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The Stone Lions Shrine in Bandelier National Monument

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

Descending into a canyon in Bandelier National Monument

In spite of having a week off with splendid weather – except for today with its blowing dust – I chose to do spring cleaning and intensive yard work instead of hiking, and consequently I don’t have an up-to-the-minute entry to make. But a glance into the archives reminds me that it was almost exactly this time last year that I made a unique hike at Bandelier National Monument, west of Santa Fe, and that reminded me of an earlier, more challenging hike I made a couple of years ago in the backcountry of Bandelier, to the intriguing Stone Lions Shrine.

Bandelier National Monument preserves hundreds of archeological sites within its boundaries, and while some of them are accessible from paths in Frijoles Canyon, where there is automobile access and easy trails, by far the bulk of them are hidden deep within the park, guarded by distance, arid plateaus, and steep walled canyons that repeat themselves with exhausting regularity. Right in the middle of the park is one with a name that just calls out to you to investigate: the Stone Lions Shrine at the edge of the Yapashi Pueblo Ruins. You can live out here for years, however, before you muster up the time and energy to make the trek.

Event map in the nature journal of Scott J covering the hike from the south

This site perches on a plateau of volcanic tuff between Alamo Canyon on the north, and Capulin Canyon on the south. If you choose to hike from the Visitors Center in Frijoles Canyon, you face a 13 mile round-trip up the wall of Frijoles Canyon, over a plateau, and then up and down Alamo Canyon, to reach the shrine. If you choose – like we did – to make the difficult backcountry drive to a high trailhead in the Dome Wilderness, southwest of the park, you get to enjoy an 11 mile round-trip with a descent and ascent of Capulin Canyon to reach the shrine, and you have a major uphill grind to get back to your car, just when you least appreciate it. Either way is a major undertaking for a day hike.

The San Miguel Mountains and Boundary Peak where our hike began

You can see, in the photograph above, the sharp spire of Boundary Peak which marks the southwestern edge of Bandelier National Monument. Our hike skirted down behind the ridge that is capped by this peak. The “level” areas in the foreground mark the top of the Pajarito Plateau, which is riven by the canyons I mentioned earlier, among others.

A hike like this is always filled with adventure. My journal notes “first hail”, and, along the walls of Capulin Canyon, “shelter from second hail”, and also, “bobcat tracks”, so you get the idea. There is splendid natural detail along the way:

An elk antler bleaching against volcanic tuff

Eventually you reach your goal, shortly after the intersection of the two trails coming from the north and south:

The Stone Lions Shrine, enclosed in a circle of stones

This is a place still important to the modern Puebloan people, so it is important to keep this in mind as you investigate the site. You’ll want to take up the same attitude you might, say, having a look inside the St. Francis Basilica downtown in Santa Fe.

The stone carvings of two mountain lions are unique in Bandelier:

The Stone Lions

Did they guard the nearby Yapashi Pueblo? No one knows. You are likely to see evidence of modern ceremony near the Lions, so please treat the circle as the Shrine that it is.

Not far from the Shrine are the sprawling and undisturbed ruins of Yapashi Pueblo, which you’ll want to see. Artifacts litter the ground; the caver’s motto of “take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints” applies here.

A page from my journal

You’ll find plenty of beautiful polychrome pottery fragments scattered everywhere.

After having a look around, and a big drink of water (of which you need to bring plenty), you’ll now face the return trip back to whichever trailhead you picked. I recall this as a very long day.

If you are making a short visit to Santa Fe, it’s unlikely that you’ll have the time or resources to make this hike. But there’s no reason to leave out a visit to Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier, which is an easy and beautiful hour’s drive west of town. The 1930′s Visitor’s Center, built by the Civilian Conservation Corp with remarkable sensitivity to the spirit of the Monument, has been renovated, and there are easy trails from there to pueblo ruins, cliff dwellings, and a restored kiva reachable with the aid of 140 feet of ladders. So please be sure to include Bandelier on your visit out our way!

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The Nature Journal

Saturday, March 19th, 2011 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

Above Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, journaling

Although I’ve kept a written journal for many years, after I moved to Santa Fe, a friend introduced me to what is usually called nature journaling. A nature journal is a kind of sketchbook and written journal. It’s a place for you to record observations made during your outings, or your travels, with drawings and sketches, and hand-written notes. Generally the drawings dominate; some people love hasty sketches made spontaneously in the field, in a cheap notebook, while others make lavish, multi-media illustrations that run over the pages of their hand-bound books, and make the entire journal a work of art. No two nature journals are, or ever will be, the same. If you begin to keep one, you will be creating something utterly and uniquely yours.

