Pecos Baldy Lake, NM

Objective:  
A) Practice winter mountaineering skills for future alpine climbs (successful).
B) Summit Pecos Baldy (12,4??') and East Pecos Baldy (12,595') (bailed).
C) Summit Truchas Peak (13,109') (bailed).
D) Summit Middle and North Truchas Peaks (bailed).
 
Date:  
November 9-10, 2002
Photogallery:  
Party:  
Robin Blume-Kohout and Mouser Williams
Summary:  
An 8-hour slog through deep powder with snowshoes that were too-small led to fatigue which caused us to ditch our plans of climbing Truchas Peak. We opted instead for a climb of nearby East Pecos Baldy. However, after a cold night I lacked the strength for the summit push and turned around after only a few hundred feet of ascent. We made the five-hour return trip to the car starting at 12:30pm on the second day, getting there just as it became officially dark. The 1-2 meters of snow made following the trail impossible in places, and wandering around lost accounted for much of our extra time and distance.
Route:  
From the Jack's Creek Trailhead we took trail 25 to the junction with trail 257. We allegedly followed this, though it became clear quickly that we were on the wrong side of Round Mountain. We bushwacked around Round Mountain to the Northeast corner and down to the creek, which we followed upstream until we found trail 257 again. We took this up towards Pecos Baldy Lake, losing it again about two-thirds of the way up. We ended up orienteering our way to the lake sans trail. In the morning, we ascended a path roughly equivalent to trail 251 up towards the saddle leading to the East Pecos Baldy summit push, though we never saw the actual trail and never gained the ridge. The return trip to the car followed 257 down to the creek, then bushwacked all the way back to an early portion of 25 already heading down the south ridge towards the car.
Noteworthy:  
My first real snowshoing trip (barring a short trip up to the treeline on Long's Peak several years ago that only took a few hours).

I saw my first shrew ever.
Lessons Learned:  
Slightly-too-small snowshoes on soft powder make for really strenuous trail breaking.

Pecos Baldy Lake freezes - but not enough that you can walk out far enough to get to water sufficiently deep to avoid retrieving slushy dirt swill.
We met at Robin's house at the insidious hour of 4:40am for biscuits and final packing. We were on the road for the two hour trip to the trailhead by 5:30am. The road north from Pecos, NM, through Cowles is a nice one, though there was a lot of fallen rock on the road. We were below snow line right up until the trailhead (8,800'), where there was a layer of slush on the ground and a light snow falling. The weather had been warm and sunny for the past week. Only the day before our climb did storms fall in and put fresh snow all over the mountains. The cloud cover was still continuous.

It took us half an hour to get our gear together, attach our ice axes and snow shoes to the backs of our packs, boots on, etc. I put some preemptive moleskin on my feet for my still-not-broken-in boots, but they ended up not giving me any problems at all. I really like my La Sportiva Makalus. We were on the trail by 8:00am.

Trail 25 is a very easy one. It goes through a few switch backs and lazily ascends the ridge East of the trailhead. Most of the trail was muddy and slushy until we gained the ridge and headed North to the junction of trails 25 and 257. Once we were on the ridge top, there was proper snow a few inches deep.

About a mile after the last switchback, the trail opens up into a meadow surrounded by aspens. Round Mountain was visible to the North, though the cloud cover made the visibility pretty lousy. There was a trail intersection sign here, indicating that trail 257 headed off to the West. We turned and follwed what seemed to be 257 for a ways, but it became clear that whatever we were following was heading around Round Mountain in the wrong direction (to the East). We made the call to go off-trail and traverse around the mountain with map and compass. This meant entering snow deeper than 1', so we put on our snowshoes and off we went. Our intended route was all open in this area and was easy to navigate with Round Mountain always in site.

The snowshoes were a great help compared to the post-holing we had been doing, but they were clearly a bit small for such light powder. Robin was breaking trail (as he had 9x36" shoes and I only had 9x30) and he was sinking up to 6" with each step. There was no hard layer to give support. Following behind Robin I had a much easier time, since his footprints were already compacted. I was only sinking 1-2" per step.

Once we had traversed around to the Northwest side of Round Mountain, we had to enter the thick spruce forest again. The map indicated that 257 went into the forest here somewhere, but we couldn't find it so we had to bushwack it. The trees were really dense here, and there was a relatively high-angle slope leading down to the creek that we were having to side-hill much to the chagrin of our ankles. Roughly contouring around some ridges that didn't seem to be on the topo quad, we made our way to the stream and crossed over, quickly regaining trail 257 which was following the creek at this point.

From this point onward, the trail was steadily uphill for well over a thousand feet and several miles of linear distance. This wouldn't normally be terribly difficult, but now we were high enough that we had to contend with snow that was up to a meter in depth in our lousy snowshoes. It was slow going and very tiring.

After awhile we noticed that there seemed to be blazes chopped into the trees on the trail. We hadn't noticed them before, but they did seem to be following the trail. So when we got to a point where the trail clearly went one way, but the blazes went uphill, we weren't sure what to do. I made the bad call to follow the blazes rather than what appeared to be a trail.

The blazes quickly petered out, but not before leading us 100' or so above the trail. We decided not to descend back to the trail because it would just mean an extra 100' we'd have to gain later. Instead, we opted to contour around and try to find the trail when it crossed our present elevation. This would be the last of trail 257 we would see during our ascent.

