ABQjournal: Leaders Save Wilds at the City’s Edge By Bob Howard, Wilderness Advocate

[The Sandia Mountains] loom as timeless sentinels on our horizon, as Albuquerque’s “Acropolis”— so familiar in its beckoning wildness and blissful solitude.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of an important step in preserving the Sandia Mountains. It is a story worth remembering.

Gazing up at Sandia Crest, I think of the leadership that has preserved some of New Mexico’s grandest wilderness areas. In a less frantic and driven world, one might think such gems of public land wilderness could preserve themselves. But as early as the 1920s, farsighted leaders understood that in the face of ever-growing development pressures, wilderness areas would persist for our grandchildren’s children to savor only if we deliberately protect them while we can. …

Who benefits from half a century of bipartisan efforts to preserve areas such as the Sandias? To my Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican conservationist way of thinking, we all do.

We earn the blessing of future generations for our restraint in leaving some of New Mexico’s still-wild landscape for them to know and enjoy. We all benefit, too, from the fact that our wild Sandia “Acropolis” stands above us, visible throughout Albuquerque and the surrounding valley. It enriches our busy lives with the scenic grandeur of its lofty, well protected wildness. Even if we never set foot within its boundaries, the Sandia Mountain Wilderness is a pillar of what makes Albuquerque unique.

What metropolis would not envy us this wilderness setting! …

Viewing the wilderness crest of the Sandias reminds us that it is the land of enchantment we must preserve for all who will follow us.

Great piece by Chantal Foster on a one or two day trip to Bandelier in the Jemez Mountains and Santa Fe National Forest, featuring waterfalls, ruins and a ceremonial kiva (with photos):
Duke City Fix ROADTRIP: Bandelier Nat’l Monument
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Here are some photos by MRudd at Bandelier with visitors Plamen and Susan in May 2002.

Tyonyi Ruins

doorway and window in cliff

long climb to ceremonial cave & kiva

restored kiva in ceremonial cave

First of all, turning 50 is better than the alternative. While I’m no senior citizen, I’m surely not middle aged anymore — unless I’m living to 100. I’m afraid the glass isn’t half empty — it’s 5/8ths empty, maybe 2/3rds.

Still it was a good excuse for an in-town party and another party in the woods. In-town, a couple of dozen friends came over for a potluck cookout and cakes. We had a good time and even stayed up past 9pm — woo-hoo.

For the weekend, a dozen of us trekked to a sweet little spot I’d visited the week before. The place is called Resumidero and we all loved it on first sight. It is a long, flat meadow between two rushing streams, surrounded by dense woods on the edge of the San Pedro Parks Wilderness. It was perfect — up until it was ruined. But I get ahead of myself. …
Continue reading San Pedro Parks Wilderness Birthday Trip →

The Great Old Broads for Wilderness have released their calender of events for 2005! The groups unique, passionate voices are needed in many places on many issues that threaten our nation’s wild places. Join the Broads as they do Wilderness events in New Mexico. For more information, contact Rose Chilcoat at: 970-385-9577, rose@greatoldbroads.org

Days in the Desert IV – Jemez Mountains, NM

Date: May 20-22

Cost: $70 incl. meals and camping

If you want to understand the effects of grazing on our desert riparian areas, this is the workshop for you! We gather Friday afternoon at an undeveloped campsite near La Cueva for dinner and to begin our awakening to the way streams in the desert should look. Scientists from the University of New Mexico will train us out in the field to systematically assess the health of a riparian area. We will spend a day visiting an ungrazed stretch of creek as our reference site, where you will be able to see what optimal conditions look like and to practice using the assessment tools. Sunday, we will visit an overgrazed, impacted stream, and continue to learn how to evaluate the health of the stream. Our weekend will conclude with a wrap-up Sunday afternoon. Folks are welcome to arrive early or stay longer to enjoy the beautiful Jemez Mountains, hiking trails, and hot springs.

