Today we rode a big loop out at Valles Caldera National Preserve. Valles Caldera is a volcanic crater that lies atop a dormant supervolcano. The caldera is one of the largest calderas on earth at 13.7 miles in diameter and formed about 1 million years ago when multiple eruptions occurred. A caldera eruption differs from …
I’ll venture to guess that 90% of you reading this blog post have never heard of Bandelier National Monument. I hadn’t until we decided to spend some time in Los Alamos, NM and did some research on things to do here…besides mountain biking. Named after Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist, who researched the cultures of …
Junta Canyon Highpoint Forest Road 76 through La Junta Canyon goes from near the Sipapu Ski Area over to Angel Fire. We decided to ride out and back to the highpoint making for a 26 mile ride with 3227’ of climbing. The highpoint of our ride was 11,314’. There isn’t much to this ride, we …
Rift Valley Singletrack After our big ride the other day we decided to take it easy on our ride today. Plus it started to spit rain so we cut our ride short. Our loop was 12 miles with 933’ of climbing. In sections, the trail is a bed of clay type dirt and gets pretty …
Like I said in previous posts, we are never really sure what we are in for each day when we set out on our rides. This day was the closest we have ever been to getting panicked about making it back to camp. Our mountain bike “loop” was 36 miles with 4341’ of climbing. Starting …
Our boondocking spot is incredibly quiet nestled in a little clearing among towering ponderosa, spruce, cedar, and gamble oak. We had a pretty good blast of rain yesterday evening that magnified the fragrance of the forest. Wet, warm pine needles and sweet smelling trees greeted us this morning. Riding new trails every day is a …
Slide Trail and Petaca Point After a big ride the day before, we dialed it back a bit and did a fun exploring ride along the river gorge that clocked in at 20.8 miles with 1800’of climbing. Slide Trail is a section of the old NM State Road 570 that closed after a landslide buried …
Angel Fire Town Trails Boondocking rules for the most part, state 14 day maximum in a forest and we usually stay all 14 days before moving on. Our trailer is equipped for us to have enough fresh water and gray/black water space to last the entire time so it works perfectly. For our last ride, …
The Big Kahuna ride shares sections of trail we rode on other rides, and includes plenty of new trail and gravel road as well. We started from downtown Angel Fire earlyish one morning in order to beat any chance of afternoon thunderstorms. The loop is 22 miles with 2929′ of climbing up to around 10500′. …
Our Rio Chiquito Loop was exploratory. We wanted to incorporate some parts of South Boundary into our ride, and check out Rio Chiquito Trail, and Buena Suerte Trail. To do this, we linked everything together with some forest roads that we were hoping were passable. Our loop was 20 miles with 2305′ of climbing. We …