Just up the road from downtown Silver City is a great riding and hiking area I call Walnut Creek. We road a big loop last time we were in the area and this time I hiked while Derek rode a smaller loop. His ride was 14 miles with 1534′ of climbing.
I hike the Angel and Pinon Loop and really enjoyed it. This figure eight hike had a lot of bang for it’s buck. The climb up is shaded to begin with as you head up through the forest of pinon pines, juniper, and oak. Once I wrapped around to the city facing side it got warm. Giant agave’s are sprinkled around everywhere and I stopped to take several pictures. This back side is where most of the climbing is and the trail got pretty rocky as I kept going.
At the intersection with Dragon Trail I continued on around towards the Gomez Peak intersection. This part features giant granite slabs as part of the trail. Mountain biking this loop would be tough but doable. I opted to not head up to Gomez Peak and add on Pinon Trail instead. One thing I’ll mention is that the maps at the intersections weren’t always helpful and I was happy to have the area downloaded on AllTrails so that I could see all my options. There are a lot of offshoots and different choices of distances out here so something for everyone!
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