We met up with Matt's parents in Angel Fire for the weekend. After being able to leave Denver at 4pm on Friday, we hoped to miss at least some of the crazy weekend traffic. We didn't and it took us 2.5 hours just to get to Colorado Springs. Ugh. We made it to Angel Fire around 11pm - a 6 hour trip.
On Saturday, we hiked Mt Wheeler with Matt's dad, Ken. Wheeler is the highest point in New Mexico at around 13,100 feet. Matt and Ken had been to the summit years before, but couldn't remember which way they went so we picked a trailhead at Red River and went with it. Matt thought that it'd be a 12-ish mile hike...boy, was he wrong.
About 5 miles into our hike, we came upon Lost Lake. We were going to do some fishing, but decided to summit first.
We kept walking and after 2-ish miles hit an aptly named Horseshoe Lake.
From here, we could see the top of Wheeler so we took a short break and kept hiking. Instead of going along the ridge, the trail went along the backside of the peak to the other side and then up to the summit. After about 5 hours of hiking, we finally made it to the summit! Matt had his GPS tracking on his phone and informed us that we had just hiked about 10 miles...and still had to go all the way back
Matt was a little off on his estimate of length of the hike. About 9 hours and around 20 miles, we completed the hike. Ken and Karla were a little tired. Okay, Karla might have complained the last mile. But it ended up being a great story!
Saturday night we hung out at the house with Ken, Nancy and two of their friends who were spending the night on the way to Colorado. On Sunday morning, all eight of us took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain to do a little walking, take in the views and watch the crazy mountain bikers tackle the first downhill of a hard trail. Ken, Matt and Karla didn't have a lot of energy that day, so there was a lot of lounging around and Carbles games. We went fishing for a bit in the evening. Ken and Matt had to duck every time Karla cast out; she's still working on that technique.
Overall, it was a great, relaxing weekend in New Mexico! We do love being closer to the house - a five (or six) hour drive is a lot better than having to fly in from Chicago and then drive.
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