On the Cat Walk!

We did two day trips out of the Silver City. 49ers from San Francisco returning overland discovered gold, silver and copper all around the area. Billy the Kid was also born in Silver City and committed his first robbery there as a prank.
The first trip (4/7) was to Catwalk Trail near Glenwood and the next day (4/8) was to Gila Cliff Dwellings.

The Catwalk intrigued me because it was well this.........

The catwalk was built by miners going up the canyon to reach their claims and mines. The state took the site over and built a nice metal catwalk in place of the original and even paved a handicap accessible path all the way to the catwalk. So this looked like a fun thing to check out.
We went west on 180, always the changing landscape.

Whitewater Creek. Driving up we could see where they had a large dozer or scraper working over the rocks to smooth out the river bed. They also did some repairs to the road.

 We looked at the map and saw the trails. Then we headed out and the trail we ended up on was a stone path. We went about a quarter mile up it before turning back on a particularly steep section. The trail was closed just beyond that. It turns out that a large flood had swarmed through the area destroying the catwalk, the paved trails and much of the park. Up the road it destroyed parts of a mining ghost town and rearranged the landscape all up and down the rivers.
I was glad to have my Freewheel along because it helped getting around on the trails. We were all disappointed that we made the drive and weren't able to

Here you can see handrail from the paved trail. A little further on, the rock had slid and took out the path and the handrail.

On the right, you can see the path that we took. It was steep in parts and had a good handrail so I pulled and Becky pushed up the hills and bumps.

On the way home, we stopped at an overlook and found out about Aldo Leopold. He was the guy who got the Gila River area deemed the first national forest and spurred the efforts to protect the nations wilderness and heritage sites.