It’s time for some more leisurely backpacking! We hit the Jack’s Creek trailhead around 10:30am, and it’s busy. We’re the first to have to park in the weeds. On the trail, we meet hikers and equestrians enjoying the nice weather. It looks like it could storm, but after just a few drops it clears up…

We return to the site of our snowbound May hike to see how it feels now. No postholing this time! The Santa Fe Ski Basin parking is now packed, however, and the trail is accordingly much busier. It takes ten minutes of climbing before my body starts to come out of its murky funk, and…

The physical feeling of moving slug-like underwater has not left since we stopped hiking 20 miles a day last week. We take our friend Lisa, who is nursing an ankle injury, on this short hike. The feeling persists throughout. Maybe the combination of hiking and illness has left me with greater deficits than I realize.…

This a perfect refresher hike. A good climb, nice ridgewalk, fresh air. This post is almost more significant than the hike – the first draft of the map was posted from my phone! It’s a precarious stack of home-rolled and bleeding-edge open source software that I balanced on to accomplish it, but I’m going to…

We kind of expected this hike to be easy. That probably ensured that it would the hardest yet. The combination of heat, flies, monotonous trail, and unexpected difficulty finding the southern trailhead bruised our resolve. We hiked in opposite directions to avoid a two-car shuttle, and perhaps hiking alone made it harder too. Ann used…

Ann did a backpack trip on her own starting Friday afternoon. During the night a heavy rainstorm moved in, and kept soaking her through the day today! She managed a nice 22-mile route with about 6,000 feet of climbing over the crest of the Sangre Cristo mountains regardless, and caught a ride home with some…

Ann pours on the steam today, climbing Atalaya like a machine. Apparently all of our hiking has had some effect. She is ahead of me in preparations for our Wyoming hike as well. I decide that I may have to skip our weekend hike to catch up, and we discuss alternatives she might do without…

There’s a desert stretch of the Continental Divide Trail I’d like to map, and we figure it will be a good way to test ourselves and our gear in some hot, waterless terrain. The forecast is for sun and wind, but clouds and occasional rain storms spare us from the heat. Many cactus are beginning…

It’s been a busy week, and we’ve lost some of our hiking momentum. We also have a lot of preparations to do for our July hike, like buying dehydrated food. We combine our two needs and muster a hike to Wild Oats with empty backpacks, which we fill with bulk bags. Our minds have also…

The forecast calls for warm weather, so we decide to risk another hike in the high country. This time we drive to the trailhead after work on Friday, with a couple of hours of light to get us started. I love hiking at twilight, but it doesn’t leave much time to find a campsite. After…