Southeastern New Mexico Overland - January 2018

[wngrog]

The annual trip. We start talking about it while we are on the current trip each year.

Where are we going? When are we going? Who is going to be invited?

There were some votes to head back to Big Bend National Park of course. Who doesn't want to go to Big Bend?

What are the requirements?

January.....desert. No snow. We come from the deep south so if we can get there and back in a hard day each way, its a bonus.

Thats about it.

I tossed out New Mexico and pulled up the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route to our chief navigator Andy.

http://ridebdr.com/NMBDR

He picked this one apart and tossed it out to our crew. I thought we could start at the bottom and punch out at Truth or Consequences and head back out via Roswell.

The mere mention of Roswell got some out our crew so excited we decided to toss out the whole plan and start there and work our way back to the southeast.

 

[wngrog]

2016 Trip......

http://forum.expeditionportal.com/t...tional-Park-and-Ranch-State-Park-January-2016

We did mostly Big Bend National Park with a taste of the State Park.

2017 we touched the National Park and really got deep into the State Park


http://forum.expeditionportal.com/t...ark-MLK-Weekend-January-2017?highlight=wngrog

 

[wngrog]

We struck out across Texas......one from Tennessee, one from Arkansas, 5 from Mississippi, one from Colorado and one from Texas.....all converging on Roswell to get our Alien on before we hit the trails

Downtown Roswell for a beer and a burger before we visit some aliens.....

Real? Sure.....

Louis was sad....

Bah, it was bull**** so we hit the road again to get some altitude for camp on the first night.

We met up with our Colorado adventurer and noticed the Billy the Kid memorial across the street......

On the way to camp we hit Lincoln NM the epicenter of the violent fights with Garrett and Billy the Kid....memorialized in the movie Young Guns......

 

[wngrog]

1100 miles from Canton Mississippi we finally turned uphill off-road into the mountains

I'm type A as hell, but on this trip I was trusting my proven navigator and had not even scouted the areas he was sending via group text. I see this and I get a bit worried

Then this great sign showed up and I went back to being a follower....

Fortunately, the first campsite that Andy had scouted was occupied at Capitan Gap.

Uphill we went.......

 

[wngrog]

Uphill.....and Onward

 

[wngrog]

We found a great camp at around 9500 feet

That night, Louis, out resident chef whipped up some house cured bacon and potatoes with sous vis filets on the Skottle

 

[wngrog]

The next morning we were treated with the reverse view of our climb up and out of the Capitan Mountains to Socorro New Mexico for lunch....

 

[wngrog]

After a superb burger with Hatch green chilis we hit the road again see the Very Large Array.........

I pulled over to call my wife.....'

nah.....its so cool though....

 

[NM-Frontier]

Looks like you guys had a great time, hard to think that it is winter around here. Glad to see you enjoyed the Lincoln! :sombrero:

 

[wngrog]

We did! I’ll get the rest of the story up soon.

 

[Not Dave]

Glad you posted this. Last year I was going to go to Flagstaff in May but a family emergency came up. I plan to do it this year and pretty much hit the same places you posted. Starting in Austin. Thanks for the excellent photos showing how beautiful the mountains are.

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

 

[wngrog]

Glad you posted this. Last year I was going to go to Flagstaff in May but a family emergency came up. I plan to do it this year and pretty much hit the same places you posted. Starting in Austin. Thanks for the excellent photos showing how beautiful the mountains are.

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

They really are. I did Sedona, Falgstaff and North Rim this summer if you need any tips holla.

I’ll work on this tonight. We have 3 more diverse days left to tell

 

[wngrog]

We finally tore ourselves away from the VLA and headed toward the mountains

We had some possible campsites spotted on the other side of Mt Withington but we had time to do a little bit of exploring before we went up the mountain. There are two routes, one through Monica Canyon and one around the edge of it. We chose the through route

......but when we got to the end, it was blocked off. Damn, backtrack.......

At least the trail was good though

 

[wngrog]

The alternate route was really awesome. Tons of switchbacks and altitude. We had a long train and were working the radios and with no incoming traffic we were able to peel out

Look there.....its the VLA from 20 miles away.....

No passenger cars but grocery getter mall Cruisers are allowed

 

[wngrog]

Mt Withington DID NOT disappoint. Wow. Superb views and an awesome fire tower.

It was getting dark fast, we had a big group and we needed to find a campsite. Down the mountain we went. Lots of fire damage along the way had the road in terrible shape so the going was slow.

I finally caught up with the group to find that at the split in the road, two went down and one went up looking for a place big enough for all of us. The low group worked their way out of radio contact and the high group found a spot close to the split so 8 of us went up and got set up for the night.

We always eat like kings on these trips and Skottles are always doing work

We were stuffed but we needed some dessert. One guy had some Reeces Pieces he was trying to bait up an alien with and since we were already away from Roswell and the VLA we broke them out and grilled them up