A New Year of Hikes

To celebrate the new year, the kids and I went to the Elena Gallegos open space on Tuesday and tromped through the snow for a few hours. The Pino trail leads east up to the mountains, eventually meeting up with the 20 mile Crest trail that runs the length of the Sandias at 10,000'. We didn't hike that much...

About 1/2 mile up, we paused for a picture of the kids:
After nearly a mile we reached the edge of the Forest Service wilderness area, where we decided to turn north and circle back to the parking lot. The trail was more involved than we expected, so our short hike turned into 2.5 miles, with a lot of up and down. The kids were great; here they hit one of the hills:

One of my favorite parts of this area is the topography of the Sandia foothills. Here's a shot of the northern edge of the mountains from about halfway along our hike:

And this is a view south from the same spot:

The snow from a few weeks before was mostly melted on the south-facing slopes, but, as seen above, in the shade and on the north-facing slope, there was still a bit of the white stuff. Much of the trail was muddy from meltoff, especially in stretches where mountain bikers had dug ruts.

And here is my favorite vantage from the hike--looking west across the valley. From this far up, you can see 12,000' Mt. Taylor, an ancient volcano that resulted in the lava fields of El Malpais, near Grants.