.

Member Trip Report

HOME

SEARCH CALENDAR VIDEOS TOP ROPING
SCHOOL ROOM BOARD ROOM WHITE ROCK CRAGS
GREAT LINKS BECOME A MEMBER DISCLAIMER
SWAP MEET LAM HISTORY INDEX NACLASSICS
TRIP ARCHIVE DOWNLOADS CLIMBING NEWS & FORUM


South and Medio Truchas Peak Backpack, Northern New Mexico

June 6-8, 2008

Author: Francesco Grilli

Participants: Bart Daly, Noor Khalsa, Tianshu Li, and Francesco Grilli

This backpack to the Truchas Peak turned out to be quite an adventure.

On Friday we drove to the Pecos valley and left Jack's Creek Campground at 1.30 pm toward the Pecos Baldy Lake.  It took us almost 4 hours to reach the lake hiking along trail n. 257: the numerous snow patches and fallen trees in the upper part of the trail considerably slowed down our progression.  We set camp at the lake and enjoyed Noor's delicacies for dinner.  The next day we woke up at 6 am, packed the tents and left at 7 am toward the Truchas Peak.  The initial part of the trail was still in the woods and still covered with snow. We reached the flat (and very windy) part of the Trailriders Wall, finally free of snow.  At the end of the flat traverse, at the base of the peak, we dumped most of our gear, in order to be lighter for the final steep ascent.  We reached the summit of the South Truchas Peak at 10.30 am.  Francesco ran quickly to the nearby top of Medio Truchas, while the others enjoyed the view from the summit.  We went back to our gear and, following the original plan, we tried to find and follow the trail n. 264, which should have brought us to Beatty's Flat.  It was very difficult to follow the trail in the woods, due to deep snow and fallen trees.  After numerous attempts to track the trail, we decided that the safest option would be to go back to the Pecos Baldy Lake and camp there again.  For dinner we enjoyed Noor's and Bart's cooking and we went to sleep quite early.  The next day we traced our steps back to the car.

 

Since in this region there are several peaks packed quite closely to each other, I started wondering when a top can be considered as a "peak" with its own identity and not just a sub-peak of a higher summit.  I learned the interesting concept of topographic prominence.  It seems that in the Truchas group only the South and North Peaks have enough prominence to be considered peaks, whereas the Middle and Medio Peaks are mere sub-peaks.  Anyway, despite the definition, they are all beautiful mountains!
 


Send your trip reports, comments, updates, and suggestions about this site to
Jan Studebaker

Website Design by Jemez Web Factory
.