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

Cibola National Forest, San Mateo Mountains - Monica Cabin

Monica Cabin

We stopped by here on the way home from the cabin on Horse Mountain on the Sunday before Christmas. I'd been wanting to visit Monica Cabin for a while now, and I was also curious to see if FR 52 to NM 107 was a viable back way home. It's not, but at least I can say I've driven the whole thing now. 

We turned off of  US 60 onto FR 549 that morning around 11. It's more or less a straight shot as this good dirt road heads for the northwest corner of the San Mateos. Eventually we came up to some railroad tracks seeing that there were several more components of the Very Large Array out here which can't be seen from US 60 or NM 107. After 5 more miles is the turn-off to the east on FR 52. The road quickly brought us down into the pretty little valley that is Monica Canyon. The stream is dry here but lined with mature oaks that likely make a lovely display in late October. The cabin, several outbuildings and a windmill  are just past the creek crossing. I can't find much about the cabin's history but it looks to be built sometime after WW II I would guess. I read that it was for  Forest Service personnel who were doing field work, so that they wouldn't have to drive all the back to Magdalena everyday. It reminded me very much of the stuccoed  Forest Service cabin we saw last year of FR 522 in the Black Range, except this one was not encumbered with the accumulated junk of fifty or more years which made it quite a bit more scenic.

 We wondered around the environs a little bit, ate our lunch and then we were on our way. I had tentative plans to do short hike on an old road in Little Monica Canyon, but it was getting late on a very short day and we didn't relish the though of driving for several hours after dark. 

 FR 52 was okay for a mile or two past the cabin but then it got very, very rough and stayed mostly rough most of the way back to NM 107. If one could forget about getting one's bones constantly rattled, one might notice that it's a very scenic little drive with views down in to the rugged Estaline Canyon and beyond to the peaks and canyons on the east side of the Withington Wilderness.