Hiking

Buen dia!

I recently went with friends on a hike, up into the hillsides below Mt Alamos. Our intent was to go as high as we could and see what we could see. My friends have hiked the area before and were familiar with a particular route.

The photo above is the view we see as we leave our gate and is where we hiked.

I did not have any expectations of going to the top as the last heavy hike I made was in 1985, for three weeks on an Outward Bound course in the North Cascades, and a few months after, an unsuccessfull climb to the top of Mt. Rainier. Throughout the years our family has done some nice little walk hikes, little ups and downs, some overs and unders, but nothing real strenuous. So, I was not looking for an extreme hike on this morning.
But, I was looking for something.

It has now been over five months since Hurricane Norbert hit us and I was very interested in seeing the terrain and some of the rockslides, which are even more visible now, from town below.

As we hiked we spent alot of time traversing boulder strewn arroyos and climbing over old stone walls that seemed to stretch for miles. We crawled under barbed wire fences and pulled ourselves up onto ledges and held onto tree trunks for support. Because I have a bad left knee that likes to whine and cry when going up the smallest porch steps, I was tired after an hour. I kept trying to remember the Outward Bound hiking rule, which I think is when ascending, it takes one hour to go 1,000'. Coming down should be half that, but never is. But, the sights were lovely............... old tree roots with long ghostly fingers wrapped around rocks, magical old stone walls appearing out of nowhere, weaving some sort of mark of declaration along the hillside. The deciduous oak canopy kept the sun away and old leaves crunched under our footsteps.................



an old stone retainment dam.............nearby were two wheelbarrows, chained to a tree.

an old asadero, built up on the hillside........

one of the rockslides, many of the larger boulders made their way down to the Chalaton Barrio and the arroyos in town..........

another slide, one of several we crossed.............this one was at least 30 yards wide.

a small shrine, amazingly left untouched by the hurricane............

or, perhaps repaired since the storm.....................

an easterly view to the higher Sierras, from our position, which we guessed to be around 2,500 feet.

and below, a view up to what we think is the peak of Mt. Alamos, still too far away for us to reach.........

For me, the trip down is always the hardest. The knee doesn't bend, the thigh compensates for the knee. The ankle gets sore from stepping just off center of the rock and the fingers hurt from grasping at tree branches and trunks for support.

For a short moment, I recalled the last few days of my Outward Bound experience, after seven of us had been lost for several days in the north Cascades, after a freak autumn snowfall. The program actually had to send a chopper out looking for us. How embarrassing for us and the instructor, who, after we came sliding down a snow covered hill, on our rears and packs, yelled, "what the hell happened, didn't I teach you guys anything?"

So, there wasn't going to be any opportunity for me to get out my day pack and slide down the rest of Mt. alamos on my rear end. The feet just kept going and the body followed.
After the hike, I went to bed for the rest of the day, but what a great adventure................ to hike up into the hillsides of the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico.