Reporting live from Los Alamos, NM

For some reason, my flight from Boston to Dallas went right over Niagara Falls. Maybe my memory of geography is a little hazy, but that doesn't seem right to me. Anyway it was a really cool way to see the falls. They look smaller but no less impressive from 30,000 feet.

I drove the back way up from Albuquerque, over the Jemez and into Los Alamos via the Cerro Grande. I just can't say enough about the beauty of state highway 4.

I was pretty tired when I arrived in town, so I went to bed at about 10 and got up early to go hiking and test out my new gear. My destination for today was Bandelier National Monument, which is adjacent to Los Alamos National Laboratory but somehow in the last two years I never went.

I had about five hours to kill before I needed to go and return my rental car, so I picked a handfull of the shorter trails Bandelier has to offer and hiked all by my lonesome. The first trail was the main tourist loop. This is about a mile long and goes past a variety of archelogical ruins. One in particular, called the Tyuonyi Pueblo, is rather extensive. Most of the ruins are cliff dwellings with hand-carved caves as back rooms.

The trail is paved and mostly flat, and has too many tourists on it. Maybe memorial day weekend isn't the best time for this trail. The weather was gorgeous today too, which probably contributed to the density of old people and little kids.

The next trail I tried was the Cerimonial Cave trail, a 0.5 mile spur off the main loop. This trail is not paved, but is very flat and wide. There are an abundance of Ponderosa pines here that smell great. The Frijoles Canyon is wide here and I found the hike very relaxing. At the end of the trail, there is a series of ladders and steep steps carved into the lava rock (called "tuff") which lead up 140' to a "cave" called Cerimonial Cave. It's not really a cave so much as a large overhang with a kiva in it. The ladder work was fun, except for waiting for the less-ladder inept folks in front of me. This trail had less tourists on it, but was still lacking in a feeling of seclusion.

Finally, I went on the 2.5 mile Frijoles Falls spur. This trail goes from the visitors center to the Rio Grande, passing upper and lower Frijoles Falls on the way. This trail was nearly empty, and just the way I like to hike. The narrower, rougher trail was relatively flat and followed the stream for about 1.25 miles until it reached Upper Frijoles Falls, which was gorgeous. The canyon narrows considerably and the trail gets much more vertical and rugged. The lower falls were not as spectacular, unfortunately, but still nice.

I had lunch at the lower falls, and then turned around - skipping the last mile of the trail and the Rio. I was getting pretty sunburned, tired, and my un-broken-in boots were starting to really pinch my feet.

This takes care of most of the short, easy trails at Bandelier, leaving only the backcountry trails to be investigated. These are more appropriate for overnight hikes with multiple people, but they are definitely on the to-do list.