New Mexico may be a flyover state to the majority of Americans and it may appear to be a vast dry wasteland to those who drive through on I-40 looking forward to their time in Texas or California, and it may be uninteresting to those who think that Arizona and Texas are neighbors and that Albuquerque is in the state of Chihuahua. Those of us who live here know the state holds amazing hidden places and places to walk where few people ever go. Hiking in the Jemez Mountains always brings huge rewards.
The Jemez Mountains get deserved attention because of Bandelier National Monument and the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Both of these places deserve the special management and international attention they get because of their beauty and their importance to archaeology and geology. But the rest of the Jemez Mountains are full of equally fascinating places because, for whatever reason, this mountain range has attracted people for thousands of years and because its roots as a giant young volcano creates bizarre amalgams of scenery and hidden stories.
Getting There
We found a great hike to experience the vast diversity of northern New Mexico. The hike is easily reached from the Albuquerque area and if you come from Santa Fe or Los Alamos the drive is especially beautiful over the Jemez Mountains. The hike starts near Jemez Springs. On Highway 4 south of Jemez Springs there is small intersection with NM Highway 485 which goes west to the tiny hamlet of Canones. Take that road and you’ll pass under huge volcanic cliffs overlying deep red sandstones. Note your mileage as you’ll be going 8 miles to the trailhead.
As you drive you’ll notice the rocks change racially from the bright orange tuffs to deep gray granite. Here the road goes through two tunnels (the Gilman Tunnels) cut through granite. Back in the 1920s a railroad was built from Bernalillo to the western Jemez Mountains to remove big logs of old growth Douglas fir and ponderosa pines. After the railroad was removed, probably around World War II, the tunnels remained and today we drive through them to get onto Forest Road 376 which goes all the way to the top of the Jemez near San Antonio Hot Springs and the village of La Cueva.
What, you may ask, is granite doing in the Jemez Mountains? We thought the Jemez Mountains were a young volcano and granite is not from a volcano. As it turns out there is a north and south running mountain range called the Sierra Nacimiento which is made of 70 million year old granites. The Gilman Tunnels here are carved through those old rocks that were thrust up along the edge of the Rio Grande Riff. So this granite is actually a completely different mountain range from the Jemez Mountains and the two mountain ranges meet right here.
Granite is rock created down in the earth’s crust under heat and pressure. It is made up of melted rocks and it tends to be lighter than surface rocks like sandstones. Like the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the other side of the Rio Grande Valley, the Nacimiento Mountains were created by continental stresses related to the huge crack in the North American plate – the Rio Grande Riff.
You can stop at the Gilman Tunnels and look down at the Rio Guadalupe, the little river that rushes below you in a steep canyon. This river is fed by springs as you’ll soon see.
Holiday Mesa, A Hike Through Time
Drive on up the dirt road until you’ve reached the 8 mile point on your odometer. You’ll notice a tan colored steel gate right next to the road on the right side. Park here and get ready for an 8 mile hike. Walk around the gate and follow the road until it crosses the river. Cross the river the keep on this road, saying right at any intersections. This is a closed road so you won’t encounter vehicles.
When you are near the river and climbing, notice the rocks along the road. These white rocks mottled with bands of orange and pink are limestone formed on the floor of an ancient ocean about 320 million years ago. The limestone is the same rock found on the top of the Sandia Mountains and in places in the Pecos Canyon near Cowles. Here it was probably pushed aside when the granites of the Sierra Nacimiento rose up from below. Amazingly you’ll find fossil clams scattered around on the forest floor here.
Does all of this geology make you feel small and short lived? It makes me feel trivial. The layers of volcanic ash on the cliffs high above you were laid down by huge eruptions of the Jemez Volcano over the last approximately 5 million years. These lime stones are buried under that young volcanic ash except here where erosion has exposed them. This is part of the landscape covered by the massive ash beds of the Jemez Mountains.
