I had a window of 5 days in July where I could get away for a short trip. The New Mexico highpoint was on the radar so Steve and I made arrangements to make that happen. I invited Carey and Mason to join us since it is just a few hours drive from their home. We met them at Taos Ski Valley the evening before the hike to grab a meal, catch up, and talk plans for the hike the next morning. It was great to see family!

We started out at the trailheat at 7:30am. The weather was chilly at Taos Ski Valley, mid-40s, and overcast with high cirrus. Counter to our thinking, the air did not get colder as we ascended and we were all pretty comfortable for much of the hike. We arrived to the Williams Lake fork of the trail at 8:40am and started the steeper slog to get above tree line. Unfortunately, in our conversation, I missed one of the switchbacks and we followed a trail along a contour for about 25 mins before it ran out and we lost any trail. I had my phone's navigation turned off to preserve battery. A quick check indeed showed that we were off the trail. We backtracked and found our way back to the main trail. We constructed a small rock line to encourage people to not take the wrong path like we had. The mistake cost us about 50 mins overall. Those 50 mins would turn out to be key later on in the hike.

We got to about 11,400' when we took a break before exiting tree line. Just above this point is when Steve decided to stop his hike. Carey, Mason, and I pressed on to reach the summit. The elevation definitely took its toll on me. The trailhead is at 10,000' and the summit is 13,161' -- coming from about 1,200' where I live, my body was definitely struggling. But Carey and Mason graciously plodded along at my slow pace. We reached the summit around 11:50am and the weather was beginning to turn. There were light sprinkles and tiny hail for the few minutes we were on the summit. On the way down the rain got steadier and the hail larger. Other than wet feet and shell jackets, we were no worse for wear. We arrived back to the trailhead and reunited with Steve at 2:30pm. If we had not lost those 50 mins we would have missed much of the rain/hail and the roundtrip time would have been closer to 6 hrs instead of 7 hrs.

#39 is in the books ... and doing the hike w/ family and Steve was a great treat!