We woke up fairly early and walked to a coffee shop nearby for breakfast. It seemed a bit too “hip” for the town of Chama, but my croissant was amazing.
Hitchhiking with 4 guys can be a little difficult, but after about 20 minutes we all had rides in 2 cars. I was in the back of a pickup truck driven by a guy who was doing a day hike from the same trailhead we needed to go to.
We dropped our packs in some trees to “slackpack” the 6 miles round trip to the border and back.
It’s such a bummer the forest is closed. Northern New Mexico looked beautiful.
For most of the rest of the day we climbed up from Cumbres Pass and hit a high point of over 12,000 feet. In the grocery store they sold little bottles of oxygen. As a joke I bought one and brought it with me. I didn’t Really notice a difference after a few breaths.
We followed the ridges from the top down and made it to a series of lakes at about 11k feet, by far our highest campsite yet.
All day it’s been extremely windy and it was very hard to balance wind protection with the fact that all the trees around here are dead.
As we were hiking today, we got showered with some “graupel” or frozen rain/snow. As I sit here writing this, more of it is coming down. I’m in for a cold night.