Santa Fe Letterbox Hiking

 

One New Mexico place I always enjoy visiting is Santa Fe. We only live less than an hour away. And the ‘back-way’ route, along the famous Turquoise Trail from our house is absolutely gorgeous and very relaxing. I’m lucky if I see five cars during the majority of our drive between our house and outskirts of Santa Fe.

 

 

The biggest town we drive through is the old mining town, current artist community of Madrid, which is basically just a one-road town, with a population of less than 300.

There have been several movies filmed in and around Madrid, including Wild Hogs, and the town is a fun place to explore.

But we weren’t stopping. We had an adventure waiting for us in Santa Fe.

Almost in Santa Fe, we did drive past the tiny town of Cerillos and found a letterbox placed at a roadside pull-out called Garden of the Gods. My twinling Jem couldn’t help but climb and explore the rock structures. Here he was pretending he was a King and this was his royal throne.

 

And here on this ‘Great Wall of China’ look-alike, he was giving me a few new grey hairs.

While I stamped into our logbooks, a familiar, forbidden, smoky scent from my high school days wafted over and around me, coming from beyond this gate, making me feel a little woozy. Hmmmm, I wonder what they were doing in there?

After leaving that place (and gulping lots of fresh air to clear my senses), we were in Santa Fe in short order. Our first stop was to find a couple of easy drive-by letterboxes, including one placed not far from these fish swimming up stream, with a purpose.

The fish made for a fun photo-op, except the kids had trouble deciding which fish to ‘ride, as if this was a carousel ride at the fair.

Dobbie didn’t care to ride a fish, though. But she did think it was fun to pose beside San Francisco de Asis, who was having a friendly conversation with some kind of rodent, like a wood chuck or something.

After finding several letterboxes in town, we drove northwards into the Santa Fe National Forest and enjoyed a lovely, short hike on the Chamisa Trail to find a letterbox placed within a small canyon.

Then we traveled a little farther up the road to spend the rest of the day searching for some more challenging  letterboxes, which we were very excited about.

Ok, well maybe they don’t look THAT excited, but that’s because that was a photo I took much later on into the hike. And I don’t think any of us were fully prepared for how steep and strenuous this hike would be, but to give them credit, they were real troopers and hung tough all the way until the end. Though I think it was the reward of finding letterboxes all along the way that helped keep them going (and me, too).

   

Because quite honestly, if I had understood the true nature of this trail, I might have wimped out. This was the toughest trail I’ve hiked since a friend and I hiked the rocky, rugged, steep 10 mile La Luz Trail up from the city of Albuquerque to 10,600 feet into the Sandia Mountains, over 16 years ago. And this was, by far the toughest trail I’d ever even imagine me hiking only 9 months after my ACL replacement surgery on my knee.

I must say that my Leki trekker poles made all the difference. Without them, the hike would have taken much longer because I wouldn’t have had the extra ‘grab’ on the steep uphill sections, and the steady balance on the very steep, gravel-covered descent and on the downhill switchbacks

 

Still, I think my kids thought I had lost my mind just a little, but I was so proud of them, too, that they kept barreling upwards and forward.

When we got home I decided to do some research to learn more about this trail (good thing I didn’t do it beforehand. hah!) and found this link on our: Santa Fe Hike. 

Most of the information told me what I already knew. Yes, it was steep and rugged, but had spectacular views.

 

But then the facts of the trail were broken down into simple statistics:

• Trail starts at 8,398 ft above sea level
• Trail tops off at 9,399 ft above sea level
• Total elevation gain in 2 miles is 1,246 ft
• This 4 mile hike is estimated to take 3 hours to complete.

And the teaser of this trail was that, between the long, steep, rugged sections, you’d get a nice, brief flat section, usually along a narrow ridge, where you were rewarded with gorgeous views.

And then we’d look down and realize we were higher than most of the other mountain peaks around us. And then I’d say something brilliant like, “Well, we must be done climbing up finally. We can’t go any higher” hahahahah!

And then we would.

And we’d all wonder, ‘how much further?’, but I had no idea, because a mile on flat land is completely different than a mile on an almost vertical mountain trail. But we kept our spirits up, especially when it was time to locate a letterbox along the trail. And whenever we’d come to a bench at the top of a ridge, after a particularly grueling section, we’d all breathe a sigh of relief, and flop ourselves down to rest.

A few times we’d look down from our perch on one of the ridges and realize that it sure was a long way down to the bottom of the canyon where the trail head began.

But we did have a nice little view of Santa Fe, although a bit hazy, due to the glare of the late afternoon sun.

  

We only saw one other person on this trail, and she passed us on the way up, while we were logging in a letterbox beside the trail. And we passed her again, as she was hiking back the way she came. We think we probably know why. When she caught sight of the steep, downhill, descent with the multitude of slippery, gravel-covered, tilted switch-backs that led to the trail end, she was most likely thinking that it would be easier to just turn around and return to the trail head instead. And I don’t blame her one bit. If it wasn’t for that letterbox at the bottom of that steep descent, we might have considered that same option, too. hah!

    

The trekker poles were indispensable for me on this section because there was nothing to grab a hold of on the sides of the trail to keep me from slipping and falling. The poles did a great job of giving me balance and grip. But even so, there were a couple short sections that I still ended up skooching down on my ‘hocks’, sliding down with my feet, like a snowboarder. Thankfully, no one fell and we made it down safely (and very quickly) to the bottom of the mountain, just as the last rays of light left the sky.

We still had the hour-long drive home to contend with, but a stop off at Sonic before we left Santa Fe for delicious, cold shakes, made up for that.

On the way home, I kept telling my kidlets how proud of them I was, especially my 6 yr old daughter for the way she hiked without complaint and how she was always right there up front. Wow! She’s a strong, little horse!

And my 12 year old sons, for working together, being helpful, and being supportive of one another. And even for my little dog, Dobbie. She was like a tiny tank, pushing her way up the mountain. Wow!

Even though, afterwards, I’m feeling very sore and stiff, I can’t help but be surprised that I was able to conquer a hike like that, too. I think I’ve been under-estimating myself lately. I’m apparently capable of more than I thought I was.

And that feels so good.