Thanks a lot Lanlubber! I’ll definitely follow up with them. Do you have any issues with snow in your area around December? The Gila National forest looks like it'd be a great area to explore
Hi Chris, I live on the edge of the Gila. I'm roughly at 6000 ft. high desert area, below the tree line as they say here. It's rare for us to get snow that hinders travel at my altitude. I've drive around at the higher altitudes without difficulty. Of course the main highways are maintained except in really high altitudes during a storm. December is not especially known as a heavy snow month but you can check google for snow depths for each month. Most of our snow is in the 2-3 inches at a time and within 3 days is completely gone. I think for a newbie to the area the fun would be to travel the state highways and find roads of interest without going anywhere specifically. One fun drive is from Silver City to Glenwood. During the depression the government had what was called CC camps that gave people jobs building projects for the public at government expense. One of those projects was called the catwalk which was built in a canyon that had a mountain stream year round. It originally was a wood catwalk structure but about 15 years ago it was washed away from a few bad storms that turned the stream into a rushing river. It took about 5 years to rebuild using steel frame work. It is a favorite place for even locals to visit and it is about a three hour or better hike up the canyon. Glenwood itself is a small town with a few good restaurants, fishing pond and a few quaint old motels. The whole area has roads that go off into the mountains and lakes, there are several. You can get so wound up traveling you can end up in Flagstaff Az. easily with miles and miles of off road paths. I could spend the rest of my life permanently exploring all the back roads and trails in just the Gila area. Another NM OB'er named
@Firemedic15 has extensive travels in NM. Maybe he will check in on this thread and offer even better info than me. Or you can start a conversation with him in the forum. Keep a look out, I'm sure you will get more responses when they realize you are interested in this area and not El Paso, which offers little unless you want to off road the Butterfield trail that goes from EP to Carlsbad NM across a few hundred miles of desert.
Have fun planning your trip. Landlubber Jim
You can Google that too if it sounds interesting.
