot on a crest area crossed by a strong, cold draft despite the tree wall in the upwind side. It was freezing in the wind and I was so glad to have the Trailstar with me.
Uncharted territory
Other than the water, there was another major potential issue in this section and it was coming up: a wildfire had burned the crest section over a few miles some years back and there were vague reports about the trail having basically disappeared, the area now overgrown with the honey locust, making it allegedly impassable. You know “impassable” is always a relative term but after experiencing the thorny bush while on a trail, I’d imagine you could need a machete if the thing is actually thick. Some more vague reports about a detour, leaving the crest down a canyon, back up another connecting canyon over unknown quality, little used trails. The going could be tough and the detour would add a few extra miles but not everything was bad news: down the side canyons, there should be water, setting me one less source away from Black Range crossing success.
The detour hadn’t been incorporated into the digital track but it turned out it had already been signed on the spot, the new CDT:
The Black Canyon provided for the way down and a big change in the scene: a mix woods of pine and oak trees. It’s dry underfoot but lush and shady in a crooked, narrow valley, radically different from the openness and exposure of the crest. It’s incredibly beautiful.
The stream bed is dry at the headwaters but it’s not long before I see the first patches of stagnant H2O. As soon as I go along some bigger pools, I stop to reload. The water is not running but it’s perfectly clear and appetizing. I’d expect there’d be more water further down the canyon but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a seasonal stream with pools and even minor flow higher up going dry never to be seen again so I play it safe and top bottles. 7 liters again.
Not much later I could see a running trickle, then a bigger flow that turned into a full stream, flowing solid down the valley. It was the first time in weeks that I could see a real, running stream.
It was a very special time, hiking along this secluded valley with barely a hint of a trail underfoot, finding my own way across vegetation or over fallen logs, feeling like I’d be the only hiker around but certainly not the only animal, there’s plenty of wildlife: I met deer and those familiar prints that I hadn’t seen for a long time:
I had no idea there were bears this far south but it made all the sense. This narrow valley in the heart of the Black Range is lush and remote. It feels really wild and I can imagine wildlife being abundant here.
I myself am split between wonder and concern. In retrospect, there was probably no solid reason for the latter, everything was going well but I think I was still feeling the weight of the uncertainty about what was to come. The trail tread would only appear occasionally and even then it was very rough, the going was almost cross-country, very slow and arduous and I had no information about the rest of the detour tread. I felt like I needed to be back on the CDT proper.
I eventually got to the confluence of the Black Canyon with Aspen Canyon, the one I’d follow upstream all the way back up to the crest and the Continental Divide Trail. It’s so solitary and pristine here that it would seem there hadn’t been hikers around for decades but there’s actually some human activity indication that feels so unexpected as a UFO. Unexpected but not out of place, it’s wooden sign at the junction pointing to the CDT. There wasn’t much budget to build this trail and apparently it all went into signage.
Aspen Canyon going up had a better trail than Black Canyon did but it eventually vanished and it still took me about 2 hours to get back on the Divide. When I did, it was late in the day and it was right then that I suddenly felt different: it was still 2 days walk left for the next town but for maybe the first time since I took the Black Range route, it felt like nothing would go wrong.
Final stretch
The rest of the story felt more like thru-hiking business as usual. The trail was fairly good quality again and I crossed the boundary out of the wilderness area as the mountains started to dwindle. I eventually met a dirt road with a trailhead parking area. There, a vehicle and its driver. It wasn’t remote territory anymore.
Early the following day I could fill bottles again in some stagnant pools and later on I crossed a running stream where I would even refresh my feet. The next morning I could see buildings in the very far distance. By dusk that day I arrived in Silver City, New Mexico. I was one week worth of hiking from the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail.
Dave Sailer
Not related, exactly, but you might appreciate the sorts of things that Christof Teuscher gets up to: “In my professional life, I’m a full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Portland State University (PSU). My research team investigates next-generation computing models and technologies. In my non-professional life, I keep myself busy with photography and some ultra running on the side.”
Seriously busy. He was recently in the U.S. Southwest doing radical things on the Kokopelli Trail.
He’s into the FKT stuff, which normally drives me away, but for him it’s more of a personal exploration of his own capabilities rather than just doing something ordinary faster than anyone else has done it, and I can appreciate that.
He has a great sense of humor too, as you can tell from his “Eats” page (Frosted Cheez Balls, JelloPringles, Pringles and OReo Meatballs, Sausage-enhanced Cheesecake Sauce, and so on).
At https://www.christofteuscher.com/aagaa/