Mount Taylor is a huge, beautiful peak with a volcano-like profile, looming high over the high deserts of west-central New Mexico near the town of Grants, west of Albuquerque. The mountain rises to over 11,300 feet in elevation and is one of the state's most prominent mountains; its sheer size is captivating and it's no wonder the Navajo consider it to be one of their four sacred cardinal mountains, serving as a de-facto boundary of their historical homelands. Although it looks like a volcano, it is apparently the remnants of a long-ago volcano, but not actually a volcano itself. I had driven by it a few times over the years and had always wanted to hike the peak. I knew from various sources a good trail goes to the top and there's not much logistically difficult about hiking Taylor. For me, it was distance - over 300 miles from my home. However, for this Labor Day weekend I decided to work in a handful of western New Mexico county highpoints while the weather was actually reasonably nice. So the previous day I drove up to the Grants/Milan area and actually had success on nearby Cerros de Alejandro, the highpoint of McKinley County. I egressed back onto the Interstate-40 near Grants that night and stayed at a cheap hotel in town, the plan today to hike the peak early this morning.

In town, I followed First Street (state route NM-547) through the center of Grants, heading north into the foothills to the end of the pavement. A good forest road (dirt), marked as FR-193, runs another five miles to the Gooseberry Trailhead (Trail #77). I arrived fairly early - maybe 7 a.m. - in fine weather, got my boots and pack in order and started my hike.

The initial portion of the trail went through moderate forest and was mostly level, then quickly the trail dropped into Gooseberry Draw, then up its other side. An old road/trail continues up the other side of Gooseberry Draw, running parallel to an old fence, before coming to a gate before long. Past the gate the road/trail barges up through the last of the thick forest onto broad grassy sloping meadows. Parts of the route were badly eroded. To here I had gained about 1,000 feet and covered 1.5 miles, roughly the halfway points for both the vertical as well as horizontal. I took a break sitting on the grassy slope. Aside from the beaten-up nature of the road/trail, everything else was very lovely.

The route narrows into a proper trail from hereafter, no hint of there ever being a road this far up, which was nice. The trail gains onto a ridge and runs behind (relative to Taylor) a smaller sub-peak, then goes through a small pass and breaks back into the open, now on the slopes directly below Mount Taylor itself. The final few hundred feet follows the trail as it makes long sweeping switchbacks and even passes some gates and fence lines. Then, the summit. I arrived about 90 minutes after starting my hike, having covered about 3 miles and over 2,000 feet of gain to get here, and it was worth every step. The views from up here are stunning, mainly sweeping the south out over the badlands, canyons and volcanic plugs that populate the terrain in this part of the state. Innumerable peaks could be seen way far south; only the haze of the sky blocked the farthest-off peaks from view. I spent a little time up here, inspecting an interesting pit dug into the summit for some reason. The pit was probably six feet deep, an honest-to-gosh hole in the ground. I am pretty sure I was the first to summit today, having seen no one coming down nor passed anyone going up, but as I descended, lots of people were on their way up: hikers, joggers, people with kids and/or dogs. The fine nature of the trail and the generally moderate slopes makes this ascent one of the easiest and most pleasurable in the state for such a large, prominent and significant mountain.

I didn't know it at the time, but a "back way" to the summit can be hiked coming up the forest roads on the northwest side of the peak, near the Cerros de Alejandro hills I was on yesterday. A good road leads to Mosca Peak, the main "second" summit of Mount Taylor, on which sit the usual mix of communications towers. A short trail from there leads to Mount Taylor's summit. Actually, I am glad I didn't go that way. This route from the south was just fine the way it was. I was back to my truck by 10 a.m. Everything had gone very well! My only regret: I had exactly one photo left on my roll of film for this hike and I wasted it on some lame, into-the-sun photo of the trail and ridge, and of course, it came out looking like crap. So I have no photos of my ascent. A few years later I stopped by for a better shot of the peak, albeit from a distance.

From here, I drove south through Los Lunas and Socorro to try my luck with my second objective for the day, Socorro County's South Baldy Peak.