3 Years Around North America, Plus a Few More

[Umnak]

Solstice Tour of Southern New Mexico

Solstice Tour of Southern New Mexico

We spent the last two weeks of the year celebrating the return of the sun by visiting southern New Mexico — with a short trip to Cochise Stronghold in Arizona.

The original plan was to head south toward Grants, NM then cross into the El Malpais Monument for a look at the craters and lava flows from millions of years ago. From there we were to head to the Gila National Forest and the Cliff Dwellings, and then Faywood Hot Springs south of Silver City. Turned out that the low temperature for the first few days in the El Malpais was in the low single digits, so we rerouted to the slightly warmer temperatures of central New Mexico.



The Forest Service Campgrounds in the mountains closest to the main north-south highway were closed, so we camped along the Rio Grande near Socorro. From there, we drove to the east side of the Organ Mts and spent a night at the BLM’s Aguirre Springs campground. This is a spectacular place to explore, with a nice 5 mile trail that allows access to the base of the peaks. There was one other vehicle at the campground.


We celebrated Solstice at the Hot Springs, which has RV slots with full hook-up as well as dry camping sites in the clothing optional campground. It was still cold and we opted for electricity to run our small ceramic heater. Though the pools near us were clothing optional, which isn't a bad thing at all.

We returned to Faywood on our way back, and would be happy to visit again. It’s laid back, the pools are nice and hot, and there is no sulphur in the water. The hot springs we visited in Southeast Alaska were accessed by a 3 or 4 day kayaking trip, so being able to drive to one was a treat.


It was flooding in Silver City the day we visited, making us feel somewhat homesick for the rain forest, and not giving us the impression that I’m sure the city would like to have left us with a few days before Christmas. Still, it is a place we may spend some time in later this year and its location and music scene make it a contender even if Yankee Street does turn into Yankee Creek when it rains.



I had stopped in Cochise Stronghold two years ago when driving the van from Austin to Seattle. Eve and I had a conversation about the place ten years ago when I suggested we purchase a lot in the area, but it turned out that the drive from Tucson left both of us with the impression that it was too isolated and a bit weird.

The Stronghold is in a very remarkable place. We crossed three dry washes on our way into the BLM campground used predominantly by climbers. That night we shared a fire with a couple from Telluride, CO who told us a major rain storm was supposed to hit the next afternoon. Thinking of the washes, we decided to cut our stay by a night, leaving the next afternoon after a very nice 6 mile hike up to the pass.


We rode the front back into New Mexico buffeted by 30 knot winds, arriving at the Rock Hound Park outside of Deming just at dusk on Christmas Eve. We were greeted, sort of, by a woman in the overflow area — this being our first experience of the trip with full campgrounds — who seemed to be in a constant struggle with the Camp Host. The latter came by and told us to not listen to her and that we could have a site up the hill — with electric and water! A Sheriff Deputy and EMS team were later seen leading her away after another outburst we could hear from across the campground.



We woke to snow Christmas Morning, 35 miles north of the Mexico border. It was pretty and didn’t last much after sunrise. We are still trying to figure out why it’s so damn cold in New Mexico.

After another couple of nights soaking in the hot springs, and exploring City of Rocks Campground next to Faywood, we attempted to get to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, but were told that the road had washed out from the latest storm.



So, we headed to the El Malpais via the Leopold Wilderness area of the Gila Forest.



The Cosmic Campground isn’t on the Gila Forest map. It’s well off the road and seems to have been developed — it has a pit toilet — as a place for people from Silver City to set up telescopes while camping. It was certainly dark enough at night.



The El Malpais Crater road was far too muddy and rutted for the Sprinter but we manage a 5 mile hike through the lava flows after a night at the only campground in the Monument.



Our last night was spent at Bisti Wilderness just 40 miles south of Farmington. We did two hikes to the hoodoos and other surreal landforms then headed home.

