Today Carolyn and I climbed Lake Peak in the Sangre de Christo mountains. Twelve-thousand, four-hundred and nine feet.

I had to wake up at 4:30am to drive over to Santa Fe to pick up Carolyn. The drive to the Santa Fe ski hill is a great winding road through the mountains. Had I gotten more than three hours of sleep, I would have enjoyed it more I think. We were on the trail by 7:00am.

We parked at the ski lodge (10,300') and hiked up trail 254 to the entrance to the Pecos Wilderness. This segment of trail goes up about 400' to the saddle between Aspen Peak and Raven's Ridge. Just outside the wilderness boundary fence, the Raven's Ridge trail heads east, rising steadily as it makes its way over the top of three pine-covered peaks. Why they couldn't have the trail go around the side of the mountains rather than right over the top I don't know. But the end result is a trail that makes the most difficult possible path over these peaks.

Eventually, the fence stops when it runs into a cliff overlooking Nambe basin. Although Nambe lake was not yet visible, it was a spectacular vista. Around this point large banks of snow began to show up in the shadows below the pines. Some of them were six or seven feet deep, and often obscured the trail. Because the trail follows the ridge line between the peaks, it is generally pretty easy to figure out where the trail should be, because there is only about 20' of flat ground before the mountain starts dropping away on either side.

After several miles, the Raven's Ridge trail begins to climb Deception Peak. By this time, the trail elevation is above 12,000' and the trees are all midgets. It was not long before we broke through the timberline and got a good look at Deception and Lake peaks, as well as Nambe Lake far below. The wind was suddenly very strong, and we had to pause to put on windbreakers.

From this point, there isn't a proper trail, you just make your way up the barren slope to the top, and that's Deception Peak. This vantage point gives a great view north of all the major peaks in the Pecos Wilderness - Lake Peak, Santa Fe Baldy, Pecos Baldy, and the Truchas peaks. South is Tesuque Peak - the top of the ski hill with its radio tower farm, Santa Fe, and in the distance we could see Sandia Peak and Albuquerque. Looking west, we could see the Jemez and Los Alamos. The east offered a good view of Penitente peak.

Lake peak was now only a few hundred meters away across a rough ridge, and we immediately made our way across. Here the wind was intense. There were sharp drop-offs on either side, and the rough terrain required some minor bouldering in places. The wind made this somewhat creepy.

Getting to Lake Peak was so great. Neither of us were sure we could do it, and it felt like a major accomplishment. It took us five and a half hours to get there, and we were very tired. The view was so worth it, though. We could see everything, it seemed. We could see over the Jemez mountains, all the way down to Albuquerque, up to Taos, etc. Tremendous view.

After a half-hour of rest, it became apparent that there were storm clouds brewing in the east that would probably head this way, so we needed to leave. We found an easier way to cross the ridge to Deception Peak - a low trail that ran across the eastern side of the ridge. It alleviated any need for creepy rock crawling, but required a steep descent and ascent to get to the trail from the peaks.

Going down is so much quicker than going up, but it hurts your feet, knees, and quads infinitely more. Usually, when I go somewhere round-trip, the return trip seems shorter. Here, because we were clearly moving much faster, I expected it to seem like a shorter distance back. But the pain in the toes from the extreme slopes made the return trip seem to take forever. Despite this, we made it down from Lake Peak to the car in three and a half hours - two hours quicker than the trip up.

The car ride back to Carolyn's place was a haze of exhaustion. We were both just sitting there commenting on how utterly tortured our legs were, how bad we smelled, and how hungry for non-trail food we were.

After cleaning up a bit we drove to Gabriel's for some of their amazing guacamole and dinner. I inhaled my taco salad and was still hungry. This has never happened before. Having eaten, the only thing on my mind was sleep. I made it home by 7:15pm and fell promptly asleep for twelve hours.