Featured image of post Truchas Peak

Truchas Peak

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Truchas has been on our list since our first summer in New Mexico. The hardest part about the peaks in Northern NM is that they are all so far out there. I had originally planned on just doing East Pecos Baldy, but after I read some trip reports I saw that the lake is also used as the base for Truchas Peak as well.

We opted to hike in late Thursday night to knock out a few miles. We hiked in on the Jacks Creek trail about 5 miles before we stopped and made camp. This was the second time in less than a month that I had hiked that trail in the middle of the night. The first time was 2 weeks before for a late night search and rescue mission.

Anyway, we dropped camp that night just across the river. After a few hours of sleep we packed back up and continued on the trail up to East Pecos Lake. After getting to the lake later that morning, we found a space for camp, filtered some water out of a nasty little lake and prepared to continue our trek to Truchas.

The hike was pretty cool. Almost immediately after leaving the lake you get up on the ridge above treeline for the next couple miles. It was a actually a slow descent to the base of the peak. On the way I snagged two minor peaks, Little South Truchas and Trailrider well. The final push was pretty brutal. We had traversed too far across the peak and had to scramble a near vertical gulley to get to the peak. At the peak we enjoyed a rootbeer scouting the storm clouds that were rolling in.

We should have had time to avoid the storm, but it rolled in quick. It was nerve racking because of the long ridge line traverse. We stopped in the sparse treed sections to let the thunder clouds roll by. After getting back to camp we made some dinner and ate it while relaxing in the hammock.

The next morning, I still wanted to climb East Pecos Baldy. But I’ll write about it on another post.

It was nice to check this one of the list. It was beautiful but hard hike. It ended up being 26 miles and we felt it.

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Stats

Elevation Prominence Mileage Vertical Gain
13103 4002 23.31 6687

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Map

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Stories

Search and Rescue

A quick story…

It always seems like I get called out on search and rescue when Jo is out of town. This one was no exception. The call was for someone who was hurt up by East Pecos Baldy. The subject was scared for his life with crazy thunderstorms and rivers of water flowing through his tent. He pushed the SOS button on his InReach, probably expecting a quick extraction.

The problem was he was 5 miles deep into terrain that was not helicopter friendly. After leaving our base, we drove the two hours to the trailhead. Once there we received our assignment to support a local team with a litter extraction and scout out a viable trail to carry him. We picked the trail and started our 2+ hour hike out to meet the other team.

On the way we scouted several helicopter landing sites if needed. The other team had opted to walk him out, deeming him in good enough condition to walk himself. So we were to told to wait for them. At this point we had been hiking over 3 hours in the rain. It was cold and were told to wait. We sat there in the freezing darkness for another hour before the subject caught up to us. We was walking at less than half a mile per hour. At this rate it would have been another 10 hours to get him out of there.

Given that, we set up the litter and figured it would be faster to just carry him. We strapped him in, wrapped him in blankets, and hauled him out of there by foot. Another couple hours later we were met at the trailhead by medical services ready to look over him. He seemed to be okay, and probably was just scared when he hit the button. Oh well.