Nearly seven years ago, when we were winter volunteers at the Gila Cliff Dwellings, we made an assault on Signal Peak with the pickup truck. It turned into a long day and a longer night and another long day.
The peak is at 8980 feet in elevation. We ran into snow part way up but nothing too treacherous. Well, there were a few icy patches and the switchbacks were interesting. The worst part was where there was new snow over the old. Icy ruts from previous vehicles were under the fresh snow. All of you who know Vic know he is intrepid and isn't going to let a little ice and snow stop him.
Finally, within a quarter of a mile of the top, we became stuck in those icy ruts at exactly noon.
Vic tried everything all afternoon. All was in vain and it was soon too dark to safely keep working. We ate dinner - a piece of jerky, a few raisins and water from the snow I packed into our cooler and melted near the heater.
And, did I forget to mention, there I was in penny loafers and knee-hi's?
You see, we were headed to Silver city for groceries, not to Signal Peak. That was spur-of-the-moment inspiration.
Fortunately our winter gear, including my leather dress boots, were in a box in the rear of the truck.
In the morning, after two more tries, we headed down to the paved road on foot. We arrived in early afternoon - 7 miles later. I flagged down two young fellows who were more than happy to drive back toward town (where there was cell service) and call a tow truck for us.
Loooooo-ong story shorter is when the tow truck operator got to the final place to turn around before reaching our truck, Vic suggested he might want to back in the rest of the way. Being young and macho and not needing advice........guess I don't need to tell you that he didn't back up.
He immediately pulled our truck back about 2-3 feet and we were free.
He then proceeded to back up and found that he was stuck. The trail was too narrow to get around him soooooo-o, as dusk descended we started to get ready to spend night #2.
Apparently after we got stuck a car went off the trail at lower elevation. That man walked out also and called another towing company. After getting his vehicle out, they came up to find out what was happening.
They were able to remove the stuck tow truck. We backed up to the turn around and were finally back on the road for groceries at 8pm - a very long 32 hours.
All this leads up to yesterday when we decided to try again. This time we used the Jeep and carried five gallons of water, lunch, a small cook stove with freeze-dried meals, and other assorted survival gear. This time we were ready.
This time we had snow right from the git-go.
This time it got deeper sooner and there were had icy ruts underneath for the entire distance.
When we reached the 'y' in the road, the only tracks to Signal Peak were made by
skiers.
We first chose the other route to see where it went.
After over 8 miles on what was Bear Canyon Road, we reached private property and this gate and sign.
I love the small bear warning sticker glued to the larger sign.
Double click on the photo to read it.
We were at something over 8100' elevation.
By the time we descended to the 'y', the temperature had warmed to about 50F and the snow was quite snotty. We chose to leave Signal Peak itself for another time.
It was a good and much shorter day lasting 4-5 hours.
On the return drive the dry, winter grasses appeared golden in the low late afternoon light.
