Page 25 - Volume 3 - Walks In The Black Range

8. North Seco Box Contributed by Devon Fletcher
The North Seco Box trailhead is nearly a three hour drive from Las Cruces, but wherever you are, it will seem far away. The 18 or so miles from the nearest town (Winston NM) will take close to an hour to drive, with the last 3 or so miles past Hermosa, on a rotten coda to the now mostly well maintained Forest Road 157, where the going is tortuously slow right up to the dead end at the locked blue gate past which the last mile or so (seemingly in better shape, but perhaps because it's not driven on anymore) has to be walked down to the creek. (See access map to the right.)
So much for convenient accessibility, but it’s not a difficult hike. There is little elevation gain or loss, excepting the road walking down to the creek, and the trudge back up to the parking at the end of the day. It is long walk though, somewhere around 10 miles round trip which took about six hours including lunch, a few rests and copious picture taking. It's just a long day of both driving and hiking.
I have time off, and time on my hands in the summer, but this hike, which tops out at an elevation just under 7,000 feet is not really summertime hike. I started just after 9 and the day warmed up quickly in the wide east facing valley. Trying to keep a steady 3 mph pace on the way didn't help either. Still, I was never really uncomfortable, although I
did dip my hat in the stream occasionally and wet my shirt a couple of times on the way back.
All that being said, the reasons I did go, became crystal clear, the day before I went. I wanted a place where almost no one goes, I like it best when I can't find a single picture of a destination on the internet. If there are too many photos I lose interest. If it's anything like the boxes of (the similarly massively inconvenient) South Palomas Creek or Sapillo Creek, or the trips to the waterfalls in East and West Curtis Canyons, all of which I've visited in the past four years, then I knew the magic would be worth it.
Davis Well
St. Cloud Mine
Chiz
The creek was dry at the road crossing, but Davis Well's solar powered pump was filling two small ponds with water, I walked west on the road, hoping perhaps to see some ancient pottery between the dried grass, but being fooled too many times by rocks that had a maddeningly uncanny similarity to ceramics I've found in the past.
One of the things I noticed right away is that cattle are not here, and by the end of my day, seeing the remarkable recovery this place has undergone, I came to the conclusion, that it would a sin to let them back on. About mile west of the Davis Windmill the stream begins to get more and more shaded with mature alders, narrowleaf cottonwoods, box elder and oaks and lo and behold the stream came to life