Yes Virginia, A travel update.

In a departure from my typical political, social, or job-related rants I am hijacking my own blog to talk about my adventures on the road.

I'm currently staying in an off-season ski condo just outside of Taos Ski Valley. The expressed purpose of this trip is rest and recuperation (the classic R&R). If I needed any confirmation that this was needed I got it when I spent most of the first two days I was here sleeping. 

On day three (Wednesday, 8/14) I decided I was feeling well enough to try to do some walking. The maps show a couple of trailheads close to where I'm staying, so I decided to walk up to the closer one and check it out. 
TIL:

• NM 150 (New Mexico state route 150) is not pedestrian friendly. While there are good gravel shoulders along many stretches they are inconsistent and tend to disappear at inopportune times. (Like around blind curves). The walk to the closer trailhead was only an 1/8 of a mile and it was enough to convince me that walking along the road is really not a good idea.
• The trailheads here have maps and descriptions at the entrance. The two that I checked (the one I walked to and one I drove to) were both listed at roughly 4 miles with an elevation gain of almost 4000 ft. They were classified as "difficult".
• I found a very helpful cashier at the Arroyo Seco Mercantile who directed me to a guidebook on local hikes and had lots of personal input on the trails in the area. She confirmed that the two I looked at were not for the faint of heart.
• She also told me about the "All Trails" app.
• Just down the road from that store is some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

Ok, that's enough for one day. 

Yesterday (Thursday, 8/15) I cracked open the guide book fully intending to find one of the "easy" trails that I had heard about. The book is really well laid out, they were easy to find. It turns out they are all an hour drive away... Hmmm. Maybe I should have done that reading the previous night. 
I looked again at the entries on the trails near me and discovered that while they were all listed as "difficult" the reviews in All Trails agreed that they were more "moderate" for the first mile or two and only got "difficult" for the upper parts. 

New Plan! There is no rule that says I have to hike the whole trail. These are all out and back anyway, not loops. So I'll go to the easiest looking of these and only go in a mile or two before I turn around. I fill my water  bottle, tell multiple people where I'm planning to go and when I plan to be back, and head out.

So here we are at the trailhead for Italianos Canyon. 

Hmmm, that's weird. This is the first trailhead I've seen here that doesn't have a sign and a map. Oh well, no problem. I've got my guide book and app.

Oh, wait. There it is. I was just set back out of sight from the road.

Quick picture of the map just for good measure.

Ok, now I'm all set for sure. Ready to head up the "moderate" part of the trail.

Roughly 0.1 mile up the trail.
"Dude, where did the trail go? Did I miss something? I better look at the map."

Yup, sure enough, the map said that I had gone past a point that I was supposed to cross the stream. You see the trail follows the course of a stream most of the way up (at least as far as I'm going). But now that I look closer at the map I see that the trail goes back and forth across the stream. Ok, better backtrack and see if I can find the crossing.

Hey, look what I found just a little bit back on the trail. Just off to the left, I just missed it on the way past. This doesn't feel all that solid. Lots of flex in those logs. Really they are more like branches than logs. 
On the other side I notice that there is a trail coming in from the left (downhill) as well as the one continuing up. I'm not sure that was really the crossing. Oh well. I'm on this side now. Keep going.

My suspicion that the springy branches as not the real trail crossing was reinforced at every subsequent crossing that were all good sized stones.

Except for a few places where the stream and the trail just became one.

However, after a bit I started getting used to the "moderate" trail. All except the part where I was huffing and puffing like an antiquated steam engine. I started peeking at my watch to check my heartrate. Hmmmm. Ok, new rule. If my heart rate is over 140 I should probably stop in a shady spot and catch my breath. Did I mention that the Italianos Canyon trail starts at 8400 ft? The full 4-5 mile trail gains another 3700 ft of elevation, but I had no plans of going that far. Still, it seems like even down here at 8400+ I may not be fully acclimated to the elevation. 

When I told everyone where I was going I had said that I would go in "a mile or two" and turn back. By 1/4 mile in that had changed to "let's see if I can get to a mile". 

Right around 0.4 miles I found a stick that was just the right length and diameter to be a very passable walking stick. So much so that I think someone must have cut it to that size and then discarded it. I accepted it gratefully. I was starting to understand the attraction of trekking poles. 

By 0.5 miles the "keep the heart rate under 140" rule had changed to "try to get it under 150" and that was not going well. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yeah, it's time to call it and head back. By this time in addition to being out of breath my glutes and adductors were screaming at me and I was remembering sections of the trail that might actually be more challenging going down than up. 

On the walk back out I didn't have as much trouble with being out of breath, but a lot more muscles were really starting to complain. As I hit the one mile mark my watch informed me that I had been keeping an average pace of 46 minutes per mile. Gee, thanks. Made it back to the truck. Made it back to the condo. Digging through various apps on the phone that are connected to my watch I established that my peak heart rate had been 160 (right around the time that I stopped for a real break and then headed down). 

Bonus, all that work motivated me to make myself a good dinner featuring four types of mushrooms. This got a white wine and cream sauce, a lot of cheese and went in the oven with a lot of zucchini and chicken.

Making myself stand up and cook is also probably the only reason I was able to walk today. 

No hike attempted today. I had to go in to town to get 9v batteries to make the smoke detector stop chirping. While I was there I stopped at a sporting goods store and picked up some trekking poles and a combo backpack/hydration rig. (2 liter bladder).

Sadly, Taos Cow (The awesome ice cream place) was closed when I drove past.