I have to say this has been one of the most enriching and rewarding activities I’ve ever undertaken. And I admit I was resistant at first, for the same reason you’re probably feeling right now: I didn’t like the way I drew. Quite a few early attempts were discarded, journal and all, in a childish dissatisfaction. I even tried adding drawings to my written journal, where they lost themselves in the verbiage. But as it says in “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain“, if you can sign your name, you can draw. It’s true. You have to learn to draw what you see and not what you think you see. You have to learn what to exclude, as well. With just a little perseverance you’ll be on your way.

The materials you’ll need are few and inexpensive, and easily tucked into a day pack: a plain bound notebook, a pen with ink that doesn’t smear, and a tin of 12 colored pencils and a sharpener are all I ever carry.

All you need

My journal is a blend of nature observations, travel notes, sketches, including hand-drawn maps, and some feeble attempts at “artful” page compositions, geared to my trips and outings. My friend’s journal includes these elements, but with a seasonal continuity and a strong sense of composition. It’s all good.

The opening pages of "Summer" in Scott J's journal

Many of Scott’s pages are devoted to “traditional” nature journal subjects, ranging from things seen on nearby hikes to the changes occurring right outside the window:

Even a bird’s nest, tossed into the driveway by the wind, can become a work of art:

A vacation becomes an excuse for pages of drawings:

We both love to draw what are often called “event maps”. These annotated, hand-drawn maps are an attractive way to telescope a day’s activities and observation all in one multidimensional place. It’s interesting to notice how one’s observations overlap – or don’t – with another’s. Following are two event maps of the same area, made during the same visit, at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico:

Scott J's Chaco event map

Scott R's Chaco event map

Many of my recent event maps have taken on a look like this:

A day's hike to Puerto Nambe, all captured on a page

The need to figure out just what that attractive flower or odd lizard is named, which means poring through guidebooks later, has led to a vast improvement in my knowledge of local natural history. (This need has also filled shelves with natural history guides) I’ve about worn out Robert Ivey’s comprehensive “Flowering Plants of New Mexico”. My rock identification skills, submerged under years of corporate uselessness, have resurfaced as well. I love to include cross-sections of the local geology, drawn from various sources; these help me put the regional natural history in context:

Everyone has their own particular interests, of course. But no matter what catches your eyes, you’ll discover that you are starting to see in a different way than you did before. You will start seeing like an artist. And you’ll be creating a record of your life’s experiences that is much more satisfying than a simple photo album or written journal, as important as those things can be. I have a stack of written journals 4 feet high that I never open - they might as well be sediment accumulating on a dark sea floor. There are no guideposts in that mass of scrawls. But I look through my nature journals with pleasure all the time. They quickly answer every question like “when did we go there?” or “when did the peaches ripen?” with visual cues to guide you. And as the years go by, these colorful records will be there to remind you of all the wonderful things you really have been doing in your life.

Scott J. sketching on Raven's Ridge, far above Santa Fe

There are many websites devoted to nature journaling. Here are a few to get you on your way:

http://www.cathyjohnson.info/natural.html

http://ireneehret.com/nature_journals.php

http://margaretherrick.com/

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Hiking Barefoot

Saturday, March 5th, 2011 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

I like to hike barefoot. Not all the time – there are months here in the Santa Fe area when it’s simply too cold to be unshod. And there are other times when you are on a mission, for example, when you’d like to get to the top of Santa Fe Baldy before the thunderstorm, and back home before dark, and you’ve got to cover several stony miles in a relatively short time. Or you might be hiking with friends, and don’t want to slow them down.

But that brings up my point: hiking barefoot slows you down. It slows you down and opens up dimensions of walking and sensing that cannot be experienced any other way. As Richard Frazine says, in the Bible of barefoot hiking, The Barefoot Hiker, “there is nothing uniquely inadequate about human feet”. I don’t know if you’ve been in REI lately – or any other sporting goods store – but you’d think, based on the almost bizarre selection of hiking boots laid out for your overwhelmed eyes, that stepping outside – especially on a hiking trail – was fraught with extreme environmental danger. You see people on a pleasant walk in the woods that are outfitted for an assault on K-2.

