On September 15th we attempted to connect the nine 12,000’ peaks in the northern part of the Pecos Wilderness. We couldn't find a record of anyone successfully doing this before without camping. Peakbagging isn’t as popular yet in New Mexico, and there is no trail between several of these peaks. Peter Gilroy tagged all of these peaks in a few days for his 2023 NM 12ers FKT. He did this over three different trips.
This was the second day of our attempt at all 29 12ers. We had done a marathon distance the day before with 7,000’ of gain so we weren’t fresh but we felt pretty recovered. We camped at the Santa Barbara campground the night before and used this trailhead. We went counterclockwise, mainly so we could tag Trampas and Sheepshead in daylight. There was some nice singletrack and old forest roads the first few miles but the bushwhacking started a couple miles before Trampas. We hadn’t found a record of anyone approaching this way but Phil Robinson had taken a similar descent to the route that we planned to take. He said it was “the hardest downhill stretch that I have ever done,” so we tried to stay out of that drainage, slightly to the side of his line. Our route was also terrible. Downed trees and steep loose rock. But it saved miles off the traditional Trampas approach.
We soon hit the Trampas Lakes Trail and started to see a lot of backpackers. Past the lake was a bit of a steep social trail that lead to an easy scree field. At the col was a good path leading to Sheepshead. There were some dark clouds we were keeping an eye on but lightning wasn’t in the forecast and we didn’t hear any thunder. We cut down another rock field to Quemado lakes where we filled up. At the col between North Truchas and Middle Truchas we decided to skip tacking on East Pecos Baldy. It was already close to 3:00pm and we knew we’d be doing good to get done by midnight. That meant that we would do Truchas before North Truchas.
This ridge was the most technical and beautiful part of loop. It was super fun, but not very fast. We came back and made it over North Truchas and cut down the east side past some bighorn sheep. We went quite a bit lower than we would have had to to get more water. This would be our last fill up until after we came down after the last peak.
We made it to the top of Chimayosos peak in time to see a beautiful sunset. The next four peaks would be on one continuous ridgeline, much of it on the Skyline and Divide Trails, which in many places are just occasional cairns scattered roughly in the middle of the ridge. It was super rocky and windy, but there was a nice full moon. Brandon slept for approximately 60 seconds on the top of Jicarita peak, then he was good to go. We eventually bushwhacked our way down to the valley and back to our campsite a little before sunrise.
This wasn’t a super fast time but it’s not as slow as you think. It’s a brutal and gorgeous route with a lot of route-finding and logistics. I would be surprised if this doesn’t become a New Mexico classic. It has to be one of the coolest ridge traverses in the state.