White Mountain Wilderness- Camp night 11

It was getting on into late afternoon, so I hooked up with trail #33 on the ridge, and started off, hoping to get of the ridge to camp for the night. The blurb I had read about the trail said there weren't many level spots on the trail for a couple of miles once off the ridge, so I knew I'd have to make good time.



Of course, the snow, which on the ridge was nearly 6ft tall in places, fixed that. On the ridge at least 3/4 of a mile was spent on deep (to me) snow. I had to use my map and compass to be sure that I was staying fairly close to the trail. While I usually grumble about morons defacing nature, it was nice to be able to see that I was doing a good job at staying near the trail when I saw where people had carved their names into the aspen trunks.







I found a sheltered spot without snow and camped at 10,000 feet for the night. After setting camp up, I scouted ahead, the trail was under even more deep snow. I'd also passed up the one water source on the ridge, so I used my canister stove to melt enough snow to refill my bladder, my bottle, and for supper.



It was really windy on the ridge, but my campsite for the night was pretty cozy. I could hear the wind, but my little tent hardly made a sound in the wind. That night, lying in my sleeping bag I realized that I could have been in more trouble than I thought. Though I was feeling fine, what would have happened if I had started suffering for altitude sickness? It was a couple of rough miles back to where I had climbed up, and I wasn't even sure where the trail ahead was located, other than where it disappeared in the snow. If I had had to climb down in the middle of the night, stumbling from being sick, where would I have gone? It would have been a miserable slide down the south facing slope, and I would have had to figure out navigation the next morning.

Nothing bad happened, but I should have thought things out a little better before. But, now I know.




The next morning I got the water for breakfast boiling while I broke down camp. It was more fun through the snow, but I was getting pretty good at reading it. I could guess what stretches would allow me to walk across, and which were slick enough to make me land on my butt, and which would force me to posthole. Of course my five minutes of "alpine" experiance was proven wrong when I sunk waist deep in the snow.

Later that morning, after spending most of yesterday and all of the current day seeing only elk tracks, I came across a blown over tent on the slope. It was on a bad, steep spot, staked right in the middle of the trail under a tree. It would have been a rocky, windy place to spend a night. Inside the tent were two empty Sam's Club disposable water bottles and an empty ziplock bag. I set my pack down and scouted around the area, and farther down the trail.

No tracks in the snow or the mud. The tent had been there awhile, and was holding water. There had been no other vehicles parked at the trail head, and this was several miles away from the crest trail, so I assume someone abandoned the tent. I packed the tent and all the other trash up and took it down the mountain.

I'm now the owner of a Eurkea Spitfire with a dime sized tear in the bug netting on the door. A tiny bit of duct tape fixed it.


It was a little spooky to find a basically new tent lying flat across the trail, filled with water, trash, leaves and twigs.

There was one steep, grassy slope I slid down to save time, using my feet and poles to steer. Probably not the smartest thing, but it was fun, quick, and there was plenty of grass before the trees.


The rest of the hike down went okay, and once I was out of the snow, Bluefront was in a lot better condition than South Fork. Really nice trail, though I'm glad I was going down instead of up. It would have been a long climb up, here is the trail profile for Bluefront:



Near the bottom of Bluefront, at a creek crossing, there was a small log jam that was causing part of the creek to divert down the indented trail. I spent a few moments clearing enough debris so the creek wouldn't flood down the trail.





Before long I was back on the South fork trail and on my way back to the trail head. About 3/4 mile from the car I saw one other person, dayhiking. He was the only person I had seen in three days.

A quick change of clothes, some dry socks, a large plate of mexican food in Ruidoso, and then a seven hour drive got me back home.