We had our first day of temperatures in the high 50′s this week, which was my cue to get outside for the first barefoot hike of the year. The Santa Fe River Canyon Preserve, about which I wrote a week ago, was my natural choice since almost all the snow is gone, and the paths there are mostly dirt. You do have to break into this kind of walking in a gradual way, after a winter of protective boots and wool socks.

A perfect path for that first hike

The first thing you’ll discover about this mode of hiking is that you have to slow down and pay attention to the path. I estimate that I walk at about a third of the speed I might walk in shoes. Your eyes are scanning the ground ahead of you and you become aware of every footfall, since you have to choose your steps. If you want to look at something off the path, you need to pause. You’ll soon realize that the human eye-foot coordination is literally hardwired into you – it’s like reawakening an extraordinary evolutionary skill that you didn’t know you had. Even more remarkably, a meditative calm creeps softly into your walk. A mindfulness of walking comes to you that can turn a common hike into an almost blissful retreat.

Enjoying the warm texture of a beaver-felled tree

The next thing you’ll notice is that you’ve added an entirely new dimension of sensuousness to your walk. The feel of the ground changes with every step. The temperature of the path varies in an utterly remarkable manner. You begin to connect with the Earth in a way you probably never have experienced before. The analogy isn’t perfect, but it’s almost like you are tasting the ground as you walk.

You’ll also discover this: your footfalls are nearly silent. Since you are likely to be by yourself, this quietness will lead you to see birds and animals along the path that ordinarily would have been flushed far earlier. I understand why some hunters hunt in moccasins, now. (You’ll also be sneaking up on other hikers, possibly, so be aware of your invisibility.)

And for what it’s worth, your hike will have far less impact on the trail than it would if you were wearing boots. Here’s a picture of a muddy place on my walk, scarred by many boots. Keep in mind that I walked back and forth over this same stretch when I chose to take the picture, but you can see almost no evidence of my passage:

Boot-scarred path, ripe for erosion

In another couple of months, I’ll be conditioned enough to walk on most of the trails around here, even at high elevations. You do have to work up to this; they don’t call these the Rocky Mountains for nothing. I carry shoes in my pack for backup, and a cloth, soaked in alcohol in a baggie, to clean up afterwards and wipe any small abrasions. For some reason alcohol takes off pine pitch, with which you’ll be liberally splotched, around here.

But I urge you to try this out sometime – I think you’ll get a pleasant surprise. Read over “The Barefoot Hiker” for some important guidelines, first. And then, as the Nike people say, Just Do It.

Guess which one I picked.

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Randall Davey Audubon Center

Sunday, February 27th, 2011 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

The new sign welcoming you to the Sanctuary

Sometimes you just need a quick getaway from town, a breath of fresh air, a place to stretch your legs without too many people around, and maybe a spot just to sit and be quiet for awhile. We have the perfect destination for you: The Randall Davey Audubon Center, just a couple of miles from the Inn on the Alameda, with good parking at either the Center itself, or just off Upper Canyon Road, at the Santa Fe River Canyon Nature Preserve. Both are free.

It’s a lovely place to have a short hike:

A pleasant walk on a winter afternoon. That's Picacho Peak above.

There are a variety of paths in the Nature Preserve south of the Center, with interpretive signs here and there:

An interpretive sign near the classroom and nature store

The “serious” birders are quick to post their sightings:

Catch of the day

A friend and I love to stop by the River Preserve to see what the beavers have been up to. Lately they’ve been rearranging their dams – here’s the newest one:

The latest engineering project on the Santa Fe River

“Busy as a beaver” doesn’t begin to describe these creatures. It’s amazing what they can accomplish:

An evening's nosh

And down, ready for stripping and hauling. That's a big tree!

There are already plenty of birds to see, even ‘tho it’s still February, and more are no doubt on the way. The robins are back – that’s always encouraging – and we also spotted mallards on the beaver ponds, scrub jays, white-breasted nutchatches, pine siskins, juncos, two kinds of towhees, and a pair of red-tailed hawks circling overhead, keeping everyone in line. The usual menagerie of reptiles is absent, since it’s still winter, so for those of you averse to slithery things, this is a great time for a walk.

