GET – Page 3 – Sagebrush Trails

Polvadera and Home Again

MRT/GET 2021 Day 34, May 8, Saturday
• Start Magdalena, NM
• End Lemitar, NM and home
• Miles walked: 30.5

Starting early north from Magdalena is a bit of Cibola National Forest with hills, grass, and juniper.

Afterwards, the route will spend most of the day crossing a huge grassland plain to a small mountain range near the village of Polvadera along the Rio Grande.

The grassland is actually a complex mixture of grasses, bare dirt, wildflowers, small shrubs, and my namesake, sagebrush, not often found this far south.

Magdalena

MRT/GET 2021 Day 33, May 7, Friday
• Start 30070 about to start Milligan Hills XC
• End Magdalena, NM
• Miles walked: 28.2

The day begins in the Milligan Hills on the approach to the Magdalena Mountain Range, playing a curious cross-country game of a sequence of directions, half a mile east along a fence line, then go up an arroyo until finding old two-tracks, and so on, all with an implied aim of navigating around blocks of private land, state land, and BLM.

Withington and Potato

MRT/GET 2021 Day 32, May 6, Thursday
• Start 28280 Red Canyon, beyond Apache Kid Wilderness
• End 30070 about to start Milligan Hills XC
• Miles walked: 25.0

Starting up Red Canyon, still on the Apache Kid Trail, the route uses switchbacks to gain 2k elevation up to Grassy Lookout with its fine 360 degree views, where the Apache Kid terminates.