El Morro

 

Another 20 miles west of the Zuni-Acoma Trailhead is El Morro National Monument. We had a few hours to do some exploring before we had to drive back to the trailhead and pick up the boys at the end of their hike, so we headed down the road. You can see El Morro on the far upper left of this map below.

 

After crossing over the Continental Divide, we were soon at El Morro National Monument. Notice Inscription Rock in the background? I had to get in just the right position to include it with the sign.

Don’t you think this photo would make a nice postcard?

El Morro National Monument is located on an ancient east-west trail in western New Mexico. The main feature of this National Monument is a great sandstone promontory with a pool of water at its base. As a shaded oasis in the western U.S. desert, this site has seen many centuries of travelers.

The remains of a mesa top pueblo are atop the promontory where, between about 1275 to 1350 AD, up to 1500 people lived in this 875 room pueblo. The Spaniard explorers called it El Morro (The Headland). The Zuni Indians call it "A'ts'ina" (Place of writings on the rock). Anglo-Americans called it Inscription Rock.

Travelers left signatures, names, dates, and stories of their treks. While some of the inscriptions are fading, there are still many that can be seen today, some dating to the 17th century. Some petroglyphs and carvings were made by the Anasazi centuries before Europeans started making their mark. (In 1906, U.S. federal law prohibited further carving.)

The many inscriptions, water pool, pueblo ruins, and top of the promontory are all accessible via park trails.

And we picked up our Trail Guide before heading out onto the trail.

 

We only had time to hike the Inscription Trail and part of the Headland Trail that day. We’ll have to come back another time to explore the rest of the Headland Trail and the A’ts’inna Pueblo.

 

Jen and Dobbie were raring to go, while I enjoyed the shade through the tunnel of Juniper Trees.

 

The trail up to Inscription Rock was very well planned and enjoyable to hike on.

 

The paved trail travels steadily upwards and with the heat of the afternoon, we took advantage of one of the benches placed beside the trail.

 

I think this would make a nice postcard, don’t you?

”El Morro National Monument ~ Wish You We’re Here”

 

The trail wound around closer and closer to the sandstone bluffs.

 

The majestic rock bluffs dwarfed us. We were in awe with our faces upturned and a crick on our necks.

Behind Jen and Dobbie is where the pond is located. The black streaks above the pond are the stains left behind from rain and snow melt dripping down below. There are no springs. All the water within the pond is from rain or snow melt.

 

 

 

 

 

This trail was so enjoyable. The beautiful vistas and nature just called out for photography at every turn.

 

We first noticed the petroglyphs, particularly the bighorn sheep and the bear paw. Many petroglyphs depict animals that were once familiar fauna in the region. Seeing these shapes made us wonder why people pecked them into the bluff.

 

 The last inscription from Spanish colonial times is by Andrews Romero. He wrote, "Andres Romero passed through here in the year 1774." Romero's visit was followed by turbulent times. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. Then, following the U.S.-Mexican War from 1846-1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded large areas of land from Mexico to the United States. This new land, the New Mexico Territory, opened the way for the Americans--the last of the inscribers--to come through El Morro.

 

Many Spanish inscribers wrote paso por aqui or "passed through here." In Spanish, the inscription below says:

"A 25 del mes de Junyo, ano de 1709 paso por aqui para Suni--Ramon Garcia Jurado." Translation: "On the 25th of the month of June, of this year of 1709, Ramon Garcia Jurado passed through here on the way to Zuni."

From the time Ramon Garcia Jurado moved to New Mexico as a colonist in 1693 until his death at the age of 80 in 1760, he was witness and participant in the Spanish settlement of New Mexico. It is likely that he was on a campaign against the Navajos during his visit to El Morro in 1709.

 

This was one of my favorite inscriptions and the reason I placed a letterbox nearby. “Peachy” G. Breckinridge was the man in charge of 25 camels that were being tested by the U.S Army for their use in the deserts by Lieutenant Beale in 1857. After his work with Beale, Breckinridge returned to his home state of Virginia and fought in the Civil War. He was killed during a skirmish at Kennon's Landing, Virginia in 1863.

As far as the camels, think U.S Camelry.

Have you seen the movie "Hawmps"? Hilarious!

E. Penn Long of Baltimore, Maryland chiseled this elegant-looking inscription. Long was a member of a U.S. Army expedition led by Lt. Edward F. Beale to find a wagon route from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to the Colorado River. The group, which first passed by El Morro in 1857, was also testing the usefulness of camels in crossing the deserts of the Southwest.

 

I usually tend to take animal or people photos, so it was really fun and challenging to stretch myself and experiment with landscape photos. The rock was just begging to be photographed, though, and I was happy to oblige.

 

 Another postcard perfect photo, don’t you think?

