I’m fortunate to have experienced many adventures during my lifetime, and one of the most memorable was traveling to, and hiking up, Wheeler Peak — the highest point in New Mexico — in 2004. At the time, I didn’t yet have a blog and had not yet heard of Flickr, so the story was limited to in-person retellings and the photos were too large for the photo-sharing sites of the day so others only saw them by standing behind me as I clicked “next” on a computer. Here, then, is the story of that adventure, along with some of the photos.

(Note: In 2004, I created a highly detailed PDF document including some photos and many details about the trip. Feel free to read it, but be warned that it’s far longer than this blog entry and the writing style makes me sound like a teenager. In 2010 I uploaded every surviving photo of the trip to Flickr — they’re here, best viewed on a computer rather than a phone. I also wrote a blog entry about the trip in 2010, but it is now lost due to the 2020 collapse of my WordPress databases. The blog entry you’re reading now was requested by a friend who recently visited Wheeler Peak.)

To Set The Stage...

2004 was the year before I met the woman who would become my wife — I was a childless, unmarried man of 31, working as the police and courts reporter for a small-town daily newspaper in Seminole, Okla., where I also lived in a “fourplex” apartment. My brother Zane was 18 — he’d graduated high school a few months earlier and was set to begin college.

In 2003, my parents and Zane had visited Red River, N.M., enjoying it, but both my father and Zane came home disappointed that they hadn’t attempted to climb nearby Wheeler Peak and determined to return. They invited me to come along and I didn’t hesitate too long in accepting the offer of a vacation that someone else was paying for.

Wheeler Peak, at an elevation of 13,167 feet, is the highest point in New Mexico, part of the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) Mountains — the southernmost subrange of the Rockies. It’s about a hundred feet taller than the other Wheeler Peak (in Nevada), both of which are named after cartographer and explorer George Wheeler. New Mexico’s Wheeler Peak sits about 30 miles south of the Colorado border, in the middle of a circular area bounded by U.S. highway 64 and state highways 38 and 522, which are home to the small towns of Taos, Red River, and Eagle Nest.

Preparation

I knew I was out of shape. Working at a desk job for a few years and being a smoker overwhelmed what few exercises I performed in my free time. I knew I couldn’t train for the high altitude (Seminole sits at about 1,000 feet elevation, which is basically sea level in contrast to Wheeler Peak) but I could at least prepare for a very long walk. Starting four months before our trip, I began driving to a quarter-mile track at a small park a few blocks from my home. (In hindsight, I could have saved money and gotten more exercise if I had just walked to the track.) At first, I walked around it two or three times, but soon made a mile and then two or three. By July I was walking four miles on the track and then shooting hoops at a basketball goal next to the track for an hour afterward. I began jogging every other lap. When July ended and my trip was only days away, I was clearing eight miles on the track in blistering 98 degrees Fahrenheit three days a week.

I would soon learn that eight miles on a smooth track is child’s play compared to 14 miles (half uphill and half downhill) over rocky terrain at 10,000 feet or higher. But I was better prepared than I could have been.

Outbound Trip

We took my father’s king-cab Chevy Silverado pickup, leaving Seminole at 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 3, our luggage in the bed of the truck, my Dad driving and me in the back seat. We took SH3 going northwest, then the recently re-paved “Earsboro cutoff” to I-40, and rode that west through Oklahoma City to US281 Spur. Northwest Oklahoma is a part I hadn’t seen before; unlike the hilly, curvy southeast, it is very, absurdly flat. We passed through towns like Geary and Watonga, Oakwood and Seiling — where Z took over driving at 9:20 a.m.

From there, we saw Woodward, Gage (wrong turn), May (population 33!), and then Elmwood where we stopped for gas. (Oklahoma is only the 20th largest state by area, but the panhandle adds incredible width.) We went on through Bryan’s Corner and Hardesty, and began noticing the lack of trees — miles between them. We finally stopped for lunch at McDonald’s in Guymon, then pushed on through Four Corners (the one in Oklahoma, not the famous one) and Boise City, then saw our first mountain peeking over the horizon at 1:40 p.m. — it was in New Mexico but we could see it in Oklahoma. We stopped at the border at 1:50 p.m. to make a photo and rest.