 

[justBill]

Thanks for the update! You have given me several additions for my "to do" list
Bill

 

[Umnak]

Thanks for the update! You have given me several additions for my "to do" list
Bill

Glad to provide some ideas around New Mexico. We haven't even crossed the middle line of the state yet!

And then there's Colorado which is just north of us. This from last weekend. Snowshoeing at 11,000'

 

[Umnak]

San Juan Basin Winter

San Juan Basin Winter


It’s been cold and damp in the San Juan Basin since the start of the year. And by that I mean a couple of weeks of single digit lows, ephemeral snow that seems to evaporate rather than melt in the mid-day sun, swift moving rain cells that turn the clay roads slick-as-snot, and an overall dampness that seems incredible given the low humidity. All of this has severely limited our ability to get out and explore on foot and off the paved roads. I’ve really never seen this much mud aside from the tidal flats of Cook Inlet.

Fortunately, there are paved roads out of Farmington. We’ve spent a couple of days north of Durango snowshoeing along the same trails we hiked in November.


The snow is so much lighter than Southeast Alaska making it easier to follow points of interest rather than snow machine trails. However, we are in this part of the country to see the desert and the Pre-Puebloan ruins, so while the snowshoeing is easy, it’s not what we want.


Occasionally I’ll pretend that four days of below freezing sun ought to be enough to dry the clay or freeze the wash and allow for a hike, only to spend half my time slipping and cleaning out the Vibram soles of my boots.

I knew we were in for a road trip when I saw the Oil Field Trucks stopped along the county roads putting on chains for the mud. Mud chains, who would have thought!

The problem with looking at average temperatures and rainfall — both of which seemed reasonable for January and February on paper — is that averages are just that. Bill Gates walks into a bar and suddenly everyone’s a billionaire.


So, we took off for Jamez Hot Springs in the Four Runner at the end of January. It’s about 120 miles southwest from Farmington. It’s a nice small town slumbering in the long valley that runs on a wishbone route through the mountains. There’s an active trout stream — the Jemez River — a couple of restaurants and bars, a very nice bakery, and Hot Springs.




There are a lot of Hot Springs along the valley. A couple of days of rain and snow made it less desirable to hike to the ones off the highway, but didn’t stop us from enjoying a nice long soak.



We spent a couple of nights in a small hotel next door to one commercial springs and just a few blocks from the community owned Baths, which we frequented. We soaked in side by side cement tubs and had to be reminded of the “Whisper” level of talking because we were so geeked to be in hot springs again.


The Jemez Monument is the remnants of an old Pueblo and a Spanish Mission, the former preceding the latter by just a couple of hundred years. The large Mission framework and a restored Kiva are the architectural highlights. I appreciated that the museum presented the ruins from the perspective of the local Jemez Pueblo people, who have been steadfast in retaining their Pantheist views of nature and gods.


NM Rt 4 leads up the mountain past the snow covered hiking trails and to the Caldera that created all of these hot springs. The previous night’s heavy snowfall had closed the road into the Caldera where we had hoped to snowshoe, but we did manage to find a short hike partway down the mountain.

Eve watched her first football game on television in the hotel. I provided context, though the game was exciting on its own merits. She said she might be willing to watch another one sometime, now if we just owned a tv.

We grabbed a pastry at the bakery on our way out of town. It snowed on our way north as we neared the Continental Divide.

 

[Arjan]

Love this write up !!

 

[Umnak]

Back to Twin Angles Pueblo

People in the Four Corners say that this winter has been wetter and warmer than ever. The oil and gas trucks working the mud roads have been using chains to get to the well sites, and there has been a rush on lifts for these vehicles so they can run larger tires.



We’ve found that the early morning to around noon allows us an opportunity to walk the washes of Kutz Canyon without slipping on our butts and accumulating too much mud. This only works if the temperature is in the 20s. Fortunately, we had two such days in a row a couple of weeks ago.



We set off south along the edge of the Wash at 9:00 am and were pleased the small rivulets were frozen and the mud stiff. Our goal was to find the Twin Angles Pueblo which we had walked to in early December after three attempts locating it using either poorly detailed— or purposely misleading — topographic maps. I had the waypoint from the successful attempt and was interested in what early 11th century travelers would have seen from the Canyon, which was arguably part of the Chacoan Great North Road.



