Page 8 - Volume 3 - Walks In The Black Range

2. Taylor Creek/Whitewater Canyon - Contributed by Devon Fletcher
I've been wanting to see Taylor Creek/Whitewater Canyon for many years. Once, back in '04 I think, we drove over to Wall Lake (which is fed by Taylor and Hoyt Creeks). There was a chain link fence keeping people out of an area that had once been used for camping. I guess by that time the lease agreement, allowing people to fish and camp there, between New Mexico Game and Fish and the property owner was no longer in effect. I remember the lake being very shallow and climbing down to Taylor Creek below the dam where there were thousands of huge tadpoles in the water. We drove past the area heading home from camping at Black Canyon on another trip.
The hike described here was in October of 2020. The private property around Wall Lake is still private and has new owners who run a guest ranch that features horse riding trips into the Gila National Forest with one of the premier destinations being Taylor Creek. It seemed unlikely that they were giving people access on the road through the property (they aren’t), so I devised a route that would bypass the private property and get to the canyon bottom entirely on Gila
National Forest land.
If you are wondering, we did this hike while camping in the dispersed camping area in lower Corduroy Canyon about a dozen miles away. It is just too far from my home in Las Cruces for a day trip.
I didn't feel like it was going at all well with the first side canyon being way too rugged to descend, but we stuck with it and found a cow path (and some cows) that took us around the upper end of that drainage and then back onto a second hill where we soon were looking down into a second side canyon. This one, I knew contained some old mining prospects and a road (!), that had serviced them, that went all the way down to Taylor Creek, intersecting it at a point beyond the private property boundary. Once we caught sight of the old mining adits we headed downhill. It was a steep pitch for sure, and rocky to boot, through patches of brown grass between the conifers, but we made it down to the road and then it was easy walking to the creek. I was a little uneasy when we had to pass through an open gate in a fence line, even though I knew, using 4 different maps and my On-X app that we were at least 1000 feet away from the property line. Before reaching the bottom we could see a tall precarious looking wall built into a cave with some pine timbers lodged in the opening above it. At the bottom, I saw a man walking off to the west.
There a were old corrals and cabin nearby too. None of which helped my anxiety. Even though I knew I was on the Gila NF, I was not looking for any confrontation and so I was happy to get moving to the east and leave this part of the hike behind.
We drove through
the dappled
shade of the pines
along the
endlessly twisting
FR 150 (shown as
61 on these
maps). After
crossing the mesa
top, we got to a deep U-shaped curve in the gray gravel road part way down the descent to the valley where there was enough room for parking and we set out on foot onto the piñon and juniper covered mesa. In retrospect this wasn’t the best place to start as there is ample parking just a short way back on the mesa top, which I would recommend. At a high point with a clearing, we could look down into the canyon.
The tiny spring fed meadow creek is an absolute miracle in this dry country. Running clear, maybe two feet wide, and almost that deep in many places, we began to make the first of many muddy and wet crossings. The water isn't all that cold though. I saw gray forms, tadpoles and tiny fish, scurry about in the pools. Our dogs (short- legged Scotties) hilariously leaped for all they were worth to get across. Several
Red hue indicates private property.
times as we continued, though, they found themselves performing a short swim.
Huge cottonwoods, plus the occasional ash, willow, and box elder provided the glowing yellows, while five leaf ivy vines winding around trunks burned a vivid red. Oaks, with their