Valle Vidal Broadwalk – northeast of Taos, NM

Date: June 23-27

Cost: $90 incl. meals and camping

Potential oil and gas leasing threaten the Valle Vidal, a lush mountain basin in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Donated to the American people in 1982 by Pennzoil, the Valle Vidal is managed by the Carson National Forest primarily for its wildlife, as well as its outstanding scenic and recreational opportunities. However, a forest management plan has never been developed for this area. The time for public input into the decision process is now. The Santa Fe Broadband is helping host this Broadwalk, so that Broads from all over can experience this special place and learn to speak for its protection. Folks from the Valle Vidal Coalition will lead us on hikes and talk about this special place. Forest Service District Ranger Ron Thibedeau will give us agency insight and a tour of the Valle. Tweeti Blancett, NM rancher, will share the horrors of oil and gas development on her ranch and adjoining BLM lands. Broads will help the Forest Service with a service project. We’ll be camping at a Forest Service campground. Cost includes camping fees, 4 breakfasts and dinners, and speakers.

To reserve your spot for any of these events, send full payment or a $50 deposit per event per person to Great Old Broads for Wilderness, PO Box 2924, Durango, CO 81302. Please include an email address if you have one. Detailed information on logistics, packing, and agenda will be sent to registered participants. More information is also available at www.greatoldbroads.org

Cocoposts: Ladrone Mountains

From The Place Names of New Mexico, Robert Julyan:

Sierra Ladrones, Spanish “thieves mountains'” named because Navajo and Apache raiders of the settlement long the Rio Abajo would take stolen stock here, safe from pursuit in the mountains’ steep and treacherous canyons. Later, non-Indian rustlers and highwaymen used these rugged mountains as a hideout, and legends abound of treasure still hidden here. Often called simply Los Ladrones. Highest elevation, 9,210; Ladron Peak is 9,143ft.

The Ladrones is a nice long day trip and even better for car camping if you’re prepared. The road tends to be rocky, not muddy. [keep reading]

ABQjournal: Hike Through Diablo Canyon Area Spotlights Early Human Presence in North America By Patrick Miller, For the Journal

WHAT: “12,000 Years of Santa Fe History” — hikes led by The New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies
WHEN: Periodically through Oct. 15
WHERE: Santa Fe area and northern Rio Grande Valley
HOW MUCH: $45 for Friends of Archaeology members; $55 for the general public. For information, including dates and destinations, contact the Office of Archaeological Studies at 827-6343.

On the windswept mesa overlooking Diablo Canyon, near the city of Santa Fe’s Buckman well field, are some of the earliest signs of human existence in North America. Shiny flecks of obsidian sparkle in the afternoon sun; a blanched petroglyph gazes from the smooth face of a boulder.

Of all the sites where Charles Hannaford, an archaeologist for the state’s Office of Archaeological Studies, and his colleague Steve Post lead public hikes, this one stands apart.

It’s a very unusual site, explains Hannaford, because it dates back 10,000 years— to Paleoindian times. Paleoindian sites are more common at lower elevations, says Hannaford, and the state didn’t even know this site existed until the late 1970s, when an amateur artifact collector was arrested for pillaging the site. The collector relinquished the 900 artifacts that he plucked from the area and gave archaeologists detailed notes about the site that he had compiled over two years.

The man’s work destroyed the archaeological value of the site, Hannaford says as he gathers the group in front of a stone structure. “There is no context.” …

Hannaford said the predominant migration theory holds that people trickled into North America around 12,000 years ago from Siberia over a now-submerged thousand-mile-wide land bridge in the Bering Sea. A more recent, competing theory points to what Hannaford called a possible maritime route along the coastlines of North America. This theory suggests wayfarers roamed the Pacific coast as far south as Chile instead of moving immediately into the continent’s interior.

A combination of both is the most likely explanation of Paleoindian presence in North America, he said.

“The various data suggests that there were multiple migrations. Linguists feel that there were probably three languages, and geneticists suggest four to five founding lineages,” he said. “Today’s Native Americans are descendants of these migrations.”

Regardless of how Paleoindians wound up at the Diablo Canyon site, the fact that they settled here is strange, he said. The area would probably not have been particularly rich with big game, which Paleoindians pursued across plains like those in Eastern New Mexico, Hannaford said.

“There were probably herd fragments here, but they may not have been hunting here at all. It may have been ceremonial. That’s one of the mysteries of this site,” he said.

Nor, said Post, do archaeologists know why these ancient people left. Perhaps as the weather got warmer, streams and arroyos became unreliable and without a steady water supply, animals drifted away. Perhaps the human population began to dwindle.

Post speculated that once the site was abandoned, it may have lain untouched until the 1200s, when descendants of those early residents settled in the area.