Last Hike
Monday, February 23rd, 2026: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Last week I drove to Tucson to get a second opinion on the shoulder pain that’s been waking me up throughout the night for the past two years, and to resume the physical therapy I started there in December.
The second opinion will require a minimum of two follow-up visits. And the result of this first visit is that my shoulder hurts more than ever, because the drive itself is hard on the shoulder, and physical therapy has always made the pain worse.
The past two Sunday hikes have also re-triggered the chronic inflammation in my left foot. With the shoulder in the foreground, I tried to ignore the foot pain. Today – in denial yet again – I decided to do a rocky hike that’s always been hard on the feet. It starts out easy enough, heading up a long valley toward the foot of the mountains, but then it climbs a set of rocky switchbacks to a saddle, where you enter another watershed hidden from the outside and traverse the back of the ridge toward a big canyon. I’d avoided this hike for almost three years, so my memory was rusty and I just focused on the positives: that view of the interior, and the pine park which would be today’s destination.
As usual this winter, the sky was mostly clear and the high in town was forecast to reach the upper 50s. Snow still lingers above 9,000, even on some south slopes of our high mountains, but today I would mostly keep below 7,000 feet.
You have to ford the big creek to reach the trailhead, and it was flowing pretty strong from snowmelt in the interior, almost reaching the undercarriage of my recently lifted Sidekick.
The first half of the trail, up the long valley, is completely different from the trail shown on every available map. This turned out to be important because it made my hike a mile-and-a-half longer than expected.
There were two other vehicles at the trailhead, which is remote and unpopular: a big pickup carrying an ATV, and a Subaru station wagon from Utah. I was impressed the Subaru had made it across the creek.
At the head of the valley you pass over a scenic rock dam and begin the first set of switchbacks, which seems endless. My foot seemed to be doing okay here. The switchbacks were decorated with frequent pink ribbons, which I assumed had been left recently by the Backcountry Horsemen, who have the permit for trail work. Their horses had left plenty of shit on the trail, probably from last fall, but I couldn’t figure out what the ribbons were for – they seemed completely random. As far as I’m concerned the trail needs no more work than they’d already done years ago, but the equestrians love to cut trees, cacti, agave, yuccas and nolinas way back from the trail. I even found spots where they’d hacked manzanita as much as eight feet off-trail.
The wire gate across the saddle was closed, but the ground inside it was all dug up by cattle – something I couldn’t remember ever finding here.
The traverse to the pine park also seems endless, and the farther I went, the more the trail was dug up by cattle. This east-facing slope holds a lot of moisture, so every time the trail cut back into a drainage, it got really muddy. I was frankly getting pissed.
Nearing the pine park, which is a level plateau, I came upon a guy with an off-leash dog – a violation of forest regs. I started bitching to him about the cattle, and he said he’d seen a “whole bunch” up on the plateau, around a pond that was holding water now. I assumed by a “whole bunch” he meant at least 8-12, and was even more surprised. I wondered if these cattle had drifted over through a gate left open by ignorant hikers, then become trapped over here behind the fence.
The stranger was carrying field glasses and a tripod and said he’d camped there overnight, scouting for deer pending a return in the fall to hunt. He said he’d only seen a couple does, and I said I couldn’t remember seeing deer on this side of the big canyon.
The pond is at the far upper end of the forested plateau, so I fortunately never even saw the cattle. I love this spot, and stretched out on a bed of pine needles for a brief rest in the sun.
But I was frankly feeling kinda sick – unusually fatigued, sporadically dizzy, mildly nauseous. Dreading the return hike, I cut my rest short and unfolded the trekking poles to hopefully reduce the impact on my sore foot.
But by the time I reached the saddle between the interior and exterior of the mountains, not only was my foot hurting, but I realized the trekking poles are hard on my shoulder. So I downed the first pain pill of the day.
Those endless switchbacks are so much harder on the way down! By the time I reached the little plateau below the rock dam, facing another two miles with the sun setting, I couldn’t believe the punishment I’d gotten myself into.
At that point, the only things I had to look forward to were the landscape colors highlighted by the setting sun, and the large covey of quail that’s always flushed from the grassy slope I traverse nearing the low point of the valley.
It’s a pretty drive out at sunset, but nothing could compensate for the pain that kept me awake most of the night, and the depression of realizing I’m simply going to have to give up hiking. It will take months to overcome that foot pain – maybe even a trip to the podiatrist in the Bay Area, and more ultrasound treatment. And that’s not even the priority – the shoulder comes first, and that will take months by itself. I always knew I’d have to give up hiking at some point, but I never believed it would come this early. I just have to be grateful for the sedentary passions that remain – music, art, and writing.
