Wow - how innovative can I be?  (I'm making fun of myself!)   Instead of walking the bottom two miles of Camp May Road yesterday,  I drove two miles up and walked the top two miles to the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area and all the way around the Camp May Community Park loop.  Whee!!  The upper half of Camp May Road seems less steep than the bottom half.  Camp May Road dry except past Oxbow Road parking and then there was some tamped down snow and ice on the sides of the road.  In the few shady parts, road surface was thinly snow-covered but not bad.

Interesting studying the topography from the roadway - next time, bring binoculars.  The area between Camp May Road and Los Alamos Canyon seems so spacious since all the trees burned in the Las Conchas wildfire.  Could fit in a lot of cross country ski trails and snowshoe trails and hiking trails.  Would love to explore that area when snow melts.

In this same area, and between Townsight ski run and parking for Oxbow Road, saw, just below the guardrail, one of the little house-shaped wood signs on a metal stake that the forest service uses.  Usually these appear near the beginning of forest roads off Camp May Road.  Hard to tell if there was ever a truly a forest road there because t's now a burnt, rocky area and I saw no trace of a road.  Regardless, I'll add this to my springtime explore list.

When I got to the ski hill, I was happy that the ski lodge door was unlocked.  Nice to use real bathroom!  In the dining area, I took a ski area brochure.  It shows tiny flame symbols in the burnt east and west sides of Pajarito Mountain to indicate they are closed.

Carefully made my way down all the stairs, which can be slippery, to the parking lot.  Continued past boulder barrier and up groomed hill to Camp May Community Park.  The decrepit pit toilets have been replaced with modern ones.  Saw lots of bunny tracks.  Could hear grooming machines on the mountain.

Groomed walkway ended at Mother Lift but then I followed vehicle tracks and didn't sink.  Private vehicles can't go up to Camp May Community Park until the spring melt but ski hill vehicles have obviously gone up.  Grooming started again, past uppermost parking area, for Salamander Gully, an easy ski run.  I debated going on this back down to the Mother Lift but when it got just a tad steeper, I chickened out and instead followed old snowshoe tracks at the bottom of the park road to close the loop.

I could hear whoops and hollers as I got close to the ski area parking lot.  A van load of kids from the local Y were getting ready to snowshoe the Cañada Bonita Trail.

As I walked down Camp May Road, a neighbor driving by greeted me.  He'd gone out to Cañada Bonita meadow with his dog.

It was a beautiful day.  No wind and the snow sparkled dazzlingly under a clear, blue sky.  On way down, I noticed some of the aspen trunks are turning khaki green so they probably survived the Las Conchas wildfire.