El Morro

This past week has been a busy one in terms of outdoors stuff. I went on a field trip with Allyson and Ryan to Tent Rocks National Monument on Thursday, and I will post an entry about this trip later in the week. We had planned on a camping trip for the weekend, but Friday was a horribly rainy day here, so we scrapped that and waited for Saturday, a bright, warm New Mexico day. Since we were looking at a day trip, we went to El Morro National Monument, about two hours west of Albuquerque.

El Morro is a sheer sandstone bluff rising from the Ponderosa forest along the Continental Divide southwest of Grants. On the northeast side of the bluff, a secluded basin fills with rainwater and snowmelt to create a perpetual pool 10-12 feet deep. For centuries, this has been an oasis along the route between population centers such as the Acoma and Zuni pueblos, as well as Chaco Canyon to the north. Atop the bluff are ruins from an Ancestral Puebloan site, and along the wall near the pool are petroglyphs and inscriptions by indigenous peoples, Spanish conquistadors, and Anglo travelers, making El Morro a bit of a microcosm of the intersection of cultures in the Southwest. Here is a view of the bluff looking up from the edge of the pool.
We hiked to the pool edge and along the inscriptions, some of which are incredibly intricate. We then climbed to the top of the bluff. It is a good ascent (~250 feet vertically), and the elevation at the base is 7200', making for a good hike. Once at the top, we followed a trail carved into the sandstone by the CCC as it meanders along the top. From here there are excellent views of the surrounding landscape, marked by the Zuni Mountains and pine forests, as well as a few other sandstone outcroppings. Here are Allyson and Ryan at the top of the bluff looking north; the edge of the bluff behind them is above the pool.
The top of the bluff is a contoured field of both sandstone and a harder layer of rock that has protected the underlying stone, which is why El Morro is here today, while the sandstone around it has eroded away. The rain from Friday had left puddles and pools in the depressions, some of which were an eerie milky white from the sediments and the white rock. Isaac said several times during the hike, "I like milk." Some of these pools blocked the trail, forcing us to do some trailblazing to the side of the marked path, including some impressive scaling by young children and a pregnant woman. Ryan, for one, did an excellent job of tackling some of the tough spots, and I am convinced that Nathan would love this hike, fraught as it is with peril.

We stopped at a few spots to eat and take pictures of both the kids and the landscape. The sheer walls of the bluff, which drop hundreds of feet in places, make for a surreal experience, almost like staring down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The juniper and pinon at the top of the bluff made it feel more like Utah or Wyoming than New Mexico, but the intense blue of the sky was distinctly New Mexican, a deep blue I haven't seen anywhere else.

After hiking down on the shady north side of the bluff, with pockets of snow on the ground in places, we worked our way back to the visitor center. There is a campground near the visitor center, but we'll wait until the nighttime lows are above freezing at El Morro to go tent camping. And next spring, when I'm carrying the baby in the front carrier, and Summer is in her post-pregnancy shape, we'll do it again. Here is an after picture of the kids; they look pretty good for having hiked three miles at nearly 8000 feet.