Getting There:

From the Inn on the Alameda, turn east on Alameda Street (toward the mountains) and follow it along the tree-lined Santa Fe River until it makes a sharp right turn. At the stop sign at the intersection with Upper Canyon Road, turn left and enjoy a slow drive through a very picturesque section of Old Santa Fe until the road makes an abrupt left turn. Here you have a couple of choices: you can turn left here and then immediately right into the parking area for the Nature Conservancy’s Santa Fe River Preserve, or you can continue straight ahead, along a dirt road, about half a mile to the paved parking area at the Randall Davey Audubon Center itself. There’s a great nature store here, and it’s the meeting place for the Saturday morning bird walks. Check their website for the calendar of events.

The old Randall Davey House seen from inside the Preserve

Posted in Beautiful Day Hikes, Santa Fe, Santa Fe Day Hikes, What To Do in Santa Fe | 1 Comment »

Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts unknown

Sunday, December 19th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

Conifers in the hushed air high in the Sangre de Cristo

Ever since our recent snow, the mountains above Santa Fe have been shrouded in thick clouds, the middle and higher peaks invisible behind the grey and white stratus that broods over the ranges. Since it’s only a short drive from downtown up into the forests, there’s no reason not to take a moment out of the day to see what lies inside that mysterious veil. Ten minutes’ drive brings you to the border of the Santa Fe National Forest, and ten minutes more takes you high into the mixed-conifer forest, some 2000 feet above the city.

You can’t expect any views under these conditions, but you will witness the forest in an atmosphere of utter quiet and peace. Snow clings to every branch, deadening sound.

A tranquil and snowy forest

There is no wind to chill you. Your horizons are bound and foreshortened by fog, and even a short walk takes you into a private world of meditative calm. Little things take on a new significance.

The cone of a Limber Pine, confected in snow and honeyed pitch

Soon the stillness seeps into your soul, and you can return to town refreshed, and ready to appreciate again the cultural delights of the Christmas season in Santa Fe.

Posted in Santa Fe Day Hikes, Santa Fe Weather | 1 Comment »

The Breath of Winter

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

The first snow in middle elevations

I know it’s not nearly as impressive as what those of you back East are enjoying right now, but here in Northern New Mexico, it’s been getting down below freezing most nights for the past two or three weeks, and there have been light snows in the mountains from time to time. Ski Santa Fe is scheduled to open on December 10, admittedly with the assistance of the snow-makers – but that lets you know it’s cold up there.

I like all kinds of weather, but I’ll confess that, from a geological point of view, it’s a little disappointing to see the ground disappear under the snow. You get a notion to have a look a particular belt of outcrops, only to be thwarted by that unusual mineral called ice. The last few weekends have been dry and relatively warm, however, and I’ve been getting out for some nice walks on the Chamisa Trail and the lower parts of the Winsor Trail, all good hikes in almost any weather, and blessed with wonderful light on a sunny winter afternoon.

November ice on Tesuque Creek

On our side of the mountains, Winsor Trail follow Tesuque Creek up nearly to Hyde Memorial State Park before it jogs off to the north and begins its climb up toward the Nordic Ski Area and Ski Santa Fe. The water is beginning to ice over and there are only a few places now where you can see the water burbling along its stony bed. One unexpected pleasure of a winter hike: those difficult stream crossings in the spring are a breeze in the winter:

The stream crossing at the junction of Winsor and Bear Wallow Trails

Since the Winsor Trail basically crosses the entire Santa Fe Range from west to east, it gives the observant hiker a look at nearly all the fascinating rocks that crop out in the mountains. It also gives you a taste of several climatic zones and their associated flora and fauna, from dwarf cactus and spiky yucca on the south-facing slopes near Tesuque all the way to alpine tundra and twisted bristlecone pines on the flanks of Santa Fe Baldy. With some magnificent forests and meadows in between.

Most of my walks lately have been in the 8000 to 9000 foot elevation range, where the conifers are mixed in species and delight the eye with their variety.

A magnificent White Fir along the Winsor Trail

A number of key geological transitions can be seen on a walk along Tesuque Creek once you get in the habit of looking. One of the most notable ones occurs just north of the junction of the Winsor Trail with the Chamisa Trail. From this junction, downstream and to the west, the ground is littered with fragments of a dark, glittery, very distinctive rock called amphibolite schist. But as you walk upstream from the junction, through a meadow and just past a mysterious old overgrown stone dam, you’ll notice that the path is now simply an orangy-pink:

Fragments of pink granite on the forest floor

You’ve crossed a fundamental boundary in the bedrock, one that separates a belt of strongly deformed and metamorphosed sediments with a heavy component of dark volcanic tuffs and lavas, from an equally deformed belt of very hard pink granite. Not far after this transition the trail is forced to leave the pleasant meadows along the creek and cut its way along the canyon walls:

A rocky footpath in the granite above Tesuque Creek

Here you can get a good look at the granite, and see how it has been stretched by shearing forces deep in the Earth’s crust. This is revealed by strongly aligned streaks of dark mica called biotite.