As you walk along on you’ll notice the limestone gives way to the volcanic rocks that make up so much of the Jemez Mountains. You’ll also notice a really strong spring gushing a stream out of the side of the mountain here. Sadly its not a hot spring but it is a clean spring which should have nice flowers growing along it in the summer, if the cows don’t eat them. We’ll talk about the gross cows another time.
Rocks. Look far out to the northwest and see the way the rambling hills give way to the San Juan Basin beyond. Out there is the Bisti Badlands and Chaco Canyon National Historic Park and the Navajo Nation and endless miles of desert colored with the washing of time.
Back to our climb up the hill and at last the mesa top opens around us and you can look far to the south and see the Sandia Mountains and the Manzano Mountains and look back to the northwest. This is one of the most unique views in New Mexico, where you can look in so many directions at once and see long distances. If you know a little about the geology you can think about how it all formed over eons, think about the tromping dinosaurs and the receding seas and the fractals in space spinning and you can feel your emotions and your time here, and the music that plays in your mind when you look out of any window, any morning, any evening any day.
Up on Top – Old Stories in the Rocks
At last we get on top of the mesa and the mostly ponderosa pine forest opens around us. This mesa has had people walking and hunting and living and giving birth on it for thousands of years. For us it is a place to visit but for the Jemez Pueblo people this was home for a long time. The Jemez people lived here into the 1600s, a time when many other places like Bandelier were abandoned because of drought and used up resources such as game and firewood. Once streams dried up, the people had to leave.
The western Jemez was full of people from prehistoric time (we don’t really know when the Puebloan people arrived in the Southwest or where they came from). The big mesas of volcanic ash that jut out into the southern deserts near Jemez Springs and Jemez Pueblo have 7 pueblo ruins with more than 1000 rooms and 15 other pueblos with around 500 rooms. There were probably 7000 people living in these villages.
The second largest one is here on Holiday Mesa. Called Kwastiyukwa the village had 1200 rooms and was occupied by Towa speaking people until after the Spanish arrived in New Mexico in 1550. Horrible wars happened between the Spanish and the Jemez people here and across this landscape as the Spanish sought to force the Jemez People into Catholicism and crush their centuries old culture. In the 1600s, the Spanish managed to consolidate the Jemez People from all of the remote Pueblos into what is now Jemez Pueblo. Hundreds of Pueblo people died in the process.
Of the 5 languages spoken among the Puebloan peoples across the Southwest, Towa, the language of Jemez Pueblo is the most endangered. Towa was spoken at Pecos Pueblo, the ruins of which are within Pecos National Historic Park, but now the language is only heard at Jemez and with modern media it will struggle to survive.
We digress. You have now hiked to the top of Holiday Mesa and the ponderosa pine forests are kind of a mess up here. They were logged heavily in the early part of this century and again by the US Forest Service and its contractors through the 1980s when the agency had quotas and logged trees at a loss to the taxpayers. The thickets of trees you see are a result of that logging and fire suppression. But that’s a topic for another post.
If you have a good map or a GPS based map on your smart phone, you can find the ruin of Kwastiyukwa or Big Foot Ruin as some people call it. It is a huge ruin and though its been trampled by cattle you can still find thousands of pieces of pottery and marvel at the sheer scale of the buildings that were here. Remember that all artifacts are protected by the Antiquities Act and must stay exactly where you found them.
Retreat to your car the same way you came. This is one of the great hikes of New Mexico. It is a walk that is beautiful in its own right but is vastly more interesting if you know a few things about the features and history of the area.
Beer of Choice for this Walk
We always bring a beer on our hikes and find an especially beautiful place to drink it. This time we brought the rare and delicious Elixir from Bathtub Row Brewing Coop in Los Alamos. The beer is an ale brewed with Mormon tea and other herbs. It came in a 7.9 ABV. We sat on the edge of the mesa overlooking the Nacimeientos with the distant sound of the creek on the breeze.
This beer was a successful experiment by the brew master at Bathtub Row. Hopefully they will bring this one back. It fostered a wonderful buzz, which may have been from the herbs or from the setting, or from my companion.
Delightful reading as always. Tom.