[joker]

There for a good friend's wedding on Sunday, we flew in Friday night with a plan to hike all day Saturday. Dinner Friday night kind of nuked me. We shoulda gone for some great New Mexican food but blew our dining opportunity on a place that was trying but was a bit too rich and not interesting enough. At any rate, w/o going into details this led to a slow start for me on Satuday, and we modified our plan and instead of our original plan of hiking up and tramming down, we took the tram up with the idea of hiking for the afternoon up around the top of the mountain. We started with a nice walk along the crest for a few miles.

5K-above-albuquerque

That wasn't going to be enough, so from the north summit (high point of 10,600 ft) we headed down the Crest Spur trail (or something like that) to the La Luz trail, and headed down it until our turnaround time, which I'd aimed at being out high along the face as the sun set. We met a local who told us about "the old trail" which is much steeper and quicker than the new trail, but he suggested we stay on the new trail given all the climber's trails and such that could lead us astray. We descended to a ridge spur and then down into a canyon.

view-from-la-luz-trail

I saw the old trail to our right at a few key switchbacks. It indeed appeared to avoid some big flat-ish stretches. But we stuck to the old trail to descend, and when we were near the bottom of the canyon, we decided it was time to turn around, having gone past our turnaround itme with a gamble that the old trail would save us time on the return. It did. We enjoyed a little scramble to a nubbin on a ridge, and continued along the beautiful La Luz trail which is etched into the face of tihs long steep-faced mountain a few hundred feet beneath its crest. My plan was to get out on one of the bigger spur that the trail traverses in hopes of having a nice view of both the Rio Grande valley as well as the cliffs of Sandia Mountain.

sandia-mountain-sunset

sandia-sunset-with-yanna

rio-grande-sunset

It was getting quite cold quite quickly, so Yanna booked off as I packed up the camera and tripod, and then hustled after her. We had just enough light to avoid headlamps for the remaining mile-ish among the trippy drip-castle rock cliffs and scrubby desert pine with the giant Rio Grande valley beneath. It it hard to describe the wonderful feeling as twilight came on and the lights of the city came up, providing a new counterpoint to the grand natural environment around us. We got to the tramway right as true darnkess came on. The wind was now quite intense, and it was tough to get a crisp shot of the scene even with a decent-but-small Gitzo tripod:

albuquerque-lights

Yanna waited in the warm bar while I attempted to get a decent shot, and then I packed up, we hustled over the tram, and were the last two allowed on the departing load. Perfect!!

[the Zachster]

Good for you for getting in a great hike and a wedding! I love the Albuquerque lights shot!

[antje23]

Ah yes, I remember being brutalized at the age of 10 by the old La Luz trail. And yet I kept going back.