Caballo Mountains - Sandy Tank Canyon, BLM and State Trust Lands

Bedrock canyon in the Caballo Mountains

Mexican orange

Communication installations visible on the ridgline.

This shack, I presume, is the "homestead" that Homestead Tank is named for. It is on private property that the road passes through. I refrained from exiting my vehicle to explore.

 The Caballo Mountains, like the Sandias, Manzanos and the Fra Cristobals, align north to south close to the Rio Grande valley,  and present a bold western face of towering cliffs and brief, steep canyons that are very much of a desert character  while their  eastern slopes are more gentle (as is true of the other above mentioned ranges) with longer drainages whose north facing slopes are clad in juniper and piñon. In the first decade of the 2000's we did a lot of exploring on west side, doggedly going up into many of the major canyons south of Palomas Gap, but the only hiking we had done on east side was a trip to Palomas Gap itself. I'm talking about the main high block of the range here, from Apache Gap Canyon to Palomas Gap. We've done many hikes in the canyons in the lower elevation southern reaches of the range in the vicinity of the Mcleod Hills, Redhouse Mountain all the way down to Rincon.

I thought it was time to hike in one of the east side canyons. Most of  these are nameless (excepting the ones that actually end up flowing north then east towards Palomas Gap) in the mountains while the washes, draws and arroyos they drain to in the desert flats do indeed have names. I'm calling the one I hiked Sandy Tank Canyon which appears to be an upper tributary to the southern fork of Yoast Draw. I researched and waypointed my route well, but still managed to overshoot where I wanted to start twice (once heading south, once heading back north). Everything is always very different on the ground. It would've help to have someone with me navigating with the On-X.  It's always going to be a little bit of problem visiting a new area. I had only been out here once before when driving  nearly to the top of the Caballos on the Timber Peak Road (which may or may not be County Road A003) to do a hike on the high ridge between Timber Peak and Brushy Mountain.

 So we (Nessie and I) were finally able to exit the vehicle to begin our hike. The first leg was on the old road to the dry Sandy Tank. Past the tank we stayed in the stream bed for awhile before veering right onto a cattle path on the hillside. 

Near Sandy Tank

We had go up along the side creek  we ran into in order to find a way across. We then walked down on the gray limestone bedrock eventually finding a way up on the hillside again. Soon we were back on the limestone bedrock on the northern of the two main forks of the canyon only now we were marching upstream.  Eventually we exited onto the hillside to our left and got up on the ridge. From that vantage point we  could see across the foothills of the Caballos (including Lone Mountain) across the Jornada del Muerto and out to the Chalk Hills (a sub-range of the San Andreas Mountains). Looking up the ridge, I realized we weren't all that far from the high ridge at the top of the Caballos. It wouldn't have been all that difficult to just go on up, but that wasn't in the plan for today. Perhaps on another trip. 

All the high canyons had stream beds of solid rock

View to the east

Close to the top of the main ridge

For now we had to find a way down to the final fork which runs against a massive slope of layered limestone forested with piñon, wright's silktassel and juniper. We did with a few stumbles here and there and began picking our way downstream once again on solid bedrock. Once we leveled out, we found another livestock path to follow back to the tank, where we used the road to get back to our truck.

It was gray, gray day. All day. All the photo edits I'm used to making to mitigate that washed out look from bright sunshine of a typical southern New Mexico desert scene were not useful. In fact I had in some function (such as contrast) I had to do the exact opposite. I did see deer bouncing about on the steep hillsides. Luckily Nessie didn't.

Point of Rocks, Flat Lake area - BLM and State Lands

Point of Rocks in distance.

Petroglyphs

Excavation

Excavation with pack rat nest.

Point of Rocks

Excavation

Cans

Barrel cactus.

Barrel cactus

Petroglyphs

Petroglyph

I did three hikes out to this area in December and January. The first was to a petroglyph site I had read about years ago.  On kind of whim I decided to locate it on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, a few days before Christmas.I had put a pin on Google Earth and on On-X where I thought the site was located, but hadn't consulted the former and didn't use the latter in my efforts. I was just relying on memory and instinct. At first, Nessie and I tried a small hill covered with small basalt boulders that was just a half- mile north of the county road. No petroglyphs there, but we did see the first of several small man-made excavations with the appearance of low wall on the perimeter on the hilltop. I realized we were much too far east from what I could remember and so began driving out again on the good county roads. At first we went northeast, where we did spy a likely looking hill of larger basalt boulders, but they were quite close to some private property ( actually this bouldery hill is half private, half public land) and I didn't want to accidentally encounter anyone who might be nosy as to what I was doing.

 On we went eastwards through Flat Lake, a very modest depression that occasionally fills with water, and then past an old ranch that had the appearance of being abandoned, on into an area of large coppice dunes of reddish-orange sand. I kept eyeing a low hill that kept popping up to my left as we drove on the increasingly sandy, undulating, but still easily driven county road. I decided this was my hill and we found a place to park at wide spot in one of the swales. Nessie was reluctant most of the way, I'm not sure why, and the walking was entirely in loose sand, but we made it to the top pretty quickly. Shortly thereafter I began finding the petroglyphs on the black boulders submerged in the sand. I smiled at the ease of finding them, giving that oftentimes while armed with directions, apps and waypoints locating such an obscure place can prove quite difficult indeed. I circled the the little oval of a hilltop several times before I was satisfied I had seen most of what the place had to offer. We headed back. This time I let Nessie choose the route and we ended up a little west of the truck, but all was good.

 The second trip I investigated a prominent cuesta-like hill that stands some distance apart from the many pointy and rounded hills that make up Point of Rocks. There was another excavation on top and I found  a couple of petroglyph panels in the jumble of boulders against the low cliffs on the west side. I then went after a couple likely looking ridges that lie just to the west of Flat Lake, but found nothing much in the way of artifacts or rock art.

On a third trip I hiked to a trio of hills that are the southern edge of the main mass of Point of Rocks, and then also look at isolated hill very close to the county road. I found more excavations, one with a very obvious attempt at a wall around its rim, but no petroglyphs. There was the occasional chunk or flake of point making material but little else produced by humans that I could find as I wandered over rock and sand through the creosote, mesquite and stubby grass that filled the many shallow depressions scattered over the area. The desert was warm each outing, too warm really for the middle of winter, but I enjoyed being out there in an area I had only visited a few times over the 28 years I've lived here. 

Constructed ring

Agate chunk

Cairn with fallen post