El Malpais

 

I’ve decided not to unpack or put away our camping gear after any of our road trips this year. Seems like too much work when we’re just going to head back out again. We’ve already been camping 4 times in just the last two months, and we’ve got many more camping and road trip plans for the rest of the year, too.

On Friday last week we headed west towards Grants, New Mexico to camp in a little known BLM campground named Joe Skeens, about 2 miles north of the Acoma-Zuni Trailhead, where the Boy Scouts, including my twinlings were going to begin their 7 1/2 mile hike across the lava fields of El Malpais (The Badlands).

The sun was setting as we set up camp, and just after we attached the rain fly on our tent, a few drops of rain fell, giving us a gorgeous rainbow to enjoy before the sun dropped behind the Zuni Mountains.

  The temps dropped down into the 30’s at night, but we were warm and cozy in our 10 degree rated sleeping bags. We awoke to a chilly, but sunny day. And as the warm sun rose higher, we were shedding layers.

The campground was beside and above NM 117. But there wasn’t any constant noise because that highway doesn’t have much traffic, so we slept like babies. There was only one other campsite occupied during our visit, so with 10+ sites, we basically had the campground to ourselves and it was very quiet.  

The campground was very nice and clean with pit potties and great shelters at every site. No water, but the camping was free, so we just brought our own, although we were told that the Ranger Station just 2 miles north had a water pump we could use if we wanted to.

The Boy Scouts were mostly gathered around another shelter in the site next door, so we basically had a site to ourselves and it was nice to have that when they got a little rowdy sometimes.

Breakfast was peach oatmeal, green chile breakfast burritos, and cowboy coffee.

After clean-up, packing up our tents and gear, the boys packed their backpacks with food and water and other survival gear, and we were all ready to start the day.

Me and another Boy Scout Mom volunteered for the transportation shuttle duties that day. We were to drop everyone off at the Acoma-Zuni Trailhead in the morning, then drive up NM 117 about 20 miles to I-40, drive I-40 for about 6 miles west, then drive south down NM 53 about 20 miles, to the Zuni-Acoma Trailhead, to pick up everyone at the end of their hike, which would take 6-7 hours.

Someone in my previous post left a comment asking if we rode horses here. Uh…no. This is not a trail that horses could travel due to the majority of the trail being covered with hoof devouring lava rock. (Read below)

Even hiking can be treacherous.

Due to the lack of trail markers and vistas lacking recognizable landmarks, many people have gotten injured or lost while hiking over El Malpais, some never to be found again. And a compass is not always reliable because of the iron within the lava rock.

In 2002 a Father and Daughter visited El Malpais for a day hike to explore the lava tubes and lava caves and went missing. Their skeletal remains were finally discovered 5 years years later in an area far away from the original area they had planned to hike.

And there are other hazards in The Badlands, too. Just two months ago, a Mexican Wolf carcass was found in El Malpais, recently killed by illegal gunshot.

I had hiked a portion of this trail over 16 years ago and I remember traversing some of the rugged, ankle twisting lava, so I decided to pass this time around. Jax and Jem have never hiked a trail this primitive, so I had concerns, but I knew the leaders were well-prepared and experienced hikers, and I made sure Jax and Jem had everything they’d need to hike The Badlands.

This shows the cairn route across El Malpais, and the southern section of The Continental Divide Trail (CDT), which Jen and I almost got lost on later on in the day when we decided to try and meet up with the boys out on the trail. More on that later……..

Just before the boys headed out on the trail I took a group photo, so we’d have a Before and After photo account. hehe!

Notice the big confident smiles and how they are all standing tall, ready to go! (How naive….)

Passing through the Wilderness Turnstile

After we said our goodbyes and gave them our well wishes, we drove north on NM 117 for about 4 miles to the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook so we could get a birds eye view of El Malpais and the route that the Boy Scouts would be hiking across.

The “You Are Here” bubble shows our location.   

The map also shows the Zuni-Acoma Trail.

The gravel road up to the Sandstone Bluffs was only a mile and half long, but boy howdy! it was rough! The washboards were like mini-mountains and caused my van to fishtail if I drove faster than 10 mph. But the views at the top made it all worth it.

We had fun exploring and rock scrambling across the bluffs. The ridge you see in the distance is part of The Narrows, a place where the road is squeezed tightly between the ridge and the lava rock of El Malpais. You can see it on the map above. I visited that area with Val of Fantastyk Voyage in 2009 and created a post about that here: The Narrows

The mountains in the distance are the Zuni Mountains. And the Sandstone bluff you see below is the same bluff that Jen and Dobbie were standing on in the photo above.

That mountain you see in the distance in the photo below is actually an 11, 305 ft. high strato-volcano called Mt. Taylor, located northeast of Grants, NM.

The black spots you see in the left of the photo are lava beds.

This photo was taken looking south across the El Malpais and the area where the Boy Scouts were hiking The Zuni-Acoma Trail. Notice how much of it is covered in lava rock.