These rocks are exceedingly ancient, perhaps as much as 1.7 billion years old, and they got their distinctive textures via crushing in the roots of long vanished range of mountains, perhaps 10 – 15 miles deep in the crust. The granite was originally injected as a molten mass of rock, but it, too, was caught up in shearing forces after it crystallized (losing much of its countertop potential into the bargain, I might add).

If you’re like me, you might gain some appreciation of the trouble geologists must go to, to mark these boundaries on their maps. There simply isn’t any one place where X marks the spot, and all those beautiful trees and wildflowers simply obscure the facts. On the other hand, there are beautiful trees and wildflowers to look at – and subtler autumnal and winter vistas at this time of year – so whether you’re a rockhound or not, be sure to make time for a walk while you’re visiting us here in Santa Fe.

Getting There: I’ve been accessing this part of the mountains via the Chamisa Trail, a very popular trail a short way from Santa Fe, just inside the Santa Fe National Forest border.

From the Inn on the Alameda, you turn north on Paseo de Peralta, and then turn right at the light at the intersection of Paseo with Bishops Lodge Road. A second right at the next light, which is Artist Road, or NM 475, puts you on your way. About six miles along 475 you’ll see the sign marking the boundary of the national forest, and very shortly thereafter some parking place both on the left and (for overflow) on the right side of the road.

The trail maintained by the Forest Service is the uppermost one, at the trailhead to the right of the parking area, and this is the way I recommend. There is a less formal path directly along the creek, much favored by dog-walkers. After a mile’s walk along the trail you’ll reach a saddle with a sign, and another mile north brings you to Tesuque Creek and the junction with the Winsor Trail. There are beautiful meadows along here where you might enjoy a thermos of something hot. If you head west, downstream, you’ll encounter outcroppings of metamorphic rocks, and if you head east, upstream, you’ll see the transitions I’ve written about above. An ambitious hike will bring you to the meadow at the junction with the Borrego Trail, where you will see boulders of yet another crystalline component of the Santa Fe Range. But that’s for another time.

A boulder of pink foliated granite next to boulder of grey tonalite

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Santa Fe for Families

Thursday, November 4th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

A walk with Dad at Bandelier National Monument, not far from Santa Fe

Santa Fe is a wonderful destination for kids of all ages, but when the younger ones come along, sometimes it’s a bit of a challenge to find something that will engage them in new ways. Art galleries and elegant restaurants only go so far with this crowd! But we have the perfect solution for you: Bandelier National Monument. What child can fail to be fascinated by kid-sized caves dug out of towering cliffs and entered by ladders?

What's in here?

Just about the right height for me!

Bandelier’s cliffs and towering Ponderosa pines are tall enough to make anyone feel like a child:

Investigating cliff dwellings along the Long House Trail

And it only gets better. You won’t be able to keep the monkey-bar set off the 140 feet of ladders up to the Ceremonial Cave!

Let's go!

A triumphant ascent

Budding photographers – even the young cynical ones – will find plenty of subject matter in Bandelier:

Hunting down the devil squirrel

The thing about a family vacation is, you never know when the magical moment will arrive. This is all so b o o o r r i n g – until it isn’t:

Whoa!

OMG! Did you see that? She was coming right for me!

So don’t hesitate to bring your family out our way. We’ll send you off for all sorts of adventures.

On to the next stop!

Getting there:

The National Park Service has this useful link giving directions to the Monument from Santa Fe and Taos: Getting There. It’s just shy of an hour’s drive from the Inn on the Alameda, and much of the drive – especially the part from the Pueblo of Pojoaque to the park – is especially beautiful. You might want to leave some time for a drive up over the mountain to the Valle Grande National Preserve – it’s only about a half-hour’s drive west of Bandelier – and you can always make a stop in Los Alamos on your way back to Santa Fe, where there’s a free museum: the Bradbury Science Museum, a very kid-friendly bookstore: the Otowi Station, and most importantly, a Starbucks. With bathrooms.

