Adventures in the Pecos

Hello Friends! Happy Monday. I hope you all found your weekend to be enjoyable.
This weekend for us was pretty jam packed, but left us with some pretty great memories. We've been getting our fill of the outdoors lately, that's for sure. Being outdoors is one of my many "things" though, so I don't mind it one bit.

Our schedule can get pretty busy, really quickly, so we tend to have to schedule things a few month's out. Earlier this summer we planned a hiking trip with my brother-in-law and we made it happen over the weekend.



I was recently made aware of this place in the Pecos Wilderness near Santa Fe. Apparently it's actually quite popular. It made me feel like I've been living under a rock or something as I hadn't even heard of it before. I'm so glad I happened to stumble upon it though! I almost hate to say this, but I think it may be the prettiest place I have been to in New Mexico. There are a lot of really great and varying views in this good ole' "land of enchantment," but this one was absolutely...breathtaking. We couldn't help but remark on how beautiful this world is, yet so much of it often goes unnoticed simply because we don't get out to see it.



The hubs, my brother-in-law and I went out for what was expected to be a ten hour hike. Luckily it was only 8 hours. It was long and tiring but when you saw views like this along the way it made it so worth it!





Our goal was Lake Katherine. We took the Windsor Trail picking up at the base of Santa Fe Ski, for locals. We arrived pretty early not knowing how long the hike would actually be and we didn't want to run into any issues with daylight. As far as conditions go, I don't think we could have asked for better hiking weather. We moved at a comfortable pace to us and took breaks when we needed. The trail itself wasn't as intense as I was imagining either, which was a pleasant surprise especially given how long it was. It starts out rough! Once you get past the first 15 minutes or so, the ease of difficulty was much appreciated.



Side story: on the way up we heard a noise that we were convinced was a moose! A close moose at that. Scared us enough to be on guard through that patch of the hike. Later, on the way down we heard it again, though more frequently and couldn't believe it was a) still there and b) how talkative the thing was...about the, oh I don't know, 15th time we heard it, it actually sounded more like a cow. The hubs thought it would be fun to imitate the animal as we got closer, I was not as enthusiastic about his jokes. Luckily, our suspicions were confirmed about 20 minutes later when four giant black cows came out of the woods to cross the path to the other side. I don't know what you're supposed to do when you see cows in the woods, but we decided to stop for a break until the coast was clear. Though they seemed friendly enough, I have seen first hand how quickly cows can move if they want to, and they aren't always nice, that's for sure!



Anyway, Windsor Trail will take you all the way up to Santa Fe Baldy, which was tempting. I can only imagine what the views look like up there, but I'm sure they are nothing short of stunning. We decided for the sake of time we'd forego Baldy this time and jet off the other trail (251) to Lake Katherine. We knew we were getting fairly close at that point, but didn't know how close. About an hour or so later we found ourselves finally walking through the trees to open up to a gorgeous Lake Katherine. The water was pristine and the views well worth our 4 hour trek to get there. We stopped to have lunch, chat a while and enjoy our scenery, then geared back up for the 4 hour trek back to car.

 
(photo cred to the hubs on this one)




(photo cred to the hubs again...)

It was the longest I'd ever hiked before, so not only was it pretty on the eyes it was also a nice little accomplishment to add to the books! We were dead tired when we arrived back home. I think we are all walking with a bit of a gimp, but I still find myself reminiscing on the sights that we saw.


(...and again)

Lake Katherine needs to be on any outdoor enthusiasts list. You can hike it, backpack it or somewhere in between, but it's absolutely worth it. We definitely plan to return and check out some of the other lakes in the area as well as conquer Santa Fe Baldy, though next time I think we'll camp!

Hope you have a wonderful week friends, we'll see you on Friday!