This photo is centered more southeast and shows the area where the Zuni-Acoma Trail begins and travels west. You can also see the ridgeline and cliffs of The Narrows, too.

Here you can see a zoomed-in shot of the typical lava rock-covered terrain that the Acoma-Zuni Trail traverses. This lava rock, called The McCarty Flow, is less than 2,000 years old. 

 

While hiking along the Sandstone Bluffs we discovered a cave. No idea if anyone has ever given it a name, but Jen and I decided to name it Owl Cave.

 

After spending about an hour exploring The Sandstone Bluffs Overlook, we headed up NM 117 to I-40, and then east on I-40 for about 6 miles. Then we exited onto NM 53 and drove about 20 miles south to the Zuni-Acoma Trailhead, where the boys would be ending their hike for the day.

Actually we drove right by the trailhead and headed out to El Morro National Monument, another 20 miles farther west from the trailhead. We had about 6 hours to kill and I’d never been to Inscription Rock before and I knew there was a recently placed letterbox located there, too. But for the sake of keeping this blog post on target and not too lengthy, let’s just say, we pulled into the parking lot to wait for the boys to show up. 

 

Jen and I decided to do some exploring and try to hike a few miles on the trail so we could meet up with the boys and hike with them for a little while.

Beside the parking area the National Monument had re-created a small taste of what hikers would experience out on the trail. There was a short vein of lava rock that they built a little bridge over and a brief trail that circled through and around the jagged and rough lava rock.

 

 

The boys confirmed to me that more than four miles of trail were just like this below. They had to jump over large cracks, climb up and over buckled sections of table-sized lava and maneuver over large lava rock boulders. 

 

Thankfully, only a short section, The Twin Craters Flow, was the jagged, boot-ripping AA (pronounced Ah Ah!……My guess is because the Hawaiian person that came up with that name walked over it barefoot) lava rock. The majority of the lava beds were the ropey, undulating Pahoehoe lava rock. And the remainder of trail was littered with chunks of ankle twisting cinders.    

 

Soon after leaving the trailhead, hiking east, the trail is a pleasant dirt path, surrounded by a sea of dry, yellow grass.

 

Every 20-30 feet we’d see a rock cairn, the only sign that we were on the correct trail. Many of these cairns may be more than 700 years old, placed there by the ancient Zuni and Acoma Indians to help them navigate across the lava beds.

 

The famous Continental Divide Trail (CDT) joins up with the Zuni-Acoma Trail for about 20 miles, as it travels from Mexico to Canada across the Rocky Mountains along the Continental Divide.

 

 

 

About a half mile east from the trailhead, we soon entered into the official wilderness area.

 

Soon afterwards, the trail became rougher and more rugged.

And we had to begin navigating over cinder covered trails and remember to keep an eye out for the rock cairns so as not to become lost. 

 

The Zuni-Acoma Trail is not one to just mindlessly stroll along while admiring the scenery. It’s imperative to always keep your eyes to the ground for rough patches and obstacles.

 

This lava rock-filled hole was once a tube/tunnel that collapsed. Lava tubes are formed when fluid lava cools on the upper surface to form a crust. Beneath this crust the lava can continue to flow as a liquid. Over time the flowing lava can form a tunnel. The lava tubes eventually drain out once the supply of fresh lava has stopped, leaving a length of open tunnel.

 

About one and half miles down the trail we arrived in a large open, grassy field that contained a Y-Intersection where the trail split in opposite directions.

 

There was no sign pointing the way to follow the Zuni-Acoma Trail. In the center of the Y, a simple flexible metal post listed the CDT at the top and arrows pointing straight and right with the word “Trail” above them. Which way to go?  This trail seemed to travel in a northeast direction.

 

And this trail seemed to travel southeast. And the stick on top of the cairn seemed to be pointing the way, so we chose that trail.

 

Unfortunately, after hiking for about 1/4 mile I realized the trail was turning southwest….in the wrong direction for it to be the Zuni-Acoma Trail. I realized that we must have been on the southern section of the CDT. We also saw no other footprints on this trail, other than elk hoof prints and scat, which was a little disconcerting.

So we turned around and went back to the Y where I checked the ground looking for any boot prints that weren’t our own, concerned that perhaps the boys had hiked through while we had traveled down the incorrect trail. They hadn’t. So, we waited in the shade of a juniper tree for about 20 minutes until I decided to head back to the trail head because our water supply was starting to run low.

About 15 minutes after we got back to the parking lot, I was surprised to see the boys hiking though the grassy field towards the trailhead. We had obviously just missed them while waiting for them at the Y! gah!

 

The Boy Scouts and their two adult leaders (one was taking photos) were obviously tired, thirsty and sore but it was easy to see that they were also elated and very proud that they had hiked the entire seven and a half miles over the rugged, unforgiving terrain and not gotten lost or injured.

And of course, I was very proud of them, too. Especially my twinlings, Jax and Jem.