Anniversary Day Trip to the Gila Mountains

In February Tom and I celebrated 4 years together and I (of course) wanted to spend the day in the mountains. Since the Sierra Blancas had been getting a lot of snow we opted to spend a leisurely day in the Gilas instead, but even then, though our walks were all below 8,000 feet, it was cold and pretty windy. Luckily we were warmly dressed for taking short walks as opposed to hiking so we were able to stay comfortable enough as the clouds multiplied in the afternoon.

I love the Gila National Forest, particularly for it’s interesting geological formations tucked between the trees and the spacious ponderosa forest in the mid-range elevations. In the course of our past trips we’ve found numerous places where it’s possible to explore some of these rock formations without committing to a hike, allowing us to visit more than one place in a day and see some different things. Though we walked around some of these previously-explored formations and overlooks we also just strolled amongst the trees in random places, pulling over to park off a forest road and then wandering across the open ground beneath the canopy.

By mid-afternoon the clouds had made the temperature feel at least 10 degrees cooler than when we’d started walking so we decided to call it early and head into Silver City for a beer and some food at Little Toad Brewery where we warmed up for a couple hours until the storm had mostly blown through. We then finished up our evening by walking along the canal in town and checking out some of the colorful murals before heading back to Las Cruces.