These are notes from the steno pad made while around the house:

"foot less sore than when hiking" This refers to the one and only snowshoe I've taken this winter.  The trail was well-tamped down and groomed.

"mountain lion and coyote attacks" Woman walking two dogs on Cañada Bonita Trail last week commented about this.  A mountain lion killed a dog on Barranca Mesa and another tried to take a dog in Quemazon Community.  Coyote attacks have occurred to dogs on local trails.  Bayo Canyon Trail had photos of wounds inflicted on dog.

"forest service website and press releases"  Dissatisfaction over delays in reopening Cañada Bonita Trail and deplorable, not-up-to-date forest service website and why doesn't the forest service issue press releases to the local newspaper so people know what progress is being made on rehabbing local trails?

"giving up on self-help books, gave up on my soul"  Thought this when I decided to take back to the library a self-help book I'd found in the non-return section.  It's not like I'm going to greatly change at this point.  Reading a self-help book only frustrates me and makes me think how bad I am.  Same way about Buddhism.  I feel like a bad person reading all the precepts.  I'll never attain saint-hood - not even close!

"trees aren't meant to last forever, nor people" Thought this on witnessing the Las Conchas fire damage along the newly reopened Cañada Bonita Trail.  I loved the forest but will love the burnt area too.  It's all beautiful!

"life is so damned finite - if I volunteer 3 hours, that takes time away from other things I might do"  Been dabbling at volunteering.   Volunteered at the blood drive but had to stay an hour longer because the next shift was late.  Couldn't accomplish much on a writing project when I got home.  It's a trade-off.  The volunteering felt good but I like to write, read and walk too.  Mustn't let volunteering encroach on that.  Maybe find volunteering job that allows reading and writing!

"I'll go to bed as soon as this is over" says husband.  Says me "Yeah, if you're awake"  Husband has tendency to snore while watching TV!

"One need never wonder again - just Google it!"  Ah, yes, my wisdom overwhelms even me!

"plain laziness - lately get such a late start"  Yes, I like to walk every day but sometimes sitting on my butt at the computer and all sorts of little household chores gets me out too late and I never catch up!

"male gossips - biddies without titties"  This when husband and brother are speculating how much sister paid for new used car!  Who cares??

There - got that off my chest!!

New Year's resolutions for this blog:

To change these settings for this blog from Yes to No:  "Add your blog to our listings?"  "Let search engines find your blog?"  I want this to feel more like a private online journal.  People can still find it if they want but why encourage them?  It's not that I'll start writing personal secrets - ha, you were hoping!  Maybe this will help me to make it more informal and more about my thoughts and life, albeit less polished.

Not to title these blog posts.   Maybe that will avoid all the hits on my blog post titled "Excruciatingly Detailed Regurgitation" which is nothing but a deadly dull and boring recitation of a shopping trip to Santa Fe gone wrong.  I think the hits are from 5 year olds using computers without parental supervision!

Now let's see if I can read my notes made while walking on Camp May Road yesterday:

"snow takes away my freedom"  What I meant by this is that with all the trails snow-covered, I can't get out on them because of my bum right foot.  I want the snow so NM doesn't burn up again this year but I'd like to get out on terra firma again one day.

"FS legal dept."  This is because I'm worried that in the Spring when more trails get rehabilitated from the Las Conchas fire damage that the forest service will take their sweet time legally amending the closure order like they did this winter, costing the SW Nordic Club monies, in officially reopening the Nordic Trails.    It got hung up in the legal department and the opening was delayed even though the trail was made more than ready by the volunteers.

"snow stays"  Walking up Camp May Road and looking longingly at the Route which is still full of snow.

"no Xmas tree gathering signs"  These appear on all the side roads along Camp May Road.  Odd that if the side roads are still closed that the forest service would place these signs at each entrance.

"sore foot - snowshoeing less fun"  Not being able to break trail because of my bum foot makes snowshoeing less fun for me.  Snowshoeing on a well-tamped down, groomed trail is boring.

