By now we were literally up in the clouds at just about 6,000 feet elevation (6,040 sez the map). It was still very cool, foggy and gloomy, with visibility at just a few dozen feet at best. We could barely make out the next rise in the road much less a massive mountain sitting just an air-mile to our west. Personally I wasn't too confident we'd have success but I didn't express this to Edward. I just took the attitude that we'll go in as far as we can, and if we have to turn around, so be it. I told Edward this afterwards and he said he felt the same way. In any case, we suited up and started hiking up this track about 8 a.m. local time.

The track is heavily eroded and moderately steep and probably hasn't seen an automobile on it in a generation or two. In less than a half-mile it entered into a canyon, where for one of the few times on the hike, the gradient became level and the road "met" up with the creek drainage that came from the canyon. Here, apparently are some options. The most obvious (to us) was to bear left and stay on the road, with the canyon bottom now to our right hand side. The road gained steadily for about another quarter-mile to a turnaround, where the road went left, as shown faithfully on the map. But based on previous reports, following the road hereafter was not a wise idea, so we continued forward up the canyon, now following a faint footpath augmented by occasional cairns. We also noted what looked like trails on the other side of the canyon, so it's possible, I presume, to follow them, the choice being made down where the road crosses the creek bed.

In talking with Dave Covill the night before, he described a good, new set of switchbacks that leave the canyon bottom and ascend the ridge, eventually topping out near the knob shown as elevation 7,402 on the map. Try as we might, we never found these switchbacks. We did, however, find about three or four "trails" that angled up the hillside and that at first seemed solid, but each time they'd degenerate into nothing very quickly. We figured these to be game trails. In the process of looking for the switchbacks we lost a bit of time, but not too much. Instead, we essentially hiked as far up the canyon as we could, always staying left wherever the canyon split. Various footpaths and cairns were spotted but nothing significantly substantial. A lot of our navigating was just by dead reckoning. Finally, we made our own way up to the ridge, hiking over rock piles and moderate foliage to gain the top. A GPS reading put us a bit southwest of knob 7,402.

We then hiked the spine of this ridge southwesterly, blazing our own paths through the brush and man-high trees. We made steady uphill progress, then surprise, found an obvious man-made trail which expedited our progress substantially. This trail put us on the principal southeasterly saddle just below the peak (here). Covill also said we'd find occasional bits of red yarn tied to tree branches and a fence line, which we did, and we followed these dutifully. Bear in mind, we still had about 30 feet of visibility, no more. It was good to know we were in the right place despite having no visual cues. We trudged up the steep slopes, following a use-trail and the yarn bits. About 400 feet below the summit the weather turned ugly and we started to get a rain/sleet/graupel mix. Motivated by this we made fast time and got to the base of a large rock fin that required a bit of hands to negotiate. This gained us about 150 feet. Despite the rain mix, footing was good. Upon surmounting this, we had to hike up another small bump, where, for the first time, the summit of Cookes Peak came in view through the mist. Then... crack...boom! Lightning. Yikes... we got moving real fast. We summitted, snapped a photo or two then immediately turned around and started the descent. The rain mix was now snow and hail and coming down pretty hard. We downclimbed off the rocks and back down to the saddle, which by this time had a covering of snow on it. Not stopping, we followed the trail back to the first ridge, then attempted to descend back into the canyon via this good trail... which it wasn't. It quickly faded into the trees and we were obliged to make our own way down. We did fine, but it went slow, we slipped here and there, and had to descend a 6-foot rock band along the way. We finally got into the canyon bottom. It was all snowy down here, too. Very pretty, in fact. The snow did, ironically, assist in our footing as we could smoosh our boots into it and it would usually hold pretty solidly.

From here we simply hiked out of the canyon, arriving back to the truck at about 12:30 p.m. The snow line was right about 6,000 feet; we could see lots above it, not much below it. We quickly changed into drier duds and got moving. The hike had been a great success despite the weather, but now I was majorly worried about the road driving out. For the couple of miles until the gate, it was okay, but after the gate it was a muddy slick mess. I had my truck in 4-wheel low, and often just crept forward at 5 m.p.h. but even then, on more than one occasion, I lost all traction and the truck just went its own merry way, yawing into the side berms. Once or twice it went into the berms or the little ditches, where it would get some traction from the rocks and spit out back onto the road. I took it real slow and just made real sure I didn't do anything stupid. Some short sections had dropoffs where if I'd gone into it, we'd have been in real trouble. Finally, oh finally, the road condition improved to where traction felt better. It took a solid hour to drive out the 12 miles of dirt road. Back on the paved highway we both gave out a hearty "yes!". Back to Deming, we ate lunch at a Denny's then I started my drive home to Chandler, just 320 miles away. All was well but the storms caused some nasty accidents, including a big rig off the side of the road near Willcox, Arizona. I arrived home about 7 p.m. that evening.