Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Hike of the Week in Pictures

With Mrs. de-I in Chicago with Motherrocker and family, I decided to take a nice long hike. I chose to do the same hike I did two weeks ago. Since I wrote about it last time, I thought I would take some pictures this time.

THE CLIMB UP CIENAGA TRAIL
It's hard to get the perspective with a cell phone camera but this trail is very steep, climbing 1700 fee in just over 2 miles at the very beginning of the hike. The good news is that that's just about the worst of the climbing until the very end.

SCENE FROM THE CREST TRAIL
The Crest Trail transverses the mountain. This section goes around one of the various peaks.


LOTS OF FOREST
Unlike the west side of the mountain, the east gets much more moisture and therefore has more vegetation. One of the nice parts about this particular hike is that the majority of it looks like this which makes for a cooler hike and makes it a bit easier on the feet.


VALLEYS AT THE END
This is one of the three valleys one must transverse at the end of the hike. It entail three descents and two ascents, the last of which is a bitch coming at the end of 11+ miles.



WATER!
A pretty rare occurrence in the Sandia's. Most of the time when you run into running water it is a spring that has come out to the surface from a layer of porous rock. This one comes right at the trail head.

5 comments:

alexis said...

wow, gorgeous!!!! I hope next time I'm in New Mexico the weather will permit a hike like this.

Although given my lowered standards for "steep" now, you may have to slow the pace down quite a bit.

Anonymous said...

I'd love to be able to take you around some of the trails at any pace you'd like

stef said...

Looks beautiful! So all these pics are taken with your phone? That's pretty good quality!

Anonymous said...

How lovely! Those pictures make me want to hike - if only hiking didn't involve all that pesky exercise.

Anonymous said...

I like the pics! Nice addition.