Feb 17, 2018 — The first few hundred feet of this hike is known as the "A" hike, because the trail takes you to the white rocks of the Alamogordo mountainside "A". I originally intended to just hike Ortega Peak, passing the "A", and then head back down. The trail is super easy to follow until just before the summit, where you need to leave the trail and head up the ridge for a short time. Once I got to the summit of Ortega Peak, I noticed the repurposed road that made up the trail I had traveled continued toward Hershberger Peak, only about a mile away. Why not? I dropped down the other side of Ortega and joined the road leading along the ridge that would lead to Hershberger. To reach Hershberger, I needed to leave the trail again and continue through some easy bushwhacking. It was a little tricky here, but I ony ended up with a scratch or two, nothing crazy. At the small false peak before Hershberger, a use trail materializes that you can follow easily to the summit.
I decided I didn't want to backtrack from the summit of Hershberger, and because I love loops sometimes to a fault, I figured I'd risk there being a sheer cliff or intense bushwhacking in order to continue down the west ridge of Hershberger. Turns out this was one of the rare times I made a good choice! The ridgeline down was barely vegetated, and there were some really nice views I didn't get on the trail on my way up. Eventually, I got to a plateau where there were clearly some prety sheer cliffs preventing an easy way down, but with a little route-finding, I managed to find one section of Class 2 that would take me safely off the plateau. Basically, leaving too soon would be a ridiculously steep slope, and too late would result in getting cliffed-out. I lucked out with this one, though, for sure. Anyway, I scrambled down the Class 2 and continued toward the canyon below, the south fork of Marble Canyon. Holy crap, this was a major surprise. I went farther up Maple Canyon's south fork, which had sections of slickrock with crazy terrace formation, and then on the way down to complete my loop, I ran into a small section of slot canyon, totally unexpected. This ended up being a great loop for sure. Just a note that on my way out of Marble Canyon, and then after passing some fancy houses, I came to a gate that read "no trespassing" and I had to jump it to get out, oops.
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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!