The ground rose gradually and we crossed a mile in elevation without really noticing. We passed Des Moines (N.M.), Capulin, Raton, and Cimarron, where we took on more fuel and I moved into the driver seat. I drove through Eagle Nest (8,000 feet) and Bobcat Pass (9,820 feet), before arriving in Red River (8,650 feet). We pulled into our hotel (Best Western) at 4:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. Central Time), so the whole trip took less than 11 hours.

The town of Red River, in 2004 at least, was tiny. Two parallel streets and about ten cross streets, some of which meander off into nearby valleys. About half the business establishments were gift shops for tourists and the other half were restaurants, plus one small grocery store and two gas stations. Almost everything closed at 7 p.m. I didn't see a single law enforcement person of any agency the entire time we were there.

Acclimation

Good advice we received was to acclimate ourselves to the altitude. I’ve spent my entire life at 1,000 feet or below, so it was likely necessary. We spent a couple of days walking around Red River and other nearby sites before attempting Wheeler Peak.

The evening we arrived, we explored some of the steep hills around the town, Dad mostly staying at the altitude of the town with Z and I scaling a few thousand-foot ridges. We had two-way radios with us, so we could communicate with each other up to two miles (none of us had mobile phones). This way, Z and I could let Dad know if we wanted to descend on the other side of a ridge; he could drive around and meet us on the other side.

On the way down one of these ridges, I pierced the palm of my hand with the pointy end of a broken stump and thereafter referred to it as my “stigmata”.

We ate sandwiches and microwave meals in the hotel room and then soaked in the hot tub as the night air chilled. We all had trouble sleeping that night.

Our first full day there (Wednesday, Aug. 4), we engaged in more acclimation. We rented a Jeep Wrangler — because the previous year, my Dad had learned that his truck was too big for some of the twisty mountain roads. We took it up to Red River Pass (9,854 feet) where we watched other people crash their 4-wheelers and motorcycles on the mountainsides. Then we went on to Greenie Peak (11,249 feet) — we tried and the Jeep failed on several routes, but we eventually made it up there.

From atop Greenie Peak, we could see the town of Red River in the distance. But there was little else to do other than make a few photos and walk around the flat gravel top, and it was about lunch time. Z drove down, which was far more nerve-wracking than if I’d simply dived off head first. Not that he’s a bad driver; the road was simply designed with instant death in mind. We saw a cave on the way back to Red River and stopped to explore it a bit.

After lunching at the hotel, we followed a pamphlet that promised several historic mines, but all of them were caved in and/or buried. This required hours of walking — so much so that my Dad worried Z and I would be sore before the next day’s voyage up Wheeler Peak.

While Dad and Z ate in the hotel, I walked to a restaurant in town and had a very large hamburger and fries.

The Main Event

We woke at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday (Aug. 6) to see that it was raining outside and appeared to have been raining a good while. It was also only 50°F. Dad had already decided not to go — he simply wasn’t feeling up to it (and was about to turn 60) — and he began trying to convince Z and I to accept the fact that it wouldn’t happen for us either. But neither Z nor I is the type of person to accept defeat quite so easily.

We said we’d at least drive up to the trailhead, in case the rain cut out or at least turned to a mist. We packed as light as we dared. Water bottles and sandwiches and fruit bars in Z’s backpack. I carried the map, compass, flashlight (maybe we’d see a cave?), binoculars, pocketknife, and my camera — of course. (The only camera I owned at the time was a four-megapixel Olympus C750UZ, which was used for all the photos on this page and in my Flickr album of the trip.) We breakfasted in the hotel and left at 7:20.

Z drove the six miles to the end of Highway 578, then another 1.3 miles down a torn up road not fit for driving. It took about 25 minutes. There, we found the parking area for the Middle Fork Trail and two other cars. The rain had splattered at us all the way out there, but quit as we locked up the truck at 8:10.

The first sections of the trail were easy to follow and probably could be driven with an ATV or even a sturdy golf cart, but it was steep. I didn’t tell my younger brother, but my plan for making it to the top was simply to keep up with him — who had just spent four years of high school playing basketball and football. I was huffing and puffing within 10 minutes and my thighs began to ache.