"hoping to get thru winter w/o -20"  So far, so good but the deep freeze didn't happen until February last year.

They Let Me Out Today

Finally escaped from the loving embrace of my family and walked up first two miles of Camp May Road.  Yes, yes, I know I bravely talked of doing a snowshoe as soon as the holidays were over but two loads of laundry this morning took precedence.

Even though it's only a road walk, I felt like I'd come home to be seeing the sights along Camp May Road again!  During the holidays, I avoided it because the traffic is too heavy when the ski area is open.  It was perfect today!   The Route is quite snow-covered and I entertained the idea of snowshoeing on it but my right foot would protest greatly if I broke trail.  Maybe at this point it's best to wait for fresh snow and a newly broken trail?  Who knows what I'll do when they let me loose again tomorrow!

Oh, the sky was a glorious NM blue today.  Some clouds but nothing diminished the beauty of that blue, NM sky and golden afternoon sunshine!   The beauty of a NM winter would even melt the heart of a snowman!

Biding, Biding

No, not Joe!  The holidays drag on.  I eagerly await the return of normal life.  I wonder if anyone has studied how productive the country is between Christmas and New Year's Day?  I'm sure not very because everyone is waiting to be productive again after the holidays are finally over!

The Nordic Ski Trails have officially opened.  Perhaps the snow will all be melted or sublimated by the time I make it up there next week.  Just in case, I'll bring YakTrax AND snowshoes!  The word is that we are entering a long dry, warm spell.   Makes me almost miss the excitement of all the winter storms but maybe I can contain myself.  Only thing is that then we pay for it in the fire season.

Got tired of the sewage treatment plant road so walked on West Road Bypass today.  It's opened to traffic now.  Wind was really blasting me!

Used 18% discount card at Co-op today.  Earned five by volunteering 5 hours yesterday for inventory.  Aim to earn back my yearly membership fee!

Grandson here for sleepover.  Spouse goes out for Chinese carryout soon.  Yes, we'll be swinging from the chandeliers tonight!  Anyway, grandson is a fine young man and we enjoy his company!

Still Biding

Had a chance to go on a snowshoe with a group today but decided not to.  Several reasons:  Cañada Bonita Trail not really officially open yet, ski area and parking lot very crowded during LANL's mandatory Christmas week shut-down, afraid of getting stuck in parking lot if forced to park in unpaved lots.  I could probably think of more but three's enough!

Instead, this morning spouse, grandson and I headed to White Rock.  Spouse and grandson walked from library to thrift shop and back while I walked on path along NM4 to Gate 11 and back.  Then, home to lunch.  Spouse took grandson to Adventures of Tin Tin whilst I dispatched two loads of laundry.

Tomorrow, spouse goes to investment club while I jog on a dirt road.  Then we pick up grandson to take him out to eat.

Friday, I have a small, short volunteer job in the morning so I won't be able to go on the Friday walk but spouse will.  Grandson has declined accompanying us.  Spouse will eat out at one of the Indian casinos with the group.

On New Year's Eve, grandson sleeps over.  He will definitely enliven our usual extremely low key (boring) New Year's Eve "celebration"!

Sunday we try to clean up this pig sty for spouse's New Year's Day Gator-OSU bowl party.  The party is definitely not my idea but the house could use cleaning!

Next week when spouse goes back to work, it will seem strangely quiet here but I'm looking forward to it!

Beautifully warm today!  Love it!  Not sure, though, how much snow will be left next week for me to snowshoe on!

Biding My Time

A lot of snow, a lot of family events and a lot of holidays have conspired to keep me off the trails and plying the asphalt and concrete.  I haven't snowshoed since Pajarito Mountain.  Mostly the past 3 weeks, it's snowed so much that with my snow unworthy car, I'm limited in where I can park - my car will get stuck if it runs over a snowball!  Maybe next week I'll be able to find a well broken trail to snowshoe that also has a snow-free place for me to park the boat.

