Month: November 2018

If you wanted to take the hike I took today, I couldn’t tell you how.

It was my husband’s childhood arroyo hike into the Santa Fe National Forest in Tesuque. No drive to a faraway trailhead, no stopping to load up on supplies. Out the back door, into the arroyo, and it began.

We followed a web of dry watercourses and sunbaked game paths into the rolling foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The wind blew briskly from the northwest. Fresh snow coated the entire top of Santa Fe Baldy, visible periodically between hills, and crunched under our feet. The wind chill never got above 40, but the sun blazed bright enough that I stayed warm in a long-sleeved wool shirt.

My husband has told me so many stories about haunting these arroyos, and more today. The spot where he and his two best friends played paintball for a bachelor party. The ridiculously steep cliff he sledded down and crashed unceremoniously. The time, walking with two friends, that a pack of dogs surrounded them.

The terrain pushed us gradually up, making it clear we were now in a forest. The bare hills fell away and ponderosas towered above. Our footprints fell among fox and deer tracks in the snow. Ravens rode thermals overhead.

Just as I was beginning to think what this hike could really use was some views, a very steep mountain bike path beckoned upward.

Vistas opened up almost immediately, and more just kept appearing as we climbed. Beige and red cliffs stretched all the way to the Valle Grande. Redondo Peak towered above it, dusted on one sharp side with snow. The bump of Tetilla Peak to the south, the Ortiz and Sandia Mountains beyond.

It was so tempting to keep climbing until Baldy came fully into view. But I had to get my sore legs back down the steep path, and we had to get back to Albuquerque by dark.

On the way back, we took more ridgeline paths, winding amid homes with walls of windows.

We stopped at a clearing with manmade circles and stacks of rock overlooking the Santa Fe Opera.

I’d been there before, but couldn’t quite place the memory.

“I think you were angry,” my husband said.

Hard to believe, but there was a time when I wasn’t wild about ascending a steep hill.

Luckily, I learned good things await at the top.

Hike length: 8 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Wildlife spotted: juncos, nuthatches, ravens, bluejays

Trail traffic: none

We stand beneath a towering pine tree, watching a downy woodpecker tap, tap, tap on the branches above us.

My feet are caked with snow and mud, but I’m in short sleeves and sweating, the sun beating down on me.

The snow was a surprise, and the mud with it, pulling my feet back down as I climb.

It had last snowed five days ago. The elevation here is only 6,500 feet at the trailhead, and, for the few who know this trail, it’s known to be sunbaked and rocky. But sometimes your feet are in the shade even when your body’s in the sun. So we were navigating two inches of snow for long stretches of this hike.

That was a challenge on this difficult-rated, steep trail. Factor in the mud, and some muscle went into this hike.

Osha Spring Trail’s defining features are pine, silence, solitude and views. First, the rolling hills of Placitas surround you.

As you rapidly ascend, a chunk of the high Sandias comes into view ahead. The Ortiz Mountains and the plains and arroyos draining them. The snowy Sangres. The rocky Jemez.

As I climbed rock, snow and mud, I had the fleeting thought that getting down would be twice as hard, and pushed it away.

Strangely, though, it wasn’t. I stepped carefully into the footprints we’d made on the way up, and stayed upright. We walked over fossil-laden rocks, raccoon tracks and what my husband was sure was a bobcat hairball (a first for us, though we’re quite familiar with the domestic cat variety.)

It was our first hike in the snow in nearly two years (the last was a New Year’s Day hike on the Winsor Trail in Tesuque).

I hope this winter brings us many more.

Hike length: 7.3 miles

Difficulty: difficult

Wildlife spotted/heard: ravens, downy woodpecker, jays

Trail traffic: none

We had our minds set on one thing: the magical mystery slot canyon.

It had tantalized us at the end of an already-trippy arroyo hike at Golden Open Space in the East Mountains. I didn’t have the stamina to tackle it then, but neither my husband nor I had forgotten it.

So we headed out to Golden today. It’s a city of Albuquerque open space way down a long, winding road lined with spindly, naked junipers that look almost like palm trees.

