OCATE — White Peak is something of a misnomer.

The mountain known as White Peak isn't so much a "peak" as it is a bald hill that rises a few hundred feet above a mesa on the edge of Colfax and Mora counties.

Much of the mesa consists of malpais (an area of rough, barren lava flows) and is dissected by a few sharp canyons carved down into the volcanic rock.

Roads that traverse the area around White Peak are rugged and deeply pitted. They can turn a trip of just a few miles into hours of jockeying and jostling in a pickup.

"There's no good road," says Ty Jackson, one of two state Game and Fish Department officers who regularly patrol Game Management Unit 48 in the White Peak area. "People don't understand how truly rough it is."

When he makes his rounds in Unit 48, it normally takes him a full eight hours to travel a distance of 20 miles as the crow flies.

The vicious malpais is hard on trucks and other full-size vehicles, and for a long time it prevented a lot of off-road travel at White Peak.

However, a dramatic increase in the popularity of recreational all-terrain vehicles such as four-wheelers in the last 10 years has allowed outdoorsmen to navigate the uninviting terrain much quicker and reach places that previously weren't accessible.

Jackson says the freedom offered by four-wheelers has created a chaotic web of roads that crisscrosses both state and private land in the White Peak area.

"There's a road everywhere," Jackson says. "Some are old logging roads, and in other places it's just where somebody found a wide spot between some trees."

Though Game and Fish officers can cite people for driving off-road, vague definitions of what actually constitutes a road, especially in an area with so many primitive two-tracks, make it tough to enforce.

"The problem is that once a handful of vehicles drive there, it basically meets the standards of a road," Jackson says.

Rough roads make Unit 48 especially difficult for law enforcement officers who can only cover limited ground in a day's patrol.

"You can literally drive around all day and never cross the same spot twice," Jackson says.

Quantity versus quality

The network of improvised roads spread out across White Peak doesn't only make things challenging for game wardens.

It doesn't help the hunting much either.

"Anytime you have roads, it creates a tremendous fragmentation in the habitat because there is no place the animal can go to easily get away from people," Jackson says.

The White Peak area has many qualities of good game habitat — dark cover, open meadows, abundant water — but the unrestrained use of four-wheelers can quickly spook elk into other areas where they are less likely to be bothered.

The trouble in White Peak is that once hunters show up in droves, the elk tend to make themselves scarce.

Still, elk harvest reports compiled by Game and Fish over the last couple hunting seasons show Unit 48 is just above average relative to statewide success rates.

But because those surveys are broken down by factors such as private-versus-public hunts, or bow-versus-rifle hunts, it is difficult to draw any conclusions about how good a unit may or may not be.

"There's so many variables, it can be hard to be able to tell," says Stewart Liley, elk biologist with Game and Fish.

He is more inclined to look at mandatory hunter satisfaction surveys when trying to determine unit quality.

"Overall, it gives you some kind of idea of what a unit is like," Liley says.

Unit 48 received grades slightly above average on those surveys with an average rating of 3.3 points out of a possible five.

Aside from habitat fragmentation, the way the unit is managed could affect hunter satisfaction in Unit 48.

Across the state, the New Mexico Game Commission decides whether to limit the number of hunters in a unit to promote the growth of trophy elk populations, or allow more sportsmen the chance to hunt by providing more tags in that unit.

Liley said quality game units are typically found in remote areas of the state where the vast majority of the land is public. By offering fewer tags, Game and Fish can facilitate the growth of large, mature bull elk.

In places like Unit 48, the goal is to maintain a sustainable herd while at the same time maximizing the number of hunting opportunities.

Bigger crowds don't necessarily equate to less success, but allowing more hunters does mean elk hunts might not be as impressive as they would be in units specifically managed for quality.

The State Land Office has said that it would like to see wildlife habitat improvement in the White Peak area sometime in the future.

But despite average numbers in Unit 48, sportsmen in the area are showing incredible loyalty to White Peak state trust lands.

Jackson says nearly all of the people he comes across during hunting season live in nearby communities and put in for a tag at White Peak every year.

"For most guys it's not about how far you have to go, it's about where you like to hunt," Jackson says.

Ed Olona, 70, says he's hunted the White Peak area since he was a kid.

"I used to go there with my dad," Olona says. "That's why I feel so vehemently about the Land Office deal. I want my grandkids and everyone's grandkids to enjoy it."

Olona is adamant that there is nothing mediocre about the quality of the hunting at White Peak.

The State Land Office says it is "going make it into a very unique hunting area, but it is already," Olona says. "I've killed bear, deer, turkey and had a chance at cats in there. It's a quality hunting area already."

Access issues: Whose road is it anyway?

On paper, the landscape around White Peak is broken into scattered pieces of state trust land and private property.

Old roads cut by logging companies pay no heed to public/private boundaries because of contracts between loggers and landowners.

When the logging ended and the nearby sawmill closed, these roads were left open across the entire area.

Rancher David Stanley believes this is when the trouble began.