The Las Conchas Closure will be amended soon.  The Southwest Nordic Ski Club's (SWNSC) blog says that a few trails that have been mitigated (cutting down burnt, hazard trees, etc.) will reopen.  So far, the only ones scheduled to reopen are the Nordic Ski Trails (in part, called the Cañada Bonita Trail/Guaje Canyon Trail 282) at the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area.  The Cañada Bonita/Guaje Canyon Trail 282 will reopen as far as Guaje Canyon overlook.  Pipeline Road will reopen from Quemazon Trail to the Guaje Canyon Trail 282 at the overlook into Valle de los Posos.  The Nail Trail, off West Jemez Road, will reopen all the way to Camp May Road (the map on the SWNSC blog indicates that Forest Road 2998 is included).  I'm happy about this!!

Small Snowshoe on Pajarito Mountain Jeep Road

Hiking group was having a joint snowshoe/cross country ski today at Pajarito Mountain Ski Area.  When I drove past the the bottom of Camp May Road, no one was there to bum a ride up with.  Camp May Road was OK up until I was almost at the ski area and then I met a snowplow coming down.  I moved over to let the snowplow pass but then my car, hardly a snow-worthy vehicle, couldn't move forward.  I put it in 1st gear and eventually it started uphill again.  Next time I hitch a ride!

Only two snowshoers showed up and three cross country skiers.  We snowshoers headed up Zero East Road while the skiers headed up the Logging Road.  One of the snowshoers was really slow - only her second time snowshoeing.  Due to babying my right foot with the bum posterior tibial tendon, this was my first time snowshoeing since the winter of 2009-2010.  I felt bogged down with the very slow uphill progress so I said goodbye to the other two even though I'm no speedster.  I made it as far as the 4-way intersection at the antennas and then the grooming ended.  In deference to my right foot, I decided not to risk breaking trail to the back of the mountain and headed back down.  On the way, I met up with the faster snowshoer.  She was almost where I turned around and somehow she made it back down before me because I saw her car drive away as I approached the ski lodge.  I think she took a short cut!

My right foot was OK.  I kept adjusting the strap so it wasn't pinching my right medial arch too much.  It was a quintessentially sunny-turquoise-blue-sky-New-Mexico-day!   I was elated to have successfully snowshoed at least part way up the mountain.  I was envious, though, of a woman snowshoer I met on the way down who was climbing straight up the mountain on the ski runs, breaking trail in the deep snow!  I have to be happy, though, for what I can do.  Until I get a bionic foot, breaking trail in deep snow is off my to-do list, much as I'd like to!

On the drive down, the snow was slushy and I stuck to the uphill side of the road since it was snow-free.  One of the cross country skiers, a child-sized woman, advised me, when I told her about getting stuck on the way up, to stick to the middle of the road and don't move over!  She's small but has big cojones!!  Fortunately, I met no oncoming traffic!

Since I only managed 3 miles on the snowshoe today and 3 miles on the snowy Canyon Rim Trail this past Monday, I stopped at the closed West Road bypass for a 2 mile walk to balance my mileage account!

Quemazon Trail in the Golden Afternoon Light

Finally wrested myself from the Pueblo Canyon Rim-Canyon Rim trails loop and went up the Quemazon Trail as far as Pipeline Road.

The trail tread has been mostly restored since it was bulldozed as a fire break during Las Conchas fire.  Regardless, the mish mash of fallen dead trees to either side of the trail is butt ugly - that is until the golden afternoon sun light shines upon all the devastation.  Somehow, that makes it beautiful.  Yet and still, I wish I had magic powers and could make all the ugly, hacked up timber disappear.   One saving grace is that it's unlikely that mountain lions could bound out at me from all that mess; more likely, they would use the trail like civilized beings.  So, convincing myself of that, I kept looking behind to make sure no predators were tracking me.  Keeps me in the moment, I suppose!