There are a number of rincons and niches along the west side of the Canyon. We enjoyed arches and alignments of lone trees with far off Angle Peak before arriving at the base of the three sided wall that marks the Pueblo.



The site is impressive from the canyon floor. The cliff walls are steep and high — probably 120 feet from the wash. A talus field once may have provided access to a ladder or step system to the top, but is now 40’ to 50’ from the top.



We stopped for roasted salami in the small wash that runs along the south of the Pueblo.


The next day we returned to find a way up from the wash to the Peublo. The morning temperature was in the mid 20s — a few degrees warmer than the previous day — and just enough to create water and mud. It’s no surprise that the Basketmakers became potters in this region; all that would have had to happen is a basket fall into the clay and was then left by the fire for the “eureka” moment.



We found a steep trail that took us up to the mesa and then through the mud to the Pueblo. It was certainly protected from the canyon floor, and would have been a great place to watch the coming and going along the wash.

 

[justBill]

Yet another great update!
Thank you

 

[Umnak]

Back to Chaco Canyon

Back to Chaco Canyon

We chose to spend the past five months in the Four Corners and, by default, Farmington so we could explore the Pre-Puebloan ruins. The center of the Pre-Puebloan world was/is Chaco Canyon, which has a number of excavated great houses, kivas and back-country trails for hiking. It is a spectacular National Park. I’ve been reading a lot of dissertations related to Chaco archeology, archaeoastronomy, engineering, and society. The more I read, the more questions I have.




We recently spent a few days in the Park looking at the north and south mesa great houses and walking along segments of the Chacoan road system.




And speaking of roads, the last 4 of the 21 miles one travels off of NM 550 is in even worse condition than our previous two visits. No one takes responsibility for maintaining the road. A sign just before crossing the Escavada Wash notes the end of San Juan County maintenance. On one side of the wash a sign says don’t cross if water is flowing, on the other side it says don’t cross if water is present. It was running harder when we crossed in than when we left three days later. The ruts were six to 10 inches deep, and the flat tops were not wide enough for our tires to stay on top of as the route turned away from deep pot holes. And when the ruts disappeared the road was corduroy. Fortunately, I had Bilstein shocks installed on the van a few days before this visit. They made those last 4 miles tolerable and, along with the heavy duty sway bar, kept us upright as we waddled along in the deep muddy ruts.



The Chacoan world was focused on alignment. The great house walls were positioned with the cardinal directions, solstice view points are prevalent in and around the structures, observatories are scattered throughout the San Juan Basin and Colorado Plateau, and road systems converge on Chaco Canyon from all directions.



These were people with a world system that was realized through engineering. Unfortunately, they did not have a writing system so much of what is thought about their work is conjecture and filtered through the traditions of their Pueblo decedents.




The 4.5 mile South Mesa trail, if walked in a counter clockwise direction from the great kiva at Casa Rinconada, follows the Great South Road that leads into Chaco Canyon. Walking south one sees the distant Haystack Mountain that may have been an important meridian of the Chacoan world, as it aligns with Mt Wilson to the north. Once on the south mesa it is easy to see this alignment, along an almost due north meridian, that begins at Haystack Mountain and bisects Tsin Kletzin, the Rinconada kiva and the north mesa’s Pueblo Alto. From the Pueblo the meridian continues to Mt Wilson in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains.



The next day we walked the 5.5 mile North Mesa path whose trailhead begins at a narrow and steep cleft in the side of the sandstone walls. The trail follows the ledge for a mile passing near a stone circle, pecked basins and sections of before turning passing near segments of the Great North road that leads to Pueblo Alto.


Looking north from the Pueblo one can see Huerfano Mountain. The Great North Road — 30 feet wide and following a due north course for about 40 miles — connected Chaco with Kutz Canyon, where we found Twin Angels Pueblo this winter.



