If hell is other people, heaven is Herrera Mesa

4/30/2017

I would not normally head out to Herrera Mesa in May. There’s virtually no shade unless you hit it really late in the day.

Today, that was perfect.

We were looking for someplace we could be certain had already dried out from the rain and snow soaking of the past two days. And we knew the temperature wouldn’t get out of the 60s, so we wouldn’t melt.

The Herrera Mesa hike, as found in Stephen Ausherman’s “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Albuquerque,” is on BLM land overlooking an old ranch on the edge of the To’hajiilee reservation. The mesa is a geological wonderland (removing minerals is prohibited). The sloping terrain that rolls away from the mesa is punctuated with angular rock formations and even a little lake.

But the best thing about Herrera Mesa is the solitude. You can see forever, and there’s not much habitation to interrupt the view. The only sounds are the wind, birds and insects (and occasional gunshots, judging from the handgun, shotgun and rifle shells we spotted while hiking in on a dirt road). There were footprints (we found none the first time we hiked here), but they weren’t from today, or yesterday.

Speaking of the wind: It was fierce and cold. We felt it off and on throughout our hike, anytime we weren’t sheltered by a section of the mesa. But the equation of the brilliant sun and the cool wind added up perfectly.

The mesa looked totally different than it had on our first hike here, in January 2016. This week’s precipitation had greened the hills that roll down from the mesa, and Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers blasted their way out of the rock and scrub.

On our way back, my husband spotted a pair of shed elk (or maybe deer) antlers on a slope below the trail. He scrambled down the slope like a gazelle for a closer look.

It was hard to imagine a giant elk navigating the narrow trail at the edge of the mesa. But between the scat, the antlers and the elk skull we saw on the way up, I’d bet elk outnumber humans on Herrera Mesa any day.

Hike length: 4-mile roundtrip

Difficulty: Moderate

Odds of running into another human: very low

Wildlife spotted: Crows, ravens, butterflies, lizards

Tip: You can drive up the road that leads to the gate where the hike starts. I don’t recommend it. On a previous visit here, we spent an hour stuck in what appeared to be the world’s tiniest ditch on that road. It’s not. If you park on the side of that road right where it turns off from the road that brings you to the mesa, it’s an easy half-mile hike to the gate (and the ditch that was impassible for our truck is small enough to step over on foot.)