Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument , Broad Canyon Wilderness- Lloyd Well Canyon and vicinity

 

Vein of andesite running through ash formation.

Lumber at the target site

Nessie

bottom of a snuff bottle

Coyote Canyon

House is on private property but can be photographed from the road.

very old road

"Dummy" bomb found near the practice target

High country of the Sierra de las Uvas

Well cropped yucca

Giant sacaton

Mud arch

Mud arch

"Dummy" bomb

Lithic

I did these three hikes in the first part of January. The first was to a little mesa between Silva and Coyote Canyons. The second was in a tributary to Lloyd Well Canyon and the third was in Lloyd Well Canyon itself. The hikes, two within the Broad Canyon Wilderness and one just to the south, were nice enough even if this isn't the most exciting part of our local national monument. The area has many scattered petroglyph and artifact sites including a couple that I've found that were not known to our local BLM, so as usual I was hoping for lightning to strike again and come up with some kind of decent find. Sorry to say, there is not much to report. 20th century (or maybe late 19th as well)  cans and bottles washed down stream from an abandoned dwelling, parts of dummy bombs and old lumber in the vicinity of a WW II practice target were what was in most abundance, although I did find quite a few lithic flakes and fragments at the top of  Lloyd Well Canyon. Giant Sacaton grass filled the canyon bottoms as it is wont to do in many areas of the Uvas Mountains. Snow lingered here and there, but I was never cold. The wind blew, but not so much as to be troublesome. I'd been wanting to check out this area after making a few visits in the last few years. The access is easy as I started right off of the paved  Corralitos Road for two, and the other starting point was just a short drive on maintained county gravel road.  The rewards of places like these; skies, solitude, silence, may not appeal to everyone.  Marching over modest ridges and mesas through endless creosote growing amidst the brown rocks, trudging through sand and the maze of grass and mesquite in the gray arroyos isn't most people's cup of tea either. Hell, it's not even  mine sometimes, especially when I've already seen the best of what can be seen and just want to be back at my truck, but they are all a part of my home here in the desert.

deer shed

Juniper surviving in a narrow ravine

Calcite crystal

Cedar Mountains Range (Cedar Mountains Wilderness Study Area)

Flying W Mountain

Valiente Peak

I did this hike in early December with employees and volunteers ( of which I am one) from the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. The Cedar Mountains  are a small chain of rounded hills (with a few higher peaks) that run northwest to southeast in southwestern Luna County. On the eastern end is a small wilderness study area.  Like so many places in the west the name hardly fits: only a couple of the peaks really seem to be mountains,  and there are very few cedars ( junipers actually). The mountains are geologically similar to the many other volcanic desert ranges in the  southwestern quadrant of the state, consisting of mainly andesitic flows with some rhyolites, ash flow tuffs and occasional basalt flows, as well as the conglomerates and other sedimentary rocks that derived from these. There appears to  have been little  prospecting and unlike several of the nearby ranges they seem to be devoid of any mineral wealth in the same way the Sierra de las Uvas and the Good Sight Mountains ( two ranges where I have hiked extensively) are.

 When scouting out locations for this journey, I opted for the drainages (Deer Canyon, Sacaton Draw,Gap Draw) coming down on the northeast side of Flying W Mountain (the tallest peak in the range) where there are actually a few trees ( junipers, scrub oaks) to be seen  growing moderately dense in the canyons and scattered lightly on the hillsides.  Leaving off of NM 9 at Hermanas, the driving on the county maintained road was pretty good. Past the ranch house, though, the maintenance ends and the going gets much slower.  Beyond Valiente Well there is a descent into the Left Fork Sacaton Draw which is very rough, and the crossing of the arroyo is rougher still. We parked before crossing the main fork of Sacaton Draw (also very rough) a short ways beyond. A group of hikers followed me as we began walking west up a small tributary to the main canyon.  We eventually crossed over a low saddle into the main Sacaton Draw eventually reaching the wonderful stone and concrete dam at Rock Tank. It was a pleasant if unremarkable walking in a landscape very similar to many parts of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument right here in my home county of Doña Ana.

Dam at Rock Tank

 Shortly past the dam we began ascending northwesterly to a saddle and then descending very steeply into an upper tributary of Gap Draw. This lovely little canyon had a sweet secluded feeling to it and wonderful views of Flying W Mountain (6,275 feet). It would be a nice choice for an overnight backpack.

 Emerging out into the wide open expanse of main Gap Draw was bit of a let down, especially when we could see evidence of people still bringing vehicles into the wilderness study area.  Eventually we went up on a ridge on our right and followed a very old road to the abandoned cabin at a small private inholding which is the old Flying W Ranch. From there we headed back on the road towards our starting point. There is a crossing of an un-named arroyo just east of the cabin which is worse than the other two. Luckily we were walking.

Gap Draw

 I enjoyed this little WSA, and if I lived in Deming I probably would visit it from time to time, but it is really quite an investment in time to get there and back from Las Cruces.