Except the Ponderosa Pine looks a little wonky.

 

This same tree looks even wonkier from this perspective, don’t you think?

Do you see this slab of rock with the huge vertical crack in it? Yeah. That’s a problem.

This may be the last time we see this rock in this position. And one of the last photos ever taken of it.

 If you look closely you might be able to see all the metal hardwear, cables and ropes tucked on it. The National Park Service is very concerned about the possibility of this slab of rock calving off and crashing to the ground, so they are closely monitoring it for any signs of additional fracture.

There are only a few small inscriptions on this slab,m but it’s still sad to think of the inscriptions that will be lost. And I sure wouldn’t want to be on the trail when it falls, but it would be rather neat to watch it crash, from a safe distance.

 

That’s what this box is for. A cable runs from the crack in the rock to this monitoring box below the slab of rock.

 

The Rose Emigrant train was led by L.J. Rose  who was born in Germany, but had made his fortune selling dry goods in Iowa. The Rose Emigrant Train was the first to try this route to California in 1858. The original caravan consisted of forty families, including a  twelve year old girl named Sallie Fox. She left her inscription on this rock, too, but it is now too faded to photograph well.  Sallie was shot with an arrow during the attack at the Colorado River by the Mojave Indians, but she survived. Thanks to journals kept by the immigrants, we know that survivors of the attack, including L.J. Rose, walked most of the way back to New Mexico to wait out the winter.

 

Some of the high carvings here have the letters "U.P.R.(Union Pacific Railroad)," carved by workers on the survey crew. The Santa Fe Railroad twenty-five miles to the north rerouted travelers ending El Morro's place as a stopover on the route west.

 

P.H. Williamson was a member of the first emigrant train to try this route to California in 1858. The original caravan consisted of forty families and was led by L.J. Rose. At El Morro, they left their inscriptions and then moved on to the Colorado River, where they were attacked by Mojave Indians.

 R.H. Orton became adjutant-general of California after the Civil War. In the early years of the Civil War, the California Column, as it was known, was sent to New Mexico to reinforce Federal Troops expecting Confederate hostilities. Orton held the rank of captain when the First Cavalry was mustered out from March to October of 1866. He may have made his inscription as he returned to California.

 Another favorite inscription (also near where we found a letterbox), this one is one of the oldest and more famous inscriptions at El Morro--that of the first governor of New Mexico, Don Juan de Onate—it was inscribed in 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

Also notice how this inscription is an example of early well-intentioned, but intrusive attempts at preservation work. Early park managers darkened the inscriptions with graphite, also known as no. 2 pencils, so that they would be more visible and last longer. They ended this kind of preservation in the 1930s.

 

All along the way, I kept being inspired to take many photos using all sorts of different angles.

Does this one give you vertigo? 

 

There were still some inscriptions to see and fun trail to follow. Do you see Jen and Dobbie up there?

 

While I hiked up these several flights of steep stairs, I was reminded of how I wasn’t able to walk up stairs just two years ago after my ACL surgery and broken knee. I’m just so grateful that I’m able to walk and hike again, so I can visit all these interesting and beautiful places with my family.

 

There were more inscriptions at the top of the stairs and Jen and Dobbie kept encouraging me to hike up faster so I could read the plaques to them.

 

The views were incredible at the top of the stairs, though. Wouldn’t this make a great postcard?

There wasn’t any information on this inscription and artwork. I really like the rope/lasso carving, though. 

This is another one of my favorites, and one that makes me giggle:

Lt. J.H. Simpson, an engineer for the army, and Mr. R.H. Kern, a Philadelphia artist employed by the army as topographer were the first English-speaking people to make a record of Inscription Rock. They spent two days copying the inscriptions and petroglyphs, and their reports of the visit show that not a single English inscription could be found on the rock. Though they were so careful to duplicate the inscriptions’ in detail, they made a blunder of their own. Look carefully and you'll see that they inscribed "insciptions" rather than "inscriptions," forever immortalizing in stone their own spelling error. (lol!)

 

 

 

Another perfect postcard photo. Do you see the dog head on the rock face?

 

How about now? The dog’s floppy ear is dangling down, while it’s nose is pointing up. And the eye is right where it’s supposed to be.

 

I just love trees. Especially unique and unusual trees, trees that stand out, and trees that struggle to survive even under the most adverse and difficult situations. Like this 60-70’ tall Ponderosa Pine Tree, wedged into a dry, crumbly sandstone bluff. The only water it receives is the rare rainstorm in late summer and the occasional winter snowfall. What is it’s anchor to the earth? And where and how far does it’s roots grow?

 

I decided to edit this photo ala Ansel Adams. I think the black and white scheme gives this tree a stronger presence.

Which do you like better? 

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.