"The timber company was there for 20 or 25 years, long enough for people to be in there and have kids who were born and raised up there," Stanley says. "They had used the roads, hunted there, and knew that area."

When the company packed up shop and left the area, Stanley says the ranchers began telling people who grew up there they could no longer be on parcels of private land.

More recently, public access to state trust land has been accommodated by a few public road easements, or by landowners who are willing to permit travel across their property.

Within the last few years, Game and Fish has arranged agreements with private landowners in which the department pays for this access through its "Open Gate" program.

Historically, hunters have been able to access White Peak state trust land via three separate entrances: the Aspen Hill access in the west, the Red Hill access in the south, and the Sweetwater access on the east side.

Both the Aspen Hill and Red Hill access points are reached from N.M. 120 just west of Ocate. The Red Hill access originates in Mora County and runs through a portion of Stanley's ranch.

For about 2.5 miles, it is known as Mora County Road C-010 and is a public road.

Stanley claims the road was once private but was long ago appropriated by Mora County.

"They didn't pay for it, didn't condemn it, just claimed it as a county road," he says.

When the same road reaches a gate and cattle guard at the Colfax County line, Game and Fish pays Stanley for access.

This has been the case for the last two years.

The Red Hill access isn't the only entrance to White Peak that has its quirks.

For a decade, the Sweetwater access near Springer was embroiled in a legal feud between the UU Bar Ranch and the New Mexico attorney general.

That case was finally decided by the state Supreme Court in 2009 when it ruled to keep the access open to the public.

At the other end of the White Peak trust land, Game and Fish pays for access across a half-mile stretch of private land with its Open Gate program to get to the Aspen Hill area.

The current access abuts N.M. 120.

But just a few hundred yards west of that entrance, boulders have been strewn to block another road, known to some as N.M. 199.

Brian Henington, assistant director of public land resources, said the Land Office closed the road because no one was able to determine exactly where the public easement ran.

"That's always been the problem with 199," Henington says. "Everybody says this road is 199 or that road is 199. Nobody had an easement, so we allowed the closure."

Better options down the road?

In explaining its logic behind the Stanley exchange, the State Land Office has said that the new boundaries will make it easier for sportsmen to get onto White Peak trust land.

"One reason we want to do this is so we can build good access," says Kristin Haase, assistant commissioner at the State Land Office.

According to a fact sheet released by State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, once the land is consolidated, improvement to public access would be the second phase of the White Peak exchange.

Included in the Stanley trade is an irregular spit of land that bridges existing state land with N.M. 120 near the community of Naranjos.

Stanley says the 136-acre tract is intended to provide a direct access from the maintained highway to state land that was made contiguous in the trade.

"The road across that odd-shaped piece of land would be a great road because it would go across state land the entire way," Stanley says. "If you wanted to get to that same parcel right now, it'd take you three hours. With that road you're right there in five minutes."

According to Stanley, there was once a road on that parcel that crossed a drainage and climbed up a ridge. It has since been washed away and will need to be completely rebuilt.

Henington says the Land Office considers the reconstruction of that road vital to the overall plan. "We'd like the county or Game and Fish, or some public entity to stand up and say they'd like to do it," he said.

He added that a legislative appropriation could be required as well to get the project off the ground.

Another access near Aspen Hill is also being considered.

Henington explained that a small exchange with William Galloway would give the public another dependable entrance across public land to the western portion of White Peak.

However, the Galloway trade cannot take place until the Land Office closes its deal with the CS Ranch. Land from the CS Ranch would become state trust land, and the Land Office plans on using 42 acres that it gained from that trade in the Galloway exchange.

Olona doesn't understand why any of that would be necessary.

"The thing is that we already have, the Mora County road that goes through to White Peak," Olona says. "Why in the dickens is the State Land Office saying they need to make a brand new road when we already have a road maintained by the Mora County Commission?"

Jeremy Vesbach, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, doesn't think a new access is necessary either.

In fact, after last year's victory in the UU Bar case, he's confident that there is no such thing as a public access problem at White Peak.

"They don't have any members of the public asking for new roads," Vesbach says.

Instead, he called the access issue a "myth" perpetuated by the State Land Office to justify the trade.

"The access to (White Peak) is more secure than a lot of other areas in the state," Vesbach says.

He and other sportsmen see all four of the White Peak land trades as convenient for private landowners like Stanley, but not for the public.

"It consolidates lands for the ranches, but for the public, it moves them out of White Peak."

In the meantime, Stanley says he will continue to grant access across his land through the Open Gate program until other public options such as new roads become available.

"I'm not trying to keep anybody out, that's never been our intent," Stanley says. "We've never tried to keep people off of state land. We've tried to keep them on state land."

Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series focused on the issues surrounding state trust land in the White Peak area and the impact that a trade between a rancher and the state office would have on private landowners and sportsmen.

State officials say land swap with ranches would improve access to popular hunting spot, but sportsmen say the need for new roads is a myth