BH writes from Bear Mountain Lodge on the edge of the Black Mountain and Gila Wilderness:
Silver City, NM is just down the road and full of bikers and fierce cops. A prototype for Deadwood. In fact, the evil George Hearst made money mining here before turning his attention on Deadwood’s pickings.
Very hot here during the day; sometimes triple digits hot! First trek was through a “garden” of big head and balancing rocks near where Jerry Eagan encountered a mountain lion not long ago. A local dog accompanied our party; up hill we scrambled always keeping an eye open for ground dwelling varmints. We did climb high enough to view some great pictographs but the heat was terrible and Cynthia began to demonstrate several bad signs including lethargy, skaking, head-ache etc. Struggling back down we located a pool of cool water naturally contained in the rocks and shaded by trees. Life saver. This is how Apaches navigated this otherwise hostile environment and not surprisingly many of the battle sites and positions that can still be found are near water sources.
