Beth and I took advantage cheap air-fares to Albuquerque, and with the monsoon weather pattern finally over, we decided to head to New Mexico for a weekend of hiking and driving in clear, spectacular weather. In my opinion, the best time for hiking the southwest peaks is September-October, during the few weeks after the humid monsoon falls apart, and before the cold and snowy weather descends from the north. On the agenda for this weekend was Little Costilla Peak in the Carson National Forest up near the Colorado line, and a drive-up of Elk Mountain in San Miguel county to the south. We left Phoenix on Friday afternoon, arriving in Albuquerque about 4 p.m. We piled into our rented SUV, a Mitsubishi Montero, and started up the highway heading north. From Albuquerque it's about a 4-hour, 150-mile journey to the northern reaches of Taos county. We had the usual friday crunch in Albuquerque, a bit of traffic in Santa Fe and Espanola, and a lot of it in Taos, of all places. We stayed in a decent, older motel in Questa, arriving about 8 p.m. Originally I hoped to stay in Costilla, about 20 miles north and nearer our objective, but I could not get through to the only inn in town, Leroy's Inn. Not sure whether it was even still in existence, we played it safe and stayed further away in Questa.

The next morning we headed up to Costilla, a 20-mile drive via NM-522 from Questa, then turned east on NM-196 heading into the main mountain range. We passed the little town of Amalia after about 8 miles, then stayed straight on a lesser paved road for a couple more miles, passing farms, until the pavement simply ended. The next few miles was decent, sometimes washboarded dirt road, with many signs pointing to the "Rio Costilla Park". Finally, we came to the National Forest boundary and stayed straight on the main road, now marked as FR-1950. We turned right at a junction at about 21 miles, then followed this good road (still FR-1950) about another 9 miles amid high open valleys and meadows to our trailhead. Actually, we drove to a corral shown on the map alongside the road... then backtracked less than a mile and parked off the road at the Grassy Creek drainage. A good trail led into the trees, and we could see a meadow behind the trees. We decided to start from here.

There is no developed trail to the summit, but it's only 3 miles due north (roughly), with the hardest part coming first. The hike pretty much breaks into two parts: a steep haul for the first mile through heavy forest cover to a ridge bump at 11,645 feet, then a less intense 2 mile stroll on high open ridge to the summit. How one gets to the 11,645-foot bump is open for question. From our vehicle we walked up the short trail and out into the meadow, where our great-looking trail simply ended. Looking at the map, I opted to take a bearing slightly east of north, essentially staying high on the southern ridge emanating from bump 11,645, keeping the Grassy Creek drainage down below us to our right (as we walked). We soon entered the forest cover and found a series of use trails, some good and some poor, which we followed for roughly over a mile. Finally, a GPS reading put us at about 11,200 feet, just east of the summit of the 11,645-foot bump. Here, the tree cover was pretty thick, and we both simply barreled up the steep slope, which at times was quite loose with scree and organic crud. This little section tired us out both pretty good, and we took an extended break on top this little bump. We found a very old barbed-wire fence running north-south here, and we could spy the upper reaches of this ridge, with our objective still hidden behind foreground peaks.

After about 20 minutes we started the second leg of the hike. The terrain was mostly open, and the fence served as a good navigational device. We played hide and seek with a deer for a hundred feet or so - she'd run ahead, then stop and watch us as we came up to her, then she'd run off again. She did this about 4 times. Finally, the fence line ends on the western slopes of one of the many intermediate ridge bumps. We were now above tree line. We hiked by reckoning up the open slopes and found a good trail that ran for maybe 500 yards. This trail petered out on the ridge spine, and put us below the last of the false summits before the end. The wind was fierce - maybe 40 mph gusts and sustained 20 mph, but we mitigated that by staying on the lee side of the ridge whenever possible. Beth was about 50 feet ahead of me. She surmounted a summit, and I could see her drop her arms in frustration... upon realizing the true summit was still a short walk away. But that was good news: it wasn't far at all. We both reached the top about 12:30 p.m. local time. Some clouds had congregated near the peaks but it was pretty clear out on the horizons, so we weren't too concerned. It was cold and windy, though, so once we snapped out summit poses, we took cover in a windbreak a few feet on the lee side of the summit. As usual, the views were awesome, and we relaxed and enjoyed having the peak all to ourselves. It had taken us roughly 3.5 hours, including stops, to gain the top, with about 2,600 feet of gain. We kept each other warm and congratulated one another. But soon, it started to get plain cold and we got moving.

The walk down went fine and fast. We quickly found our friend the fence, and followed it back to the 11,645-foot bump, where we stopped again to relax. Instead of going down exactly the way we came up, we decided to follow the fence down the slope. Mostly the fence was lying on its side and good use trails intertwined with the fence. We followed these and made good progress down. About half-way we found some pretty substantial paths, which steeply descended, finally coming out into the lower meadow at a "corner" where our fence meets with another coming in a different way. We hiked by sight down the steep meadow grasses and were out back to our vehicle at just before 3 p.m. In retrospect, it may have been quicker for us to ascend the way we came down, as it is all trail (good and bad). In any case, it's a steep grind no matter which way one approaches the initial portion. Well, we were quite happy to be out, safe and warm. We changed into civvies and started the drive out, highlighted by viewing two snakes locked in a mating (?) coil alongside the road. We spent the evening in Santa Fe, soothing our sore leg muscles with an evening at a fine Hot Springs Spa near town. The next morning we visited Elk Mountain.