Valle Caldera

The Mrs and I took off camping near Jemez Springs, outside Los Alamos. Our evening was perfect, camped by a stream, had a fire and a beautiful warm sunset. In the middle of the night it started to rain, so I had to book it to the truck for the fly, and my sleeping pad went flat. No big deal, it's New Mexico and won't stay rainy...

Morning came and it was still raining. We had made a reservation for the first guided hike of the year at Valle Caldera, a National Trust land preserve of 89,000 acres atop an old volcano. It's exceptionally beautiful, and is home to 3-4000 elk, as well as coyotes, bobcats, bear and a couple of mountain lions. It will probably clear up in an hour or so...

At the trailhead we were the only ones who showed up, and were prepared for a light 7 mile hike (lunch, water, no raingear and I brought light hikers, no goretex boots). It began to dust some snow early on, but by the time we hit 9900 feet at the midway point there was a full on snowstorm in progress, blowing sideways into us. No visibility on the lookouts and it was too cold to stop for lunch. Our very knowledgeable guide picked up the pace once we heard a nearby thunderclap, stating something about the terrible lightning strikes on the mountain. By the time we got back to the trailhead there was 4-5 inches on the ground and J's hair was literally frozen with snow. On top of that, the van we were in got stuck headed back to the ranger station and we had to hitch a ride to our vehicle.

Even with the weather, it's easy to see what an exceptional place this is, and how different it is from the sanitized version of parks we get used to with the Park Service. Here there were no trail markers, washboard dirt roads, no bathrooms and no maps. Very refreshing.