Took myself to Cerro Grande yesterday. Trail's been closed since last June's Las Conchas fire but was reopened Monday. It's been rerouted. Everyone complained (not me) about the old route because it was straight up. (Bandelier National Monument purposely calls the way up Cerro Grande a route and not a trail but I call it both.)
The reroute doesn't start until just above where it used to drop into Frijoles Canyon. Now, instead of going downhill into Frijoles and then having to immediately drag oneself uphill to the high pass meadow, hikers can contour left onto the unnamed slope south of Cerro Grande, through a mature forest of conifers and aspens.
I could see lots of work had been done to clear a trail over to the high pass meadow - lots of cut up trees. The forest here sustained patchy burn damage. There are some amazingly massive trees alongside the trail and it even passes between two of them. I must have just missed the peak aspen display since the brilliant leaves were now on the forest floor, instead of dangling from the trees. I have to say, even though I appreciated walking through this thick forest, it looks like it could use a prescribed burn before a catastrophic one occurs - too many trees.
At the high pass, near the meadow where we saw a bear cavorting this year among the dandelions, I could see the Bandelier rangers obliterated the old trail into Frijoles Canyon with branches and logs. From here, yellow diamonds briefly follow the old straight-up-the-mountain route before veering off sharply right (east). Now begins a series of 6 or so long traverses that take you through a partially burnt forest and the large meadow up to the false summit. The meadow traverses take you near where the 2000 Cerro Grande fire originated in the big bowl where Frijoles Canyon starts.
The burnt forest has a thick layer of slippery pine needles underfoot - not pleasant. In the meadow, I could look downhill and see yellow diamonds out of order, on the traverse below the one I was on. I'm afraid that hikers will shortcut straight downhill to the markers they can most easily see because sometimes the yellow diamonds play hide and seek. In one case, two arrow diamonds were placed at an angle so as not to be visible from the immediate marker below.
It will be interesting to see how the "ground truth" of hikers' feet trample the route out. When that happens, it will also be easier to walk on because walking in a tussock grass meadow or over slippery pine needles is not easy. Depending on how this route develops the longer, eastern route may seem more attractive because traversing back and forth is not my favorite way to go up a mountain if I can clearly see the top (or in this case, the false summit). I did, however, religiously follow the yellow diamonds but I can't control what other hikers do.
On top of Cerro Grande, which is now ringed by a severely burnt black conifer forest, I could hear the wind sounding like a freight train approaching the unprotected peak. Maybe the wind is why I saw no other hikers (although it didn't seem at all windy in the forest). Even though an interesting assortment of clouds were forming in the sky, it remained sunny albeit cool.
At first I sat on a rock to eat lunch but I didn't feel comfortable with my back to the blackened woods so I ate standing up, eying the woods in case something terrible came tearing out. There's something eerie about a completely scorched forest - even the dirt is burnt black. Yet and still, Cerro Grande is still beautiful and I plan to go back one day. And yes, although I hate to say this, the fire really opened up tremendous views from Cerro Grande into the Valles Caldera National Preserve. It's perfectly obvious now just how achingly close the Preserve is to Cerro Grande and to Los Alamos and despite the Las Conchas fire damage to its cerros and valles, it too remains beautiful.
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