Hike South Mountain

A new Hike is now available at the Valles Caldera and what's cool about this hike is that you don't have to take a van back and forth plus it's only 5 bucks. It is a long hike if you do the whole thing (10 miles or so), but the good news here is you don't have to do the whole thing. The hike starts at the Valles Grande Staging area where you park your car. