Wish I Had a Brain!

I offered to check out snow conditions on specific trails for the WI's. Kathy thought that Water Canyon and Valle Canyon looked promising. She asked if I would check them out and let Barbara know because she will be leading the next two Wednesday snowshoes.

Today I snowshoed up Water Canyon to FR181 and then down old FR181 to West Jemez Road and walked that road back to my car.

You can park alongside West Jemez Road at the Water Canyon entrance road or those with adventurous vehicles can drive in. From West Jemez Road to the Water Canyon trailhead locked entrance gate, there is thin snow and ice cover but I was easily able to snowshoe down from the road. The snow is thin right at the locked entrance gate and if the warm conditions continue, may get bare this weekend.

After that, the snow is hard packed and most recently traveled by hikers. Then there is a section that gets lots of shade where the snow was softer. In the area on the left of the first major side canyon to Water Canyon, which gets a lot of sun, there was a bare spot which was easy to get around.

When you get to the meadow where you have to cross the stream (the crossing is getting marginal but a fraidy cat like me was able to do it!) there are some bare spots in the meadow but the trail into the Water Canyon narrows on the left was fine.

I didn't think I was going to go up Water Canyon to FR181 by myself because I can get spooked in narrow canyons but it seemed friendly enough. The snow was nice and had been snowshoed enough to pack it nicely until you got closer to FR181 and then it was less traveled but highly doable. I managed to slide off and into the snow when I crossed the final stout fallen log across the trail before going up to FR181. Imagining a mountain lion coming in for the kill, I got a bit perturbed at myself as I frantically tried to extricate myself from the soft snow.

FR181 was like a groomed trail because a narrow axled motorized vehicle had driven over it. The vehicle tracks went almost halfway down old FR181 until the sharp curve area where it gets really rutted. Surprisingly, no one had recreated on the old road since the last storm. At one short area of southern exposure, there were outright short bare stretches. When I got to the area where the Perimeter Trail (coming from Water Canyon) intersects old FR181, I couldn't see any tracks and decided to walk down to West Jemez and return to my car via the road.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day of bluer than blue skies with high, silvery clouds and fantastic views, from FR181, of the Sangre de Cristos.

Distance snowshoed today was 4.4 miles and walked about .5 miles on West Jemez back to car. GPS batteries died so got the mileages from Craig Martin's book. Took about 2 1/2 hours.

Hopefully, I'll be checking out Valle Canyon on Sunday or Monday.

The Wish I Had a Brain! refers to my experiment: I wanted to see if the snowshoes would be healthier for my feet if I wore waterproof shoes and no overboots. Big problem was, though, that I forgot my gaiters at home! I only remembered that I had planned to wear them when I noticed cold snow going down the back of my mid-cut Keen Targhee hiking boots. At the end of the hike, my socks were soaked.

I need to dry the Keen's out for a week and then try the experiment again but this time with the gaiters! I did feel I could move my feet more naturally without the overboots but getting soaked feet is certainly not an ideal situation. Still, it may work with the gaiters on short trips. All day trips would definitely require the overboots!

I'm going to make a huge stew: onions, garlic, whole wheat pasta, jarred red peppers, canned pumpkin, jarred artichoke hearts, black soybeans, jarred tomato paste, canned tomatoes, leftover red coleslaw, okra, spinach, seasonings and olive oil. The canned foods are low in sodium except for the jarred artichoke hearts and jarred red peppers and they are reasonable amounts that will provide the sodium for the stew. In addition, I'm making spouse a potato kugel. I have to get to work now!