Serpent Lake hiking with the kids

After a long day of driving around Mora County with my kids, I decided our next adventure would involve more hiking. There is a hike in the northern part of the Pecos Wilderness that I've been wanting to do for a while, Serpent lake. Actually, the hiking guide books refer to this hike as Jicarita Peak, which is the mountain overlooking the lake. If I were hiking on my own, I would certianly have been aiming for that lofty goal, and maybe even would hide a geocache up there. But with my kids, I decided on a shorter hike that would be challenging for them but hopefully still well within their abilities. The hike up to Serpent lake would involve about 1000' elevation gain, and 8 miles round trip hiking. This is more than they've ever done before, but given enough time and the right incentives, I felt that they would be able to succeed here.

We had a leisurely start, leaving Santa Fe around 8am and getting to the trailhead a little before 10am. There is a very lonely cache near the trailhead that we stopped to find at the start of our hike, Langdon's Hollow. I'm not really sure why, but in 5 years since it was published it has only been found twice. It is not difficult, and does not involve much hiking, being a tenth of a mile from the trailhead, a trailhead which should be reachable by most cars. But for some reason, it is not on people's radar when caching in this remote part of the state. I can understand that at least. The kids both delighted in trading items in the cache, and then we were off up the trail towards Serpent Lake.

I had two "tricks" up my sleeve for getting the kids to keep hiking. The first was Jellybeans. Every 0.3 miles I would loudly announce "Jellybean!" and they would each get one from my stash. This was jsut about the right distance to keep them forging ahead to the next reward, but not so much that it made them feel like they wouldn't get there. The other fun thing about this is that we bagan measuring our distance in "jellybeans". They would ask how much further to the lake and I would reply, "oh... looks like 5 more jellybeans".

Ready for Jellybeans

My second trick was walkie-talkies. Not sure why, but kids love playing with these.  Once the two of them had walkie-talkies in there hands, they would run up ahead to "be far apart" and then talk all sorts of nonsense into the radios. If there had been other hikers around, I might not have been ok with this as all their incessant chatter on the radios might have been annoying to some. A lot of their talk on the radios was to make "static" noises, and other silly nonsense. But we had the trails almost entirely to ourselves, so I let the childish noises run with abandon. And the children kept on hiking.

Yes... radios help stay in touch even at close range

We reached the lake a bit after noon, and found a nice spot for a picnic. It is a really beautiful setting, high up in the mountains with a mirror like lake reflecting the peaks above. After a good picnic, we found another lonely cache placed up here, then because clouds were starting to roll in, we started our trek back down the trail.

Ada ate this whole can of smoked trout!

The hike down was just as easy, although the mileage was starting to wear on the kids, especially Ada ho is only 6. She started whining a bit more about tired legs, and I didn't blame her. We hiked over 8 miles and did it all in under 6 hours! Definitely a worthy accomplishment for a little girl. I'm proud of them both and look forward to taking them on more hikes up here in these wonderful mountains.