On the way down, I pondered about why Los Alamos Canyon is such a deep, mostly straight canyon while Pueblo Canyon is dissected into multiple branches in its upper reaches.  Los Alamos Canyon is south of the Quemazon Trail while several Pueblo Canyon branches are north.  One Pueblo Canyon tributary wraps right up to where the Quemazon Trail intersects Pipeline Road.  Pipeline Road then parallels that downhill for a while.    All I can figure is that Los Alamos Canyon has a more direct path to follow from the high mountains while the Pueblo Canyon drainage seems to start lower and is broken up by ridges running this way and that.

Near the bottom, I startled at a long, moving shadow to my right.  When I turned, I saw a woman I know. She was just completing the Quemazon Nature Trail loop.  It was late afternoon and we talked briefly as we continued downhill.  She was faster so we said goodbye and she headed off toward Western Area and I toward my car parked at the Quemazon trailhead.

Route Maintenance Extravaganza

Monday, picked up 4 grocery bags full of trash in the vicinity of  the Route.  By the time I got to FR2998, it was late afternoon so I decided to walk down Camp May Road because the shadows along the Route reminded me that mountain lions like to feed at dusk.   The bags of trash were too heavy so I had cached them periodically in several places along the road.  When I got to my car, I drove back to pick up the bags.

Tuesday, did some useless work to delineate the Route better.  During the back burn to establish a fire line to fight the Las Conchas fire, some of the logs that mark the Route burned.  It's also marked with rock cairns but they're hard to see at times.  On one section, I really overdid it with lining both sides with logs.  When I could, I confined the path to a bare dirt since it's probably not good to spread out too much in an area recovering from fire.   After this work, I was tired and since walking on a paved road is far easier, I went out to Camp May Road at the Shotgun Shell dirt parking area and completed my walk.

Today, I undid a minor re-route that I'd done Tuesday because I realized that it wasn't at all obvious and where it was originally was further above a tiny drainage and drier.   Also today, near the Ocean, I decided that logs on both sides were overkill and I lined only one side of the path.  I wanted to stay more left where there was bare dirt and it seemed the way was obvious.  In the process of doing this, I discovered a short, ready-made trail connection and it made sense to start using that.

Today, I collected 3 more grocery bags of trash, some which wasn't really along the Route but I could see it glinting so I picked it up.  That's it, though, for my annual trash pickup!   Today, I didn't quite go up to FR2998 but instead finished my walk on Camp May Road.  Once again, I'm superstitious about walking by myself along the Route when it's feeding time for the animals.  Speaking of animals, I saw a total of 4 deer today!  Again, I had to drive up to retrieve the cached trash bags.  They'll go out in my trash tomorrow.  Gee, if any neighbor looks in our trash can, they're going to think "They sure drink a lot of beer!"

I may have seen the resident jogger again today.  I parked where West Road is blocked off and saw a jogger just coming off the steep trail the bicyclists have built that shortcuts up to the Ocean.  In the past, I went up and down that shortcut twice but it's steep so I'll stick to going up the old dirt road remnant just below Camp May Road, hopping the guardrail before the first steep hill on Camp May Road and crossing the paved road to go up to the Ocean.

I realize that any maintenance I do on the Route is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are so many fire-damaged trees along the Route which will surely topple one day.  Today, at Guardrail Hill, below the second major climb Camp May Road makes, I happened to notice a towering burnt snag, the very bottom of it chiseled narrow by the back burn used to fight Las Conchas.  It leans like the Tower of Pisa and I hope when it falls no one is there and it falls away  from the Route.

Red Dot to Blue Dot Tuesday and Broken Mesa Ruins Wednesday

The Red Dot to Blue Dot hike on Tuesday was with the women's group.  I almost bailed the night before because we got a little snow in Los Alamos.  I thought sure the trail would be snowy and icy but the hiking leader, who lives in White Rock, emailed everyone in the morning after she checked the trail that it was clear!

When we first started on the Red Dot, we heard cranes overhead.  There were waves and waves of them flying in fluid V's and squawking.  Some flew so low that I could for the first time see what truly large birds they are.

