Between Santa Fe and the Sandia Mountain Wilderness:
- I took the main rail trail bike path south out of Santa Fe. A few camping options would about 15 miles south of Santa Fe.
- I ended up walking along some railroad tracks, and then walked along New Mexico highway 14 through the historic town of Madrid to avoid a ton of private land. This was a cool town and worthy of routing the trail through. I continued along highway 14 until basically reached the Sandia Wilderness. From Santa Fe to the Sandia wilderness is the longest stretch of continuous private land along the entire FCL. This section has a lot of road walking to get around private land, so if it is possible to get easements across some of the large ranches in the ares this would be cool. Once again this area is by far has the most continuous stretches of private land of the entire FCL
Between the Manzanos and Socorro:
- Basically followed the Grand Enchantment route and it would be cool to get an easement though the area pictured (. this is south of the Ten Points General Store.
Between Socorro and Pie Town:
- There is some checker board style private property issues between state land parcels west of Socorro until you reach the Cibola National Forest. Maybe realigning the route with the already established Grand Enchantment trial would work when you leave Socorro, but I was trying to avoid swinging north to come back south, so I headed directly west and did run into the back side of some properly lines I did not know about before starting the trip.
- North of the Very Large Array there were not an east west passage near any water that I knew of so you can see I slightly dropped The area was very candy in areas. just south of the forest boundary and ended up running into the back side of a sign, and the sign made it clear I was not wanted. I did not see the sign on the east side. So to ameliorate this I this is a great area to build a new trail east west running trail that stays within the National Forest.
- Near Pie Town on the western side of the National Forest I ran onto some property boundary signs. So I walked along the fence line, this worked but a trail could be build in this area to join the CDT in Pie Town.
- Note that this area was very dry and most of of my blue water dots I found dry or did not investigate. I actually went 54 miles between water sources in this section, so running the trail past known water sources from ranchers is important. Thanks you to the ranchers for pumping water to the surface, if it was not for them I feel New Mexico would be very to hike across.
Between Pie Town and the Arizona boarder:
- This section went pretty good, yes there was some dirt road walking as I headed south on the CDT, but it was cool to meet the CDT hikers heading north. Overall improvements can be made because I did follow a lot of infrequently used dirt roads in the area and did some cross country travel, but I enjoyed it. I would consider this section a lower priority area.
Lets not forget northern New Mexico from the Colorado boarder to Santa Fe:
- Right now there is not a lot needed on the part of the FCL from Colorado to Santa Fe. Yes there is some road walking through the Rio Costilla Ranchers Cooperative, but the people I met associated with the cooperative were awesome and the cooperative had a very old historic history.
- There is a section from Wheeler Peak to reach Eagles Nest that could use an easement to hike through.