We cut across some of the zigzags of the trail, which saved distance but drastically increased the steepness of our path. Once we missed the next zag but found our way via map and compass. After an hour, we took our first break, having gone only 1.5 miles. I was encouraged that Z seemed as out-of-breath as I was. We traded backpack for camera bag (which turned out to be a mistake on my part — I felt those extra 10 pounds immediately).

Fortunately, a few minutes later we reached Middle Fork Lake, where wind coming across the ice-cold water was in the 50s and perked us up a little. While there, a couple passed us and went to the right around the lake.

When our break ended, we also headed right, circling the lake on a very narrow trail, dodging the ubiquitous chipmunks who didn’t seem to care that we were walking through. The trail ended on the other side of the lake. We started seeing marmots everywhere, a type of animal I had never heard of before. They look a little like hamsters, but are the size of large dogs. With the help of the map, compass, and lots of walking around, we realized we should have gone left around the lake, so we wasted maybe twenty minutes getting back to the trail. Still we went upward, ever upward.

Frazier Mountain (12,163 feet) towered up to our right. Aside from a creek gurgling nearby, there was no other sound. Most of the time, we saw no other people. The trail kept twisting trickily around trees or rocks, and with no signage we missed these turns several times. It took a lot of compass and map work to keep us going the right way. We saw few animals; maybe they had learned to avoid the trail. I was already dead tired by the time we took our next break at 10:30, each having a fruit bar and water.

We eventually entered La Cal Basin (though at the time we weren’t certain of that), and we were still 2.4 miles from our destination. Surprisingly (to me), there was a herd of cattle there, chomping grass at the edge of the basin. There was no trail in the basin and no clue of whether to go left or right or straight.

We headed up the right side toward a ridge that looked as if we could walk along it. But most of the way up it, Zane spotted the trail on the far side of the basin, zigzagging up the left slope. From the top of the ridge on the right side, we looked out over a steep valley (which we later learned was Taos Ski Valley) toward a mountainous ridge on the other side (later identified as Kachina Peak and Lake Fork Peak). I nearly gave up then, thinking that Wheeler Peak was one of those, that we’d have to descend into the valley and climb up the other side. Z was growing a thick headache about that time, which we attributed to the thin air. Then we spotted the couple we’d seen earlier, nearly a mile away, zigzagging up the opposite slope of the basin — the way we should have gone.

We could have quit there, or backtracked the way we’d come. Instead we headed straight across the basin, which is filled with tumbled boulders. We leapt from rock to rock, which I don’t recommend if you’re as tired as we were just then. We each banged ourselves up pretty good and gave our ankles and knees something to regret.

Upon regaining the trail, knowing how much time we’d wasted and fearful of thunderstorms hitting in early afternoon, we didn’t zigzag. We punished ourselves by going straight up the tortuous slope. We exchanged dozens of wordless glances during this time, as if daring the other to quit — perhaps wishing the other would quit — but the other one never did and so that kept us going. I joked a few times that going down would be easier, and I would point off down a sharp slope as if to indicate we could just step off the trail and be down in a few minutes. Maybe in pieces, but we’d be down.

After that, we mounted a long and treeless ridge — the ridge of which both Mount Walter and Wheeler Peak are a part. We had passed the steepest part of our trek. It was after noon, so we ate our lunch as we walked. The ridge was so long and rounded that we couldn’t see the peaks ahead of us, just the next rise. The trail carefully keeps to the pointed part of the ridge, with sharp slopes down both sides. The wind was much colder up there; we redonned our outer layers.

We sat down for a few minutes on Mount Walter (13,133 feet) at 12:35 p.m. From there, it was anticlimactic to trudge to Wheeler Peak just a few minutes further. There, at the Roof Of New Mexico, we encountered a dozen or more young men in new and shiny athletic gear, with pointy walking poles and can-do attitudes. They said they were from all over, but mostly California and Michigan. One of them took my camera to make a photo of Z and I, and then I traded off about six of their cameras to get photos of them in various poses. Then we simply collapsed on the pointy rocks, feeling nothing except a pulsing throbbing ache in our feet. We sat around up there for twenty minutes, until the approaching thunderstorms began to exhibit lightning.