Gambel Oak leaves in autumn light

Deer photographs courtesy of Britt Renbarger. Your uncle thanks you.

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The Aspen

Monday, October 11th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

Sometimes you just don’t need to say very much. This is what it looks like in the mountains above Santa Fe right now:

Looking back along the Aspen Vista Trail

Trees along the road to Ski Santa Fe

Big Tesuque

Monumental sky above Tesuque Ridge

This could be you!

Saturated yellow along Winsor Trail

A mountain of color

Walking along the Winsor Trail

Rocky Mountain Ash

Aspen leaves on the forest floor

Come see us.

Posted in Beautiful Day Hikes, Santa Fe Day Hikes | 2 Comments »

The Pecos Wilderness and the Cave Creek Trail

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

Hiking in the Pecos Wilderness

Autumn has to be the best time to take walks and hikes in the Southern Rockies. The weather is mild, the sunshine glorious, and the inconvenience of an afternoon thunderstorm minimized. The aspen put on their annual fall spectacular – they’re at their peak here on the Santa Fe side of the mountains – and the plants on the floor of the forest take on all sorts of autumnal colors, in counterpoint to the mostly yellow leaves of the aspen. Our forests are relatively dry and radiant with light, especially this time of year, and the intense sunshine distills seductive aromatics from the aspen leaves and spruce needles, to the point where you may find yourself drifting down the trail in an almost blissed-out state.

Unfortunately there is so much else going on here in Northern New Mexico that you may find trouble budgeting for a walk, with all the choices you’ll have to make. I’m thinking particularly of the wonderful artist studio tours which occur on practically every weekend now. That’s my excuse, anyway, for the brevity of this week’s entry, as well as my choice for a hike: the Pecos Studio Tour opened this past weekend, and there was an artist a friend of mine simply had to see. Studio tours are great. Not only do you get to talk to the artist in his or her natural habitat, you get to poke your nose in peoples’ gardens and kitchens and studios and bedrooms, and meet their dogs, cats, parrots, goats, turtles, doves, etc, etc, and see how they’ve rigged their water catchment systems, and so on. Fascinating!

Anyway, being in the Pecos area, which is the gateway to the enormous Pecos Wilderness just to the north and east of Santa Fe, a drive north up to Cowles – the jumping off spot for hikes and trail rides deep into the wilderness – immediately suggested itself. There wasn’t time for a long hike, and it’s a 20 mile drive from Pecos back in to Cowles, so we chose a relatively short two-mile walk up Panchuela and Cave Creeks, to see the little caves for which the creek is named. Caves have a sort of elemental attraction to geologists and nature mystics, and they aren’t all that common in our part of the state, so off we went.

The first cave entrance along Cave Creek

The trailhead for this hike is clearly marked at the end of the Panchuela campground just above Cowles – here is a link for the trail you can print – and at least for the first two miles to the caves it’s an easy walk with a gentle increase in elevation. In another two miles or so, the trail leaves the creek and makes a steep climb out of the drainage and up onto the soft flattened summits of the thickly wooded mesas that characterize the southern part of the wilderness. If you have any energy – and time – left after this ascent, you can follow a branch of the trail into the uplift of granite that forms the backbone of the Santa Fe Range, and switchback up to Lake Johnson, one of the least visited of the glacial lakes in the wilderness.

But that’s for another time. The caves make a perfect place to stop and have a snack, and maybe pull out the nature journal for a sketch or two:

Yours truly in front of the mountain's nostrils

The gentler parts of the Pecos Wilderness are cut out of a vast thickness of Pennsylvanian strata deposited back when Santa Fe sat nearly on the Equator, and blue mountains shimmered in the hot sun above glittering inlets of a tropical sea. Layer upon layer of sand – some of it coarse and pebbly – and mud accumulated in the shallow water, washed out of an early edition of the Rocky Mountains called the “Ancestral Rockies“. During those times when the water clarified, limy beds - many full of fossilized brachiopods, crinoids, bryozoans, and horn corals – interpolated themselves between the soon-to-be sandstones and shales. It is in a rather crinkly bedded cliff of these limestones that the caves occur. The creek crowds up against the ledge, and disappears into pits that have formed like dental cavities right at the gum line, so to speak, of the limestone. (Limestone is a rock that is soluble in the slightly acidic groundwater of a forest floor and hence prone to cave-forming.)

