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.