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| Hiking | 8.40 Miles |
2,879 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.40 Miles | 5 Hrs 18 Mns | | 2.13 mph |
| 2,879 ft AEG | 1 Hour 21 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Sierra Blanca Peak has been on my radar screen for a while -- it has the greatest prominence of any peak in New Mexico and is one of 57 ultra peaks in the continental US -- so I decided to do the hike.
This turned out to be a GREAT hike: awesome scenery; prolific wildflowers; lots of wildlife; a bit of route-finding; and some fun rock scrambling.
We started off on the Scenic Trail at first daylight, and right off the bat we saw a large herd of elk. We heard a bunch of coyotes raising a ruckus off in the distance but never saw them.
From the Scenic Trail we hit the Crest Trail. At times we were going through head-high lupine -- the lupine there is much taller than the lupine in AZ. We got to a point where there was some deadfall on the trail, and we took an off-trail shortcut to bypass the deadfall.
When we got to a junction with the Lookout Mountain Trail, we went on a short offtrail jaunt to hit the White Mountains Wilderness High Point. From there, we went back to the Lookout Mountain Trail and took it to - where else - Lookout Mountain. Just below Lookout Mountain we stopped and talked to a couple of guys who were ziplining. They were the only two people that we saw all day on the hike.
It was an easy walk to Lookout Mountain, and we stopped there for a few minutes to enjoy the views. From Lookout Mountain we headed south on a service road toward Sierra Blanca. Once leaving the service road it was off-trail the rest of the way to the Sierra Blanca summit. There was lots and lots of lupine on the lower part of the off-trail. We saw another huge herd of elk on this section. The first portion of the off-trail was very steep -- we went up 450 feet over about 0.3. miles. That brought us to a saddle, and we did some class 2 hiking along a ridgeline near a false summit, and then did a bit more class 2 climbing to get to the Sierra Blanca summit. The views there were great, so we hung out for a bit.
We reversed course until we got closer to Lookout Mountain. From there we took a ski run service road for a bit, and then went down a couple of ski runs to get back to the start point of the hike.
I really enjoyed this hike, and I'd like to do it again sometime. |
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Wildflowers Observation Extreme
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| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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