I found myself with a free day and I hadn't been out climbing in some time, so I decided to knock a couple of highpoints off my list. I got up early and left the house at 6am. I drove via the interstate up to northeastern NM and followed the good instructions on the county highpointers website to the trailhead for sugarloaf mountain. This involved driving on a two-track through the Kiowa National Grassland for awhile which was really pleasant. It was quite remote and the weather was gorgeous. I was out of the truck hiking by 9:30.

The "mountain" is somewhat lackluster; it only rises about 200' above the surrounting plain, but as the plain is very flat for a long ways except for these old volcanic cones (of which sugarloaf is one), the view is tremendous. Add to that the great weather and the really interesting clouds and sundogs that were out, it was a great hour-long jaunt.

The drive to the trailhead for Sierra Grande took awhile as it included about sixty miles of driving, the last 3.5 of which were on a rough 4WD track heading up the lower slopes of the mountain. The entire jeep trail was strewn with very pointy lava rocks which made me nervous. The tires held up just fine, but it was really bumpy.

From the parking area at the end of the road on the eastern slope of the mountain, the summit appeared to not be very far away at all. I assumed it was a typo on the website that said two miles and 1,700 vertical feet.

It was not a typo. There is an interesting optical illusion played by the plants on the slopes of the mountain; they are the only thing that you have as a size reference. Down low, where I parked, the plants are all small junipers. Up higher, they are full-sized pine trees but you can't tell that from below; it all just looks like junipers. And my mind just assumed that the trees up high were the same size as the nearby junipers, and therefore that the higher slopes weren't very far away at all. But as I climbed I started noticing that I wasn't getting anywhere near the top very quickly. It took me a couple hours to reach the top and then there was a false summit. It was a psychologically challenging peak, but the weather reamained great. I was in a T-shirt the whole way.

The very top is populated by an antenna farm and I had to climb over a cow fence to get to the benchmark and register. The view from Sierra Grande was even better than that from Sugarloaf (naturally; it's about 2000' more prominent). Knowing how far the hike up was, there was no psychological impedement on the way down and I made it back to the truck in record time.

I did this hike alone and with no GPS, which was sorta creepy as I couldn't see the truck during any portion of the hike and it was all bushwacking. I managed to navigate straight back to it though.

I drove back via Raton and Taos, passing through the mountains south of Wheeler. This is a nice drive, but it was dark by the time I got into the twisty bit. I was home by 8:00pm.