When it dawns on you that the merry sound of the creek you’ve been following for a mile has stopped, and when you realize you are now walking along a suspiciously dry creek bed, it is time to start looking for the caves. You’ll find them on the left side of the trail, up against the cliffs, just about the time you hear water gurgling again.

Even without these mysterious entrances to the underworld to entice you along, Cave Creek makes a nice walk.

A little waterfall on Panchuela Creek along the way

Judging by all the rose hips and iris stalks along the trails, this canyon must be an absolute garden of wildflowers in early summer. Plenty of water pours down Panchuela and Cave Creeks, even at this dry time of year, and that always makes for a pleasant walk in the summer and fall. We were a little early for the aspen on this side of the range:

A grove of aspen just beginning to turn

In another week these trees will be dazzling. On our side of the mountains, up at Aspen Vista and Big Tesuque, the trees are at their peak of color, and I can’t wait to get up there. That is, if I can tear myself away from the Pilar Studio Tour, and the Farmer’s Market, and the train ride down to Albuquerque, and the newly restored CCC Visitor’s Center at Bandelier, and . .

Getting there:

There are several ways of accessing the Pecos Wilderness from Santa Fe, as you can see here. Read up on “access from the south” for this hike. Just as you reach the tiny town of Cowles, you’ll see a bridge crossing over the Pecos River, which you’ll take, followed by a very sharp right uphill on the narrow road to the Panchuela Campground. It’s about a mile and a half from the turning. Be sure and bring $2 to pay the day use fee to park at the campground.

We didn’t think to bring a flashlight, but you can scramble into the caves a short distance. I have to mention that water drains freely into the entrances, which looked clogged and muddy a short way in and not inviting at all. I recommend staying outside in the sunshine.

Like all trails in the Pecos Wilderness, you may be sharing with horses and their riders. Pack rides and overnighters are very popular here. Just be ready to step aside for a short while as the riders pass.

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Amazing Chaco Canyon

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 by The Santa Fe Naturalist

The ruins of Pueblo Del Arroyo in Chaco Canyon

Of all the thousands of archaeological sites you can visit on a trip to the American Southwest, the remains of the Chacoan Great Houses, preserved in Chaco Culture National Historical Park – a three hour drive west of Santa Fe – have to be the most remarkable. They utterly fulfill your childhood fantasy of finding the lost cities of Montezuma. Instead of a few low walls of hewn stone coursing through dead grass, with an interpretive sign above – common fare in our parts – these ruins tower three stories high and penetrate deep into the ground. The stonework is exquisite. There are mysterious T-shaped windows above. There are huge circular kivas as perfectly preserved as Pompeii, below. Walls align north-south and east-west with absolute precision; great houses align with other great houses throughout the canyon; windows turn out to be astronomical observatories of subtle cunning, timing the solstices and equinoxes like a huge stone clock – and webbing it all is a network of laser-straight connecting roads, nearly lost with age, worthy of the Nazca Plain.

All in the middle of the most arid, silent, isolated region you can imagine.

I had a chance to make an overnight trip this past weekend, and Chaco suggested itself immediately. Because of its distance from Santa Fe – or any other city where there is lodging – about the only way to explore Chaco Canyon properly is to camp there, or bring in a motor home. The 15 miles of washboarded dirt road that, to put it bluntly, guard this place from daytrippers have to be taken into account:

On the way to Chaco Canyon

This means autumn is the perfect time to make the trip. You would not want to be on this road during a summer downpour! On the other hand, as isolated as it is, high on the Colorado Plateau, not far from the Continental Divide, temperatures drop like a rock out here at nightfall and the winter weather is viciously cold. Even spring camping will require preparations against this. Chaco still guards its secrets, one way and another.

But what a place!

An excavated kiva at Pueblo del Arroyo

The stonework here has no match in North America:

Courses of dressed stone at Casa Rinconada

And the fact that amazes every first time visitor is this: all of this exquisite work – and there must be thousands upon thousands of square feet of it – was originally plastered over with smoothed mud and hidden from sight! From hints found deeper in the ruins, much of it might have been painted, as well, at least on the interiors.

