Turtleback Hike

This is Turtleback Mountain as seen from our front porch. Yesterday, I went on a hike with a couple of friends around the back side of the mountain.

Lloyd and Mark were my hiking companions. We parked on the east side of the Rio Grande and took a ridge trail up the northern end of the mountain beside some deep canyons filled with amazing jumbles of rock. The Rio Grande is in a rift valley with the native volcanic rock thousands of feet deep. The valley is filled with sediment from millions of years of erosion to the north.

Here's the summit from our takeoff point.

We hiked up a well trodden trail to the Crystal Cave. Not much crystal but some interesting quartz in the ceiling (too dark to photograph.) It was in the 80's and the sun was intense, but there was a nice breeze to keep us from frying.

Here's a shot from the backside of the mountain looking east toward the Jornada del Muerto, (Journey of Death) part of the Camino Real that extended from Santa Fe south to Mexico City. Lloyd remarked on the vast expanse, but I thought it was only half vast. To see vast, we would have had to have reached the summit, something we didn't quite have the legs for yesterday...maybe with an earlier start in the cool of the morning.

Here's Mark on the way back down with the Rio Grande and Truth or Consequences below us.