After a nice dinner and a movie with Billy Ward, I turned in early Saturday night.  Early Sunday morning (January 29, 2017) I left Billy’s Ranch and drove to a location about 10 miles outside of El Dorado, Texas to meet up with Billy Wortham, who was to be my  “celebrity” hiking buddy for the next several days.  I had never met Billy Wortham in person-  we had only corresponded by email and talked over the phone.  I read about Billy in the March 2017 issue of Backpacker magazine.  He was a participant in the 2016 Colorado Trail Fest and the article about the event contained the following:

As Billy Wortham, a gregarious, white-mustached Texan from San Angelo, joked, “I am desperate for hiking partners in my part of the world”.

My wife and I had lived in San Angelo for a number of years in the early 1980s and I too sometimes have trouble finding hiking partners, so I looked him up on facebook and began a correspondence.  Billy joked that he was a “celebrity hiker” because of his appearance in Backpacker magazine and related videos about the event.  (He appears in this video: http://www.backpacker.com/view/videos/trips-videos/the-2016-colorado-trail-fest/).  We got along well on the phone, so I invited him to go to Alamo Mountain with me.  We met up at the appointed place and time and loaded up his gear in my truck then headed out for Alamo Mountain, which is located on BLM land in Southeastern New Mexico (about 70 mies NE of El Paso, Texas).

We arrived at a camping area at the base of Alamo Mountain about 3:30 p.m. CST.  We decided to take a hike before we set up camp, so we loaded up our packs with water and a snack and set out to explore the area of the mountain that was to the south of our campsite.  We had hoped to find and explore the ruins of a station used by the Butterfield Overland Mail Route called Ojos de los Alamos.  This station operated from 1857 to 1861 and was a station on a stagecoach route used to deliver the US mail and transport passengers between San Francisco, CA and St. Louis, MO.  We were unsure of exactly where the ruins were located so we climbed to the top of the first terrace of the mountain hoping to see them below.  We did not locate the ruins on this hike and decided to look for them the next morning to the north of our campsite location.  We hiked 3.15 miles and returned to set up camp.  I had pulled my Xventure trailer and let Billy sleep in the roof top tent.  I pitched a cot and used my Wiggy’s Ultralight sleeping bag with a Mountain Hardware Alpine bivy.  It was a very pleasant evening- cold, but with clear skies and very little wind.

The next morning we had breakfast and began our hike shortly before nine a.m. (Monday, January 30, 2017).  We headed north from our campsite along the base of the mountain and about a mile and a half away we spotted the Butterfield ruins.  The first set of ruins appeared to have been for habitation, based on the layout (possible fireplace) and method of construction (stones were not dry stacked, but contained a plaster like masonry material between the stones).  There were numerous historic artifacts observed in and around the ruins (old rusted cans, etc.).  About 200 yards to the north was another set of ruins, that we guessed were the corrals since the stones were just stacked and there was an earthen tank nearby that could have been used to water the horses.  After inspecting the ruins we hiked further to the north then climbed up terraces looking for rock art.  We found a number of isolates and a few panels.  We covered quite a bit of the lower mountainside, mainly on the two lowest terraces and the washes that separated them.  According to my GPS we hiked 7.73 miles and ascended a total of 1,479 feet.

We got up Tuesday morning (January 31, 2017) and decided to climb to the top of Alamo Mountain.  From our campsite, there appeared to be a steep saddle that would allow us to scramble to the top so we headed for that saddle.  As we climbed higher, the terrain got much steeper, and the variety of cactus plants found on the mountain became more numerous.  We encountered no trails to speak of, so it was pretty much a bushwack up the mountain- very difficult going.  We took a break when we reached  the same terrace level as the approach was located on.  It had become quite windy so we found a shallow bowl area that blocked some of the wind.  As we headed toward the area where we thought we could access the final ascent, we unexpectedly began to find rock art.  We first found a single element (shamanistic  looking anthropomorph) panel directly above a small cave.  After making that initial discovery, we began to check out each large boulder cluster.  We found several more panels, each of which was noteworthy for its size as well as its composition.  One panel was particularly difficult to access and required careful scrambling on all fours to get into position to fully see and photograph the panel.  By this time it was after noon and the wind had really picked up at this altitude, so we decided not to climb to the summit, but rather to explore some of the higher terraces to our north.  We spent the rest of the afternoon doing just that and found quite a bit more rock art.  My GPS ran out of batteries so I did not get an accurate mileage and elevation but I estimated we hiked 6 miles and ascended around 1,800 total feet.

The rock art we encountered was amazing and we enjoyed trying to figure out what each element and each panel might have meant.  Below are a couple of pictures of some of the petroglyphs we observed.