First, a mesa with great views of the Ortiz Mountains and the east side of the Sandias. Then the descent to a rust-red trail that rolls up hills and across arroyos.

One of those arroyos had led us to the magical slot canyon. We couldn’t remember which one. We decided to follow the trail to the end of the route in our guidebook, thinking it would be close to the slot. We found lichen ranging from dusty blue to turquoise to chartreuse on the rock.

The trail emptied into a wide arroyo where, almost immediately, we discovered a natural spring that flowed for hundreds of yards. It bathed the rock below deep purple and brown and brick red. At one pool, we found a few deer tracks.

We followed the arroyo to its end, where it branched into another wide arroyo. A single huge cottonwood, leaves blazing yellow, stood against the arroyo wall.

We’d gone a long way, so we walked back up the arroyo, stopping to rest on a rock ledge. Sun poured down from a nearly cloudless sky as we sat on cool rock and listened to the wind and the birds.

Back at the trail junction, we took a spur we’d visited a long time ago. It led us to an overlook above a dramatic, narrow red-walled canyon, but it wasn’t the canyon we had on our minds.

We soaked up the sun and the breeze and the birds and the scents for hours. It was a wonderful way to spend a late-fall day.

Back at the car, though, we both admitted that we’d been distracted from what was around us by our disappointment at not finding that canyon.

I’d tried to just forget about it, but I’d carried that longing with me even amid all the experiences of the day.

The heart wants what it wants.

Hike length: 8.5 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: light

Wildlife spotted/heard: robin, vulture, canyon wrens, butterflies, grasshoppers, deer tracks

The day glowed brilliant at Cerrillos Hills, but a huge dark gray cloud pulsed overhead.

No rain was forecast, and the cloud didn’t look like action was immediate.

But as we climbed the steep Jane Calvin Sanchez Trail, the cloud stretched. Its interior grew darker and fluffier.

Dramatic light played all over Cerrillos Hills State Park. Grand Central Mountain disappeared into shadow against the blue beyond. Gray lines hovered above a mesa, evidence of rain in the air. Fresh snow came into view on the distant Sangre de Cristos.

We’d begun our hike in the harsh light of noon, when photos here normally show little contrast. But it looked like sunset.

I stood in place, snapping photo after photo in the cold, damp breeze.

Last year in these rugged hills, scraped clean by miners, a canyon led us to the skeletal remains of two elk. Today we were on an official loop of marked trails, but the terrain was nearly as challenging.

We passed fenced-off mine shafts, some covered with mesh to prevent tumbling into their 20-foot depths. A canyon fed by a small mineral spring glowed yellow with cottonwoods.

A blue blur over the Sangres, like a raindrop on a windowpane, conveyed that it was snowing there again (hallelujah!) More clouds cast dramatic light on the jagged Ortiz Mountains. Mount Taylor was just visible on the horizon, 140 miles away.

I watched the clouds black out, then highlight Grand Central Mountain. A couple from Mendocino County joined us on an overlook, delighted. In 40 years of visiting New Mexico relatives, they’d hiked nearly everywhere we had.

As we talked, a racket arose from the mountain. At first I thought the park’s morning guided hike had turned raucous. Then we realized it was coyotes, yipping frantically. A dog’s bark followed, and we hoped fervently that he was leashed.

We bid the California couple farewell and made our way back through the rugged and rolling hills, stopping to admire the cottonwoods in the Cerrillos valley.

Our route back traveled a road studded with off-grid dwellings from adobes to tepees and Airstream trailers.

We almost didn’t see any of it. Our first hike attempt this morning took us to the green valley of La Cienega, just outside Santa Fe. But though the hike was on public land, the access route was gated and padlocked (not the first time that’s happened to us north of Albuquerque.)

My husband realized if we took dirt Waldo Canyon Road for about 10 miles, we’d reach Cerrillos Hills.

The strange little weather system that bathed the hills in light and shadow was just a lucky coincidence.

Hike length: 6 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: light-moderate

Wildlife spotted/heard: coyotes, hawk, raven, crow, butterflies, beetles