The park runs a nice program of guided walks and night sky explorations. We got on the 4:00 walk through the ruins of Chetro Ketl with Ranger G.B. Cornucopia, a 23 year veteran of service in the park and an astronomer, to boot, on Saturday. I cannot recommend these interpretive walks highly enough. Your visit to the park will be immensely enriched:

G.B. giving speculations on the kiva phenomenon

Chaco Culture raises so many questions that it attracts a bewildering array of theories and speculations, some of which shade off into the simply bizarre. People lived here and worked on these structures for over 300 years, in a very inhospitable place, with clear evidence of long term planning and monumental vision – Pueblo Bonito was the tallest dwelling in North America until the 19th Century! – and yet left very little evidence of themselves. They had no written language. Their descendants still live with us here in New Mexico and Arizona, but the stories retained by these people do not agree on the significance of Chaco. They just agree that it was very significant.

A room with a view

Chaco Canyon is ground zero for the study of archaeoastronomy. So it makes perfect sense that the park would offer a program of night sky viewing. Even today this isolated place is one of the darker places in the United States after the sun sets. An amateur astronomer donated a 27 inch telescope and observatory to the park, and on a couple of evenings each week, G.B. gives a slide presentation on the more cosmic aspects of Chaco Culture, and then opens up the scope for some deep sky stargazing. The program last Saturday started at 8:00 p.m., and when the last slide faded the Milky Way was glowing over the mesas, Jupiter was rising in the east, and shooting stars brought gasps from the audience. Other enthusiasts had brought their telescopes, and so we were regaled with views of Messier Objects, nebula, and the moons of Jupiter.

Chaco Canyon offers plenty of back country walks to ruins of Great Houses that have not been touched at all. If you want to recreate the experience of coming upon one of these remarkable places as the Spanish must have, you should make time for one of these hikes. Here we are coming upon Tsin Kletsin high on South Mesa, standing hauntingly in its own debris:

Tsin Kletsin

Of course we had to get up this, to get there:

Ascending South Mesa

The road in canyon itself forms a paved loop, and once you’ve braved the bumpy drive into the park, you can explore many of the Great Houses on your own, taking advantage of the interpretive booklets that are available at the entrances to the sites, without too much walking.

Superimposed windows at Pueblo del Arroyo

The ability to spend the night at Chaco will greatly enhance your visit. Here’s the view from the tent on Sunday morning, at Gallo Campground:

Early morning sun on the Cliff House Sandstone, above camp

If you can find any way of visiting this remarkable place, I urge you to make the effort. Many companies that offer tours of the American Southwest include Chaco Culture National Historical Park on their trip calendars; some of them even stay at Inn on the Alameda when in Santa Fe. If you are doing an auto tour of the Four Corners, you can make the visit on the Santa Fe – Albuquerque – Durango leg of your drive without taking too much time out of the day. And if you are staying in Santa Fe and would like to arrange for a trip and a guide, please consider Great Southwest Adventures.

Just be sure to bring plenty of water. There’s a clean-up crew waiting for you if you forget:

Turkey vultures roosting above Chaco Wash

Getting there:

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is approximately 180 miles west of Santa Fe. The most straightforward way to get there is to take I-25 south from Santa Fe to its intersection with State Highway 550 at Bernalillo, where you will turn right, following the signs for Cuba and Farmington. 550 is a good 4-lane road that skirts the Jemez Mountains to the south and cuts through the little town of Cuba before tuning northwestward toward Bloomfield, Farmington, and the Colorado border. Approximately 50 miles from Cuba, near mile marker 112, you will see signs for the park on the left. This is county road 7900, which will later intersect county road 7950 to bring you into the canyon. The intersections are clearly signed.

Please be aware that it is a 23 mile drive from 550 into the park, and that the last 15 miles of this drive is on a graded dirt road that could become impassible in wet weather. Even in dry weather the road will be washboarded and you will not be able to make the drive very quickly. The roads in the park are one-way, and paved.

The park charges an entrance fee of $7 per vehicle, good for 7 days. If you choose to camp, there is a $10 nightly fee, payable at a self-serve station at the entrance to Gallo Campground (although the camp host graciously helped us in person). Camping is on a first come – first serve basis, and since the sites are limited, this can be a frustrating issue on popular weekends. There are restrooms at the campground, but NO potable water nor any facilities for washing oneself or dishes. There is a faucet with drinking water at the Visitor’s Center.

Chaco is a haunting – and haunted – place. Be prepared for some unusual experiences while you are there.

Posted in Beautiful Day Hikes, Native American Culture of New Mexico, New Mexico Day Hikes | 1 Comment »

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