The bushwacking in thick powder and dense tree cover was troublesome because we couldn't see any mountains to make bearing measurements. Luckily we knew we had a large ridge on our left and a stream gully on our right. As long as we stayed between them and headed generally uphill we would have to end up in the Pecos Baldy Lake basin.

It took a long time, and towards the end I was really starting to lose it in my quads. When we finally came over the last rise and saw down into the lake basin with the imposing face of East Pecos Baldy rising behind it, it was such a relief. The lake was completely frozen over and covered in snow, so it just looked like a flat snow patch, but we knew it was there. By this time it was already well past 4:00pm and our hopes of doing a trip up East Pecos Baldy this afternoon were shot. Besides, we were both completely worked from the 8-hour slog.

We pitched a campsite on the ridge overlooking the lake, technically out of the lake basin. it was difficult to stomp down the 1-2m of snow to the point where we could walk on it without snowshoes. By the time we got the tent pitched, it was dark. We were both starving. Mountain House beef strokinoff was, in our estimation, the best meal ever. We were in bed by 8:00pm.

Unfortunately, my 20 degree bag was insufficient, even while wearing all of my clothes. It wasn't unbearable, but it was uncomfortable and I found myself shivering a lot. My body spent a lot of the night expending energy keeping me warm rather than regaining what it lost on the hike up. When we got up at 7:00am, I was still completely exhausted.

Looking at the topo map, it was clear that Truchas was still 4 miles away. The 6 mile trip up to camp had kicked our collective asses, so we decided that doing an 8-mile trip today was out of the question. Instead, we set our sights on nearby East Pecos Baldy, whose summit push was only a third of a mile away.

After a great ham/mushroom/onion/green pepper omelet and some hot cocoa, we put our boots and snowshoes on and headed out around the lake to the general vicinity of trail 251. We couldn't find the trail, but we could see where we wanted it to take us anwyay so we once again bushwacked our way up through the spruce. This is where my lack of proper rest and worked quads turned against me. By the time we had gone up about 400', it was becoming clear that I was not able to hold my legs in a stable configuration without locking my knees. I was wobbling a lot and stumbling on relatively easy terrain. Once or twice I stepped off of Robin's broken trail and fell into the snow up to my thighs and had a terrible time trying to free myself.

I made the call to turn around just short of the saddle where the summit ridge for East Pecos Baldy begins. I could probably have pushed on and made the summit, but I was starting to fear for my own safety on the return trip. I felt like a knee injury was imminent.

It didn't take long to get back to camp. It was still early in the morning and it was clear that I wouldn't be climbing any peaks today, so we had to make the choice between sitting around all day and then returning in the morning, or just packing up now and heading back. Based on the fact that returning down the ridge from our summit attempt wasn't too hard on my legs, I made the assessment that my quads were only having problems on ascents. There is very little up-hill work on the way back to the car, so I voted for returning immediately to the car. Robin agreed.

By this time the sun had come out and was baking our tent nicely. It was warm inside. Robin went down to the lake to try to break through the ice and filter out some water. I must have passed out in the tent because he was gone for 20 minutes and I never noticed he had left. Apparently the ice wasn't thick enough to walk out to a deep portion of the lake, so he was forced to retrieve water from the lake at a point where the ice ended just a few inches above the mud. Muddy slush was all he could retrieve, and his filter was having a hard time processing it. Anyway, it took him a long time to get water and I got a nap out of it.

We packed up the tent and our gear and were on the trail again by 12:30pm. We managed to find 257 realatively quickly and follow it down to Jack's Creek. Once we got to the point where we had left the trail on account of the blazes, we could vaguely make out our tracks from the previous afternoon. It had snowed something like 6" overnight and there had been a fair amount of wind. Despite this, the packed snow from our footsteps was still down there and it made travelling on the trail much easier, not to mention the fact that we were now going downhill.

The trail down to the creek only took us 1.5 hours. We still couldn't find the trail as it connected the creek to the open meadow around Round Mountain, and were forced to bushwack again. This was the only significant uphill on the return trip and I had a really hard time with it. But frequent rests and lots of powergels got me through it. Once in the open field around the moutain, there was no hope of finding a trail under all the snow, so we just orienteered it. We took a markedly different path than our approach (since we had clearly been on the wrong trail at that point). This had the advantage of a shorter route, but we had no familiar landmarks to go by.

It was a bit difficult to pick out where our ridge was, and at some point we crossed our old path without even noticing it, as we ended up on the eastern side of our desired trail. The snow had picked up and visibility was down, so I got out the GPS and we made a rough estimate of where we were. It was clear that we were too far East and we headed back generally Southwest until we found ourselves on the western side of the desired ridge (having crossed the trail again without noticing it). From here it was a simple traverse south until we found the trail and made the remaining 2.5 miles back to the car on good trail with little snow - and finally no snowshoes.

Walking with just boots - even 2.5kg Makalus - was like walking on air. It felt great. My shoulders were killing me from the overloaded pack and my legs were like jelly, but knowing I was so close to the car gave me a psychological boost that kept me going all the way to the car in good time. All the same, by the time we got there it was almost 5:30pm and it was quite dark. If we had spent any more time up there being lost, it could have been a disaster.

Taking off the pack felt so good. We went to Asado, a new Brazillian buffet resturaunt in Santa Fe where they serve you all-you-can-eat meat. I think we almost put them out of business.

Written by Mouser Williams on 2002.11.12