Sierro Kemado, Horse Canyon - Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

Juniper

Sierro Kemado

Fence at left

Undercut layers

stone structure

Structure in center of photo

I'd been wanting to look at this area on the east end of Sierro Kemado for  a while now. I took the opportunity a couple of weeks ago on President's Day. I parked across from the  corral area on  County Road E006 and began heading south after my first of many fence transits. I got a little off of my plan by heading too far  south and had to circle back to look at a couple of canyons that interested me. One was pretty nicely rugged and rocky. The other one wasn't much.

 

Eventually I got out of the canyons and began walking on the ridges in between toward a gap in the mountain. It just so happened that the gap on the east end of Sierra Kemado which is also uppermost Horse Canyon( on the south side) is located very close to a center point where several fences radiate out like spokes on wheel.  All the getting under them was surely annoying especially for someone like me who frequently changes and improvises on the route throughout the course of the day.

There was brilliant white gravel covering the hillsides alone the ravine which made for a nice contrast with the boulders in their many shades of brown. On a relatively flat piece of land on one bank there was  a stone structure. What it was, who built it and why, I don't know. I searched around for any surface artifacts but there were none from any era to be found. It wasn't surprising though because the structure and the bank it sits on are being buried with the white gravel.  

I had planned to investigate more of this upper section of Horse Canyon but after having a look from above  I was uninspired. Instead I moved on higher up the drainage and then circled back and headed eastward a bit to check out a grove of junipers growing on north facing slope of a swale.

 Along the way, after going under a fence at a particular stop for the fourth time I spied an old rope in a couple of pieces. One still had the knot in it. When I find things like that, I always wonder what the story was for how it got left behind. Not much else to report except for several odd piles of rocks right close to where I had parked the car.