Quick catch up to how I got over a few crests to get here.
September 18- Candice and I embarked on a marathon- 26.2 miles from the north end of the sandia's to the south end, bringing us up tp 12,000 feet and back down to 7,000. So we headed out - the best thing about hiking with candice is that neither one of us leads the trip, it just kind of happens. This one happened when candice called me from walmart and told me she had picked up red beans and rice and sausage to cook for dinner saturday night.
We dropped her car off at the south end, and drove the 30 miles to the north end down dirt roads and out to the north crest trail head and sometime around 11:00 started hiking. Forging our way through the scrub land to the edge of the crest and onward. About 5 hours in we started seeing people, most likely hiking north from the tram. Right what I neglected to say is that you can actually drive to the top of this mountain, or take a tram... go figure. We kept on until there was a road to our left and radio towers above us. Making it to the restaurant for some midway margaritas- though candice said we couldn't have dinner there, it would be breaking the rules of backpacking... errr...But it did make for a good time finding camp!
All I can say is thank goodness we brought along our text books, or we would have never been able to get our fire started!
That night we tucked into her one person backpacking tent and slept at a slight incline- not ideal, but we both slept until the sun shone through the trees.
Day two was long but filled with aspen forests, open meadows and beautiful vistas of civilization that we never quite escaped from.
The final descent, candice on the verge of collapse, was saved by a harvest of ripe prickly pears from the cacti!