Being from Oklahoma, lightning is just something you look at while going about your business. But up there, *YOU* are the only target for the lightning, so it’s best to get downhill quickly. The band of young and athletic men trotted off downhill, saying they had camped near Horseshoe Lake, which they got to via ATVs. It was the way we had planned to descend, though we would have a lot farther to walk than the happy campers. They hurried off, no doubt to become mayors and small business owners. Though we could see for miles up there, the young men were soon out of sight, disappearing in a flurry of optimism.

We continued south along the trail to Simpson Peak (12,976 feet), which weirdly appears to be taller than Wheeler, then began zigzagging downward toward Horseshoe Lake. Z’s headache was really killing him by this point, while I was experiencing the opposite — a kind of euphoria perhaps brought on by a combination of the thin air and the feeling of accomplishment. Or perhaps that floating-on-air feeling one sometimes gets when extremely fatigued. Several times I got more than a hundred yards ahead of him without realizing it. Eventually I decided to let him lead.

We reached Horseshoe Lake by 2 p.m., and started seeing trees again. Just a little below that, we were once again surrounded by forest instead of exposed above the tree line. Another mile and a half brought us down to Lost Lake (11,495 feet), where it rained on us for a while. We pulled out ponchos (I got the thicker one since I was then carrying the camera bag again), which helped some. It was 3:10 p.m. and we had five miles left to go.

Above us, on vertical cliff faces, some horned mammals (goats? sheep?) pranced around smirking at us.

Several places, the trail cut across large expanses of loose shale pieces that shifted and slid when stepped on. We slipped and stumbled across these, both of us twisting ankles — so we limped and stumbled painfully the rest of the way. A few times, the trail faded out and we worried we’d lost it again. Once we met some backpackers on their way up and asked them for confirmation we were heading in the right direction. They had come from the parking lot where they’d seen our red truck and assured us it was the right trail.

Z and I didn’t talk much between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. I was coming down with the same headache he’d had for hours, the scenery was becoming less interesting, and sometimes the trail was simply a level path for twenty minutes or more. Dreary. Noticing we only had a cup of water left after starting with more than a gallon, we refilled our water bottles in a mountain stream. Which had the unfortunate side effect of making the backpack heavy again. Every time one of would say “I think there’s only a mile left”, we’d walk a mile and feel like we were no closer.

We took a fifteen-minute break at 5 p.m., eating the last of our fruit bars and talking of our pains. I floated the idea of Z carrying me the rest of the way down, but he didn’t think it was funny.

The trail widened then, finally smooth again, and eventually rejoined the trail we’d come in on. We got back to the truck at 5:35 p.m., just as it began raining again.

Return Trip

We slept soundly that night and left town at 8:28 a.m. the next morning (Aug. 6, Friday) after I bought a “Hike Wheeler Peak” T-shirt as a souvenir.

Coming home, we took a different route, going south to Las Vegas (N.M.) and then to I-40, which we stayed on for the next eight hours, eating lunch in Santa Rosa (N.M.) and getting gas in McLean (Texas). I was dropped off at my apartment at 7:38 p.m. Central Time.

Some Thoughts

The entire time, we were in the Carson National Forest, 1.5 million acres of protected federal lands once inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo people for more than 2,000 years before being claimed by the Spanish monarchy and later Mexico before the U.S. invaded Mexico in 1846 and forcibly annexed a third of its territory. I didn’t think of this bloody history while walking there, but I did often think of the (many) early humans who traversed those lands before the existence of roads and power lines.

Especially in La Cal Basin, Zane and I spent significant time off-trail, out of sight of any human-made artifact, but we always knew where we were due to the map we carried. Multiple times when cresting ridges or looking over cliffs, we saw highways or towns or homes far below, or ski slopes on opposing mountainsides. Most of the time we were on mapped trails. Yet it’s about as far from civilization as most of us ever get, so it was natural to think of those who’d walked it before it was mapped and what they must have felt.

And the hike up Wheeler Peak was, for Zane and I, an excellent test of our endurance under mostly ideal circumstances. (It wasn’t dangrously hot or cold, for example, and we were wearing comfortable shoes.) I learned that, if I really wanted to, I had the ability to walk for an entire day, uphill and down. Further, I learned that I will almost never want to.