I did my usual unimpressive, slow hobble down the Red Dot but who cares since I made it without falling. The group wasn't in a huge hurry as they are not speedsters either.  We stopped often to admire the petroglyphs etched into the black basalt and the lingering fall colors.

At Pajarito Springs, they all stopped for a snack.  I prefer to stop for a full lunch but this group does snacks instead.  I wasn't sure how long I'd have so I waited until they resumed hiking and then ate 2 Raw Revolution bars while we walked on fairly level ground.  Managed to clean my teeth while walking also!

We found the crowned lady petroglyph (if you reach the rock with "Toast" and "Chook" (sic), you've passed the turnoff) but, really, "she" looks more like an anatomically correct man!

They stopped for another snack at a viewpoint above the Rio Grande and I ate my mix of roasted, salted edamame and peanuts and raw sunflower seeds.  I figured I needed the energy for the climb out of White Rock Canyon.

In the canyon, we were blessed with sunny weather, no snow and ice.  Hiking up the Blue Dot, we were blessed with overcast skies so we didn't overheat - we are, after all, postmenopausal women and we overheat easily!  I like to get elevated heart rate when walking uphill but since I was behind someone that was doing a good pace, I didn't worry about going faster and stopped often to look back at the Rio Grande.

Today's hike started at one of the gates along NM4 outside of Pajarito Acres.  The directions said Gate 8a and .8 mile from Monte Rey Drive S. but I drove right past because I didn't see the cars parked behind the dirt and gravel piles that the state highway transportation department has there.  Also, my stubborn mind was sure the directions were mistaken since the true Broken Mesa trailhead starts further south on NM4.  I was able make it back in time for the start of the hike.

We followed the Potrillo-Water Canyon connector trail, which parallels NM4, to the north-most entrance to lower Water Canyon, the one that goes past the orange, swiss cheese cliffs.  We walked down Water Canyon, past a man holding an overexcited dog that was eager to greet all 16 hikers, to the Broken Mesa Trail crossover.  We followed that uphill to the Saddle between Broken Mesa and Beer Mesa (explanation forthcoming).  Up we went on the north side of Broken Mesa to view the Indian ruins.  No one seemed much interested in them.  One woman commented that she finds Indian ruins underwhelming.  I would have been happy to eat lunch there but Indian ruins are best appreciated in the company of those who appreciate the spirit of the place.  So, down we went to the saddle again and then up Beer Mesa, so named for the day a female hiker drank a bottle of beer at lunch!

Lunch was a hurried affair.  The brave alphas sat at the very edge of the mesa.  I chose to sit on a basalt rock with a small field of basalt between me and the edge.  Still, I had splendid views of Water Canyon.  With so little time to linger over lunch, I had to clean my teeth (I like clean teeth!) while we hiked back to the saddle again.

There we proceeded back down to Water Canyon and then went up to the Water Canyon-Potrillo Canyon saddle.  Down we went into Potrillo Canyon then up the mesa between the two canyons.   Dead trees have been extensively chipped here like along the Powerline Trail, perhaps to create a firebreak.

I thought that we'd go out to the end of the mesa and then back down to the Potrillo Canyon-Water Canyon connector trail to get back to our cars but our leader took a right at the powerline and we walked over to the canyon with the big electric substation.    They all went down a cliffy, snowy area but I walked just a little past that and went down on more of a trail, marked by a tattered, white plastic flag hanging from a tree branch.  Magically, we were exactly back at our cars!

I thanked the leader, telling him that now I had many ideas for hikes to take this winter.  I usually always go on the standard trails in that area - Potrillo, Water and Powerline - but there's a lot of powerline
right-of-ways and trails not in any guidebook that allow many other options.

The leader kept a very fast pace but he'd always stop and wait for the slower ones to catch up.  My GPS said we did 6.44 miles.  We got back to the cars around 2 pm.  Weather was sunny and gorgeous!  Cranes were in short supply.  We heard them several times but couldn't see them overhead.