The Trails Be Open!!!!

Friday afternoon I was sitting in a bar with business colleague, friend, and sometime hiking partner John the Grain talking mostly about a mutual client we have when out of the corner of my eye I notice on one of the two televisions above the bar the words,

"Sandia Mountain Wilderness Open 8 AM Saturday."

I stop my conversation and exhort John to check this out via his iPhone and sure as shootin' it's true. John says straight out we need to go. I call Wild Bill who was going to do the Trail of Death with me and he is totally cool with that change.

We arrived at the South Crest Trail trail head at five of eight. The barrier is down and there is only one other car there. We're getting our gear on when this fellow in a Park Service truck goes driving up with his arm and hand out of the window shaking like he's angry or something. We're thinking we're going to get yelled at for jumping the gun. But no, he is like smiling and pumped because (to quote him) "we're back in business". I guess it gets a bit boring to be a park ranger when the parks are all closed.

We talked for a little while because we were kind of surprised that they had opened so soon after the rains started. But he told us the whole science of ground sampling, and taking samples of trees, weigh them, then dry them, and weigh them again to see how much moisture they have. These desert trees are really effective at sopping up moisture whether from air humidity or the ground.

And as we started the hike we were amazed at how wet the ground was. Guess they got rain there last night. We didn't see too many people until we were well on our way back down. But everyone we saw was pretty giddy...as were we.