Hey! It's lisa with Swifty Travels and in this video I'm going to take
you on a quick tour of the Catwalk in the Gila Mountains just outside of Reserve,
New Mexico. Between Reserve and Silver City- it's called the Catwalk Recreation Area.
So last year we were in this area exploring the Gila. We went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and
we went for a scenic drive in this area and I'll have some links down to those
videos below if you're interested in seeing that. During that time the Catwalk was closed
and so now we're going to take a visit. We're actually here in the fall this year
coming back from Arizona we decided to stop on our way back to Albuquerque. As you can see
probably just a few weeks ago this would have been gorgeous the cottonwoods are a bit dry
now kids are really enjoying this
let's see what kind of a fee is required here
three dollars for the day use fee
Right at the entrance we've got a couple of vault
toilets and there is a nice little picnic ground here
This is a reminder of how this canyon can drastically flood. There's been 15 major floods
in the last 40 years and it says the Mogollon and Apache people made their homes around this canyon
1889 rich gold and silver deposits were discovered in the mountains above this whitewater canyon
several mines were developed including the confidence, bluebird, blackbird, and red bird.
Water was used to operate the generator at the mill to meet the needs of the 200 towns people
in the area. They constructed a four inch pipeline in 1893 that went about three miles up the canyon.
Ore from the nearby mines was processed at this mill. It was built in 1893 and had a
capacity of 75 tons per day. The mill closed down in 1913.
So here you can go straight for a longer hike but we're going to take the bridge
and make a loop and then come back.
The most unusual thing there are the tiniest little water droplets falling on us and doesn't
appear to be like... there's no rain clouds in the sky. There's like these really high level
clouds but it is sprinkling and I don't know where it's coming from it's a very strange phenomenon.
if you cross the bridge you have a nice paved gently sloped trail that goes
up and back into the canyon
it does say that there was some wildfire damage in the past so it says to beware
of fallen rocks and trees and things I guess in the canyon that came loose due to the fire
Who can tell me why these are all along this rock face i don't know what this is for
okay so those big things in the wall may have been they were just trying to figure
out where to put the catwalk and then maybe they decided not to build it in that spot
that's probably what those screws in the wall were from that's my guess
so the path goes all along this cliff side with the sound of the water below it's quite lovely
it's kind of cool it's like a nice little
carve out reminds me of those little cliff
dwelling caves but I guess nobody could get up there
I
just want to sit and take in the scenery they have a lot of these
little spots with a little picnic bench just a beautiful place to come and sit and relax
The most beautiful part of the trail comes down
with these little stepping stones over the water and a beautiful little bridge
this is absolutely a place you're going to want to take your kids
this is super cool an easy hike but so beautiful the views are great so much fun so i wasn't
exactly measuring our hike so i'm not exactly sure how far we went it only feels like maybe
a half a mile or so that we've been walking back here but they have the trail blocked
off there's more steps that goes up and they have it blocked off so just keep that in mind
but it is kind of the end of the waterway and then it heads to rock so here i'll show you
well the water kind of travels up through here and around
and i'm not sure where else the trail but let's see what the sign says maybe it's a seasonal thing
trail closed due to hazardous conditions so i'm not sure what
is going on but that's what you can see if you make it
for now in 2021 i bet if you come in
mid-october the leaves here are probably stunning color the cottonwood so i would recommend coming
that time of year and then in the spring you're going to have a lot of snow runoff and there's
going to be heavy heavy water through the canyons that would be super cool too but like i mentioned
earlier if you come in the spring with heavy water you're going to need to pass over the
road where the water is flowing so just keep that in mind if you're comfortable with that or not
now this is interesting right past the last bridge how pink the rocks are
bright pink so about halfway back you'll notice that the catwalk takes two different paths so
we came up on this side now we want to go back on this side so that we can see both
sides of the catwalk
and then back up some steps and can you see gosh
darn it the drips it's got to have something to do with the
this just makes no sense that it's like it's just drizzling just right here here's
a spot where i bet the water really comes down in a flash flood and it looks like
they concreted around these rocks to hold them in place to keep it from washing away
so that's what we've got today for this quick look at the catwalk recreation area
here in the gila wilderness of new mexico thanks for watching hope you can subscribe