Doña Ana Mountains- Summerford Mountain West

Megafauna rubbing

I  last explored this part of the Doña Anas long ago. I visited so many places, usually alone, and usually without taking photos, in the first  few years that I lived here, it's getting hard to remember  everywhere I've been before. This one was different. I had 3 photos of this site, taken with an ancient sub megapixel digital camera, but these days it had begun to feel like I had dreamed the whole thing. Feeling strongly for more than a year that I needed to reconnect with its energy, I had put the trip on this winter's to do list.
 At the end of the hike in Cleofas Canyon, I told the group I had been with I wanted to do more exploring ( it was only 2:00 PM ) and said goodbye.
 

I headed north out of Cleofas, driving up and down on the road  that was winding like the dry streams it was crossing.  After several miles I turned toward the east on an even more  narrow up and down track that stayed on a slim ridge. I parked at a turnaround near an ancient fence. The gate was down on the ground but road on the other side was nearly invisible.
 Now the dream began. Bouncing through pale grass, past monzonite boulders of washed out orange and gray. Stepping on  stones down in the ravine, running  straight into a low growing cactus concealed by tar bush, I brushed and pulled the obvious thorns from my jeans and continued on with the remainder dangling from legs inside my jeans.

The sun pressed  down with an intensity that belied the February date on the calendar. It dried and burnt my lips. I only had my cap, not the sombrero, so I knew my face, ears and neck would be burned too when it was all over.
 I crossed the wash and soon after began finding petroglyphs and the searching continued of every boulder, and every group of boulders big, bigger and biggest, high and low, over, under and through. Finding more and more panels that I had no recollection of, or had never seen in the first place, I searched for the ones I had  photographed but only found one of the three.


Pictographs, red and white lines and zig-zags appeared as well on the curving undersides of boulders sheltered for hundreds, if not thousands of years.


A deep mortar and shallow cupules in granitic rock, which I did remember seeing, presented themselves also.
 

One piece of pottery lay in the sand on the bank of the wash.  A side by side, 4 person ATV plowed up through the thick sand of the wash, but didn't notice me as I watched a short distance away. I finally had to really call it, and, hard as it was began trekking back  to the blue truck.
 Two hours had not been enough time and I'm sure I didn't see all this place has to offer, but I didn't want to be negotiating the sub-standard roads out here in the dark.

Magic views behind me,  I drive home happy with ancient electricity sifting through my bones.

NOTE: This hike is on NMSU's Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center land which is technically not open to the public, although many people access the area mainly for biking, shooting and motorized recreation. Please treat the area with respect. If you see other's trash, take the time to pick it up. Do not drive off of well-established roads, or ride of off well established trails. Use only during daylight hours. The Doña Ana Mountains are a treasure in our own backyard. Be careful to conserve their natural and cultural values.

Peña Blanca- Organ Mountains Wilderness

It's been many years since I visited Peña Blanca. I didn't have a blog about  it until now. If there are any pictures of those earlier trips, they might very well have been taken with a film camera, because I can't even find any from a sub- megapixel digital one I used  way back when.
 I've been out in the area  quite a few times passing by on the way to other adventures, but a few weeks  ago I just decided to make our monthly LCPS Wellness Hike to Peña Blanca. I'm glad I did.
 We parked at the trailhead, where there is now a ribbon and  " NO VEHICLES" sign across the road that would normally be driven right up to Peña Blanca. The Sierra Vista bike trail which is also right here is the boundary of the wilderness, while the road, which more sensibly should be the boundary, is within it. So, we walked the mile  and then began exploring the cliffs, alcoves, caves,  and boulders formed in the rhyolite tuff that almost seemed to shimmer in the winter morning light. There are a very few pictographs to see, lines and shapes in red pigment, in some of the shallow recesses, but the black images are charcoal drawings from more recent times.

 Our group of eleven had the place to ourselves, which was nice, and the whole area had the aura of being less visited than in the past. Or maybe we just got lucky. On a detached outcropping we found our first ancient grinding hole, and then just down the hill I found a few fragments of brown pottery.  Although I wasn't expecting to find any, in this relatively well travelled location,  earlier I had given my customary speech  about what to do if one were to find any: " look at it, and put it back."
  We had only gone about a mile and half when four of our group went back. I wished they had hung on for a bit longer to see the largest cave  with its numerous grinding holes, just a short distance away.
From there we headed north along the base the larger mass of layered volcanics, admiring the varied and unusual formations as we went. There was even a hole in the wall natural arch.



The going got a little thick through the creosote and thorny brush as we headed towards our turnaround point. We passed a mortarless rock dam and then finally stopped at small thicket of hackberry trees where a spring may have been, or perhaps seeps water out seasonally.

 After snacks, we headed out. I found two more larger pottery sherds as I walked. We found a very faint road which led us to the  road that took us the two miles back to the  parking area.

Doña Ana Mountains, Selden Hills

I made three trips into the Doña Ana Mountains and one into the Selden Hills over my Christmas break. One trip was with photographer friend David Daniel to the Lucero Canyon petroglyph site which I hadn't been to in many years. Everything appeared to be good shape although I noticed that now people are driving right up the canyon practically to the site. They must be coming in the long way from the south because the last time I checked access was blocked from north end. We hiked in from the Radium Springs exit on I 25.
 On a second trip, also with David Daniel, to the Dagger Flat area, we saw coming in that the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument sign is missing.  It was also very difficult to escape the fact that the roads needed to access this area just keep getting worse and worse.
Both days were sunny and unseasonably warm, which made it nice to be out, but is always a little disturbing.
 On the third trip,  my wife and I went up the north branch of Cleofas Canyon, walked on bike trail on the ridge and back through tiny tributary on a much cooler but still sunny day.
 On a cloudy and windy afternoon, Seamus and I crossed the river and went up and down a couple of nameless canyons just south of Buckle Bar Canyon. I did all the larger canyons that lie north of Buckle Bar up to and including Lytten Canyon a couple of years ago, finding some very interesting sites in the process. So, now I am on a mission to explore all the major drainages that lie north of Radium Springs and south of Buckle Bar on the east side of the river.  Nothing much to report from these first two, but we did see deer, javelina and a small herd of some very large breed of goat roaming the hills. We also found a small remnant of native bosque with cottonwood, hackberry and tornillo trees( I'll be back for a fall color photo) on the old Broad Canyon Ranch property, which still awaits its transformation into a state park.
Note: no photos from the Selden Hills hike as I forgot both my camera and my phone. Hard to believe in this day and age, but in conversation with David Daniel, I reminisced  about visiting places when I first moved here and taking no photographs.