The North Mesa trail also passes near a cut stone staircase and ramps for access to and from the canyon. It offers spectacular viewing points of the Great Houses along the Chaco Wash.


Our last hike ( 3.5 miles) was to the most eastern accessible great house, Wijiji. While not as impressive as the other ruins, this site is of interest because it has some nice petroglyphs and an elusive staircase and solar observatory. We easily found the petroglyphs, but were not able to see the staircase, so that means we need to go back.



The drive out was as bad as the way in on that four miles of unmaintained road.

 

[profdlp]

Great pictures and commentary, as usual. :ylsmoke:

 

[Arjan]

:clapsmile

 

[Umnak]

:clapsmile

Great pictures and commentary, as usual. :ylsmoke:

Thanks for reading. More to come!

 

[Umnak]

Finding Pierre's Complex

Finding Pierre's Complex, a Chacoan Outlier

I’ve been researching the Ancestral Puebloan Great House called Pierre’s Complex for a couple of months. It is about 12 miles north of Chaco Canyon and lies along the Great North Road.

Pierr's Complex-Pre-Puebloan Great House by Joseph, on Flickr

That road led to Kutz Canyon where it then went down into the wash and passed by Twin Angels Pueblo about 45 miles north. While Pierre’s Complex is well known among archeologist, its location isn’t easily determined. I had noted 6 different sets of coordinates, which when plotted on Google Earth created a scattergram stretching more than a mile from side to side. While a mile isn’t a huge spread it becomes difficult when the terrain is so similar and the ruins so subtle. I’m beginning to think this is intentional to thwart pothunters.

So, I took a guess from the sets of coordinates, looked at terrain to confirm a possible location, plotted a course, and set off to see how close the Cabin on the Road could get to the site. Turns out the roads were decent and an oil well pad was under two miles from where I assumed the ruins were situated.



We set off across the sage in a more or less straight line toward my assumed waypoint, dropping into and out of washes as needed. A barbed wire fence a couple of miles in gave us hope, which was followed by a style at the base of the hill that held my waypoint.

[/url]Pierr's Complex-Pre-Puebloan Great House by Joseph, on Flickr[/IMG]

We climbed a smaller hill to get a look at the area and saw the depression of a fairly large ruin. This site had a sign identifying it as a Chacoan Outlier, similar to one we found at Twin Angles Pueblo.

[/url]Pierr's Complex-Pre-Puebloan Great House by Joseph, on Flickr[/IMG]

The waypoint hill, which we climbed later, had two obvious ruins and a cleared area between them that could have been a plaza. We didn’t find the fire pit noted in some of the publications, which I later decided was on the smallest and steepest hill within the complex.

Eve in Ruins at Pierr's Complex by Joseph, on Flickr

A lot of broken pottery shards (undecorated) were scattered along the desert to the east of a deep wash and I’ll assume that this was a section of the Great North Road.

[/url]Pottery Shards along the Great North Road - Pierre's Complex by Joseph, on Flickr[/IMG]


Returning along the wash was easier since we knew where we were going.

Finding Pierr's Complex by Joseph, on Flickr

We headed to a good camp site in the Bisti Wilderness for the evening.

Bisti Morning - no cell signal! by Joseph, on Flickr

 

[Umnak]

Bisti & De-Na-Zin Wilderness

Bisti & De-Na-Zin Wilderness

We spent a couple of nights at either end of the Badlands - though I think of them in a very good way — of the Bisti and De-Na-Zen Wilderness south of Farmington, New Mexico.



The Bisti side of the wilderness is a surreal landscape composed of hoodoos, petrified logs and dramatic landforms. A walk brings you closer to dinosaurs than any other place in a region full of dinosaurs, though most are buried under the clay.



And it is the clay that defines this place. Hills eroded of their siltstone caps are mounds of clay, which become slick and dangerous after a shower and impassible after a rain.

There are views that one could assume are from mars.


De-Na-Zen is, at first glance, more of a traditional badlands with mounds and washes sprinkled with color and vegetation.



