On state highway 52, Carrizo Peak in the background.
The living ghost town of Winston, NM.
The Wall Street tree, Chloride, NM.
Beaver Creek feeding into Wall Lake.
Wall Lake
The road looks perfectly fine here...
If I was smart, I would have turned around at this point. Instead, we decide to push on. It'll take some off-roading to get around this tree. Not the best decision to make with a 2WD. But we get through to the left, and in an effort not to get stuck in the mud and crud, I gun it and in the process get a nice big scratch down the length of the Jeep on the passenger side. I *think* it can be buffed out...
Scratchy lives up to his name. Now that we made it around the tree, there is no turning back - to do so would require going back uphill in soft dirt and pine needles, and lots of mud, in a 2WD. A sure recipe for getting stuck. But that should be the last of our worries. To my horror, though, another tree is down a few miles down the road, and this time there is NO way around it. I'm freaking out and Lisa is saying "Let's just move the tree!" Of course, I think she's nuts, but oddly enough, the 1-foot diameter 30-foot long tree is surprising light, thanks to a lot of rot. Lots of relief, and we get by unscathed.
46 miles and 2.5 hours later, we reach the end of our ordeal. A few miles after the 2nd downed tree, we ran into a half-dozen hunters on 4-wheelers. One assured us the way was clear, but didn't mention the various stream crossings and ice bridges we'd have to cross.
Sunset near Mogollon Baldy Peak.
