Scaling Back
Monday, February 2nd, 2026: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico, Whitewater.
The hosting service for this blog tracks visits, and during the past two weeks, I’ve suddenly been bombarded by visits from Hong Kong and Singapore. Apparently this consists of bots scanning my content for personal data that can be harvested for criminal purposes. I assume this will fade away as they fail to find anything useful. Reminds me of when my dad died and his estate went through probate. The court shared my personal data with criminals who harassed me for up to a year by phone and mail, including a syndicate in China who sent me what appeared to be a legal document by express mail with signature requested.
I do try to omit personal data, but I’ve been liberal with personal feelings lately, so the idea of criminals greedily delving into that is pretty creepy. Let me know if you think I’m a fool and should just shut this thing down completely.
After last week’s excruciating hike, I was finally able to scale back my ambitions for this Sunday. From 9 miles and 3,000 vertical feet before, I was hoping to cover only 7 miles and 1,500 vertical feet. After a week in sneakers, I was hoping the inflammation on my ankle had subsided – I certainly couldn’t feel anything.
At least, I didn’t feel anything until I put my boots on. Then the pain came back just as bad as last Sunday. So my hike started with an hour of searching for some kind of padding – at home, then all over town, because the nearest drug store was closed due to staff shortages.
Armed with a couple of pads, I drove north to the trailhead.
The sky was clear and the expected high in town was in the high 50s. Arriving late at the trailhead, I started trying out my purchases. None of them did anything to reduce the pain. I finally dug a cotton handkerchief/bandanna out of my pack – I carry three, they come in handy for all sorts of hiking issues – folded it into a pad a little over a quarter inch in thickness, and stuck it in my boot. Over that, I laced the boot skipping the hooks nearest my ankle. It didn’t stop the pain but it helped enough to get me going.
This is a shortcut into the biggest canyon through our tallest mountains. It starts by climbing over a ridge then cuts back into a deep side canyon. Traversing from the ridge into the side canyon I spotted an older couple approaching from below. They stepped off to let me past. The man, in front, scowled at me, but his partner smiled as I asked, “How’s it going?”
The man clearly wanted to keep going, but the woman engaged me in a conversation, about my plans and where I was coming from. It turned out they live in the remote river valley, ten minutes away, but visit town often – as all country folks do. We talked about healthcare and elder care, and how the shortage of resources around here are more than compensated for by the quality of life.
Despite my determination to scale back the difficulty of my hikes, this rocky trail has a lot of steep ups and downs. I began using the trekking poles to take some load off the ankle. But after descending into the side canyon, climbing out, and climbing up and down past several dramatic rock formations high above the roaring creek, my ankle had once again reached 8 on the pain scale. I stopped at a flat boulder in the sun, figuring I’d gone less than two miles, but simply couldn’t go any farther. I ate lunch, took a couple pain pills, and waited for my GPS device to send a waypoint to a satellite.
But after resting a while, I figured I might as well make another try at padding and relacing my boot. This reduced the pain to a 6, and I soon reached the switchbacks that descend about 300 vertical feet to the narrow canyon bottom.
Of course, once I reached the cold shade of the canyon bottom, the pain pills took effect, and I was in denial that the trail upcanyon continues to climb steeply around massive boulders and cliffs. So I kept going, as the pain began increasing again despite the pills.
I was surprised by swarms of gnats – I ended up having to wear my headnet all day.
Finally, I reached my planned destination, the junction where a trail up a side canyon crosses the creek. There’s a fallen log where I could sit in the sun and listen to the creek tumbling over the rocks. Crossing the creek would soak my boots and add to my misery, so I rested there for another half hour, and began yet another experiment with my ankle.
This involved wrapping the existing bandanna pad with the Ace bandage I keep in my first aid kit, and trying yet another lacing technique, bypassing all but the top hooks of the boot.
The new lacing significantly reduced the pain, and the pills continued to help too, so that by the time I reached the top of the switchbacks the pain was down to about a 4.
From the top of the switchbacks, with my mind off the pain in my ankle, I could better enjoy the late sunlight on the rock formations all around me, and the balmy weather – I’d hiked in my shirtsleeves all day.
I was finally so relaxed that it wasn’t until I’d gone a half hour past the top of the switchbacks that I realized my ankle pain was completely gone! What had changed? I still didn’t know whether this was soft tissue inflammation or nerve pain, and there was no way to tell whether it had been eliminated by my treatment back at the creek, by the pain pills, or by natural loosening of the boot as I hiked.
Whatever made the pain go away, it sure made it easier to cross that side canyon, and the final ridge before descending to the mesa.
This is a trail I always think of first when I need something short, with less elevation gain, because it’s the most scenic short trail in our region. The beauty of that mesa is hard to convey in a photo – especially because the naked eye picks out the reflections of stock ponds far in the distance below.
However, as soon as I got in the driver’s seat and started working the pedals, my ankle pain came right back. So bizarre, and so frustrating. Now I face weeks of icing both this and my inflamed left foot, which still hasn’t calmed down.
