Fox Cliffs - Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument and New Mexico State Parks land.

 

I had seen this cliffs several years driving south on NM 185. My initial reaction was "What's that?!" I may have even turned around and drove past a second time. I knew I wanted to get a closer look one day, but then filed it way in the back of my mind.

 More recently I was scanning Google Earth for anything that caught my eye, when I came across this dark little undulation in a sea of gray, looking like a mustache or a pony. Once again my reaction was  "What's that?!" I zoomed in a bit and then remembered those cliffs.

  Again filed away, but on Sunday (2/28/21) I got the notion that I had to get out of the house even if just for few hours, and the cliffs popped into my brain. I was getting frustrated trying to find a quick route on BLM lands, when, with the help of my On X app, I realized they were accessible via a third of a mile hike through a section of State Parks land right along the highway. Off I went.

 I crawled under the fence clearly labeled " New Mexico State Parks Boundary" and the quickly encountered a  black and white"NO TRESPASSING" sign nailed to big square post, but since folks in this area have had the tendency to post signs on property not their own ( see my "Slot Canyon Access Saga" blog from November, 2019),  plus that I could clearly see my position on the app and was not on private property, and finally because the sign didn't look at all "official" like ones a governmental agency might post, I proceeded past it on to my destination.

 Not that I wasn't concerned a bit by the nearness of  house and a trailer just to the north. They were close, probably close enough to see me with the naked eye, but not so close that it would be an easy shot at a moving target. Joking aside, you never know what you are going to encounter in these private public interfaces. Once on  BLM land, after scrambling  around on the slippery gravel to the topside of the cliffs, and getting through a boundary fence ( between State and Federal), I felt a little better.

Coming around and then down again, I marveled at the crenulations, crevices and cracks in the conglomerate  and sandstone layers. They were only about 50 feet high and the entire palisade  a 1/4 mile long, but, they still had an impressive feeling to them, a landscape reminiscent of Death Valley or Badlands National Parks, just in miniature.

 I slipped and slid, catching sight of gray fox emerging from one of the dark recesses, as I made way back to the abandoned road I had walked in on. Then I  was done. The whole foot excursion taking less than hour at only slightly over a mile in distance with about 200 steep feet of elevation gain to get up on top.

Fun little trip, despite a bit of anxiety.