Zipline Trail

The Zipline Trail is a connector trail between the Tent Rocks Trail in Pueblo Canyon and the Pueblo Canyon Rim Trail.  The YMCA Youth Conservation Corps started it last summer and completed it this week.  I think the recent LA Monitor article that heralded its completion said it's 2,500' long and has 450' elevation gain.   It's a very nice trail but not one for the old and infirm which in today's heat, I almost qualified as!   It has many vertigo-inducing changes of direction and even a VW sized boulder that hangs too far over the trail.  I clung to the boulder to get around it but someone less chicken would have no problem.

To access Pueblo Canyon, I started down the Ranch School Trail in Acid Canyon from the Walkup Center.  I enjoyed seeing all the greenery in Acid Canyon.

I didn't check my GPS to see how far down Pueblo Canyon I went to intersect the western end of the Tent Rocks Trail but there is a 3' tall brown plastic trail marker that says "Tent Rocks Trail".  There are really no tent rocks right at the intersection although there are lots of them at a false trail intersection that I encountered about 10 minutes before.  At the true Tent Rocks Trail intersection, you cross Pueblo Canyon's dry wash and start uphill right at a 3' tall rock cairn.

The Tent Rocks Trail has two large, fallen trees that you have to go around.   The trail goes in and out of dry drainages and has 3 small, wooden bridges.  The third bridge has two of its slats laying on the ground.   Once again, I don't know how far I went on it before I intersected the Zipline Trail but it seemed that it was very close to the eastern terminus of the Tent Rocks Trail.  (The Tent Rocks Trail gives hikers an option to get off the sewer access road in Pueblo Canyon but the trail only goes a mile or two of the long traverse down Pueblo Canyon to the state highway transportation yard.)

At the top of the Zipline Trail, I followed the Pueblo Canyon Rim Trail along the north side of the airport to the Mesa Trail, down into Graduation Canyon and back to the Walkup Center. All the time I walked, thunderheads were steadily building both east and west over the Sangres and the Jemez mountains.  I would have liked a lunch break but instead kept moving.  I didn't eat lunch until I got to my car at 2 pm and then headed to the library to look at the county fair exhibits.  It was raining when I left the library around 3 pm.   My GPS said I did 6 miles. I'm glad I beat the storm but I felt tired enough from the heat that my body thought it was a longer hike even though my mind knew it was only 6 miles! Next challenge is to one day start from my house and go down and up the Zipline!  I much prefer going up a steep hill than down!