A closer look shows a more fantastic landscape, especially when the washes are running thick with chocolate mud.



We couldn’t find a safe passage across the widest wash and instead walked along Split Lip Mesa. The red and grey layers of the land mark the difference between dinosaurs and mammals.


Our camp in De-Na-Zen was the parking lot at the trail head. One vehicle passed along the road after we set camp.

 

[Umnak]

Solo Trip 1 of 3


Eve took a week off to visit her parents in Port Townsend, Washington where they are house sitting for us. She left from Albuquerque which put me a couple of hundred miles farther into spring. My plan was to scout out South Central New Mexico as a possible location for next winter.

I went east on Rt 40 — damn, I hate 75 mph speed limits — over the mountains before turning south and back into high desert country. NM route 41runs halfway between two mountain ranges and through some pretty desolate country. About every 20 miles another abandoned hamlet sticks out of the sage with a boarded-up store and weathered empty homes. The few villages are not far off from suffering the same fate. Pretty depressing.


Carrizozo is a storied little town and was the setting for some of the nasty business that came out of the late 19th c Lincoln County War. Just east from its four corners is the BLM’s Valley of Fires campground (not to be confused with Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park). This was the scene of an eruption from Little Black Mountain that that spread a tongue of lava over a long stretch of desert. It’s a nice campground and interesting place to walk.


Since someone always has a bigger dog, I was not surprised to find a Tiger Siberian and a Fuso pop-top as my neighbors. The Fuso owner had it built at Sportsmobile West, and allowed me a peek inside. The Siberian was less talkative, barely managing a return of my hello.


The luxury of a week’s adventure in a small area allowed me time to linger and to explore. My next stop was a little town about 40 miles south called Tularosa, which seems to have escaped being inundated by big box stores and fast food shops. There were a couple of wineries and pistachio groves among the pecan orchards. It would be an interesting place to get to know. Alamogordo wouldn’t. It’s only redeeming value is that it is closer to the mountains and just north of White Sands.


At almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit the idea of walking around in White Sands was not that appealing. However, I wanted to spend the night there and got a Back Country permit to camp. The walk to the campsite was surprisingly easy. I had assumed the sand would be like a beach, but it was hard packed in most places.


My campsite was isolated and didn’t have a direct view of any of the other sites. I was happy to see a dune creating shade close to where I was supposed to camp. I laid my Tyvek against the dune for a kitchen space, and a small tarp as my ground cloth for my bivy. It was a surreal experience to walk around the dunes and into the narrow valleys. Sunset added painterly pink and purple tones to the dunes which enhanced the shadows and light. After a tapas dinner and a cup of tea I leaned agains the dune and watched the stars emerge.


Pardon the next paragraph, and if you know the answer to the puzzle please let me know.


As it became dark I saw a small light against the horizon and watched it for at least two hours after sundown. I couldn’t recall how much I could see of the mountains beyond White Sands, which meant that my perspective was not going to help me discern if the light was close and dim, or far away and bright. For the first 30 minutes I assumed it was a hiker with a headlamp. That idea was soon abandoned as the light seemed to move slowly then fast and at angles that would challenge anyone walking the dunes. It would then make its way to where I had originally seen the light. At sunrise I could see that, whatever its source, it couldn’t have come from the mountains as only a very small peak was showing above the dunes. I spoke with a ranger about the light and she had no ideas aside from the possibility of a drone. I don’t think it was a drone because it seemed to only be in a small area and it lasted too long. It could have been a remote controlled device on the ground, but that seems unlikely given the distance that the operator would have had to have been from the machine.

I passed a gated and guarded building about 15 miles south from the entrance to White Sands that had this acronym in classic military letters HELTS, which I later learned was High Energy Laser Testing Site. My theory of what caused the light has shifted to this being the source.

 

[bigskypylot]

very much enjoying your dispatches from the road. The natural and cultural history lessons are great. Thanks and stay safe! I'll be sure to say hello if we ever cross paths