Tsankawi Sites For our day off we went into Los Alamos to walk around some historic sites and then did a short hike of the Tsankawi Prehistoric Sites. The name Tsankawi is from the Tewa language of the nearby Idelfonso puebloans and means sharp gap or village between two canyons. The cliff dwellings were built …
Month: September 2020
East Fork Trail between Los Alamos and Jemez Springs is pretty popular in certain sections so we picked midweek to have more solitude. Even then, we passed a handful of hikers. I can’t imagine how busy it gets on a weekend! We rode this trail pretty much as an out and back making it 17.7 …
This is a recommended route on MTB Project and I get why. I think it may be one of the top rides we’ve done in the past few months. It is hard. Our day was 21 miles with 3517′ of climbing. It is hard. I think I mentioned that. We started with a climb up …
Our planned ride for the day was a bust. We couldn’t find a connecting trail through an overgrown mountainside with downed trees EVERYWHERE. Back at the car and 7.5 miles with 1000′ of climbing in, we decided to try some trails in one of the canyons above Los Alamos. So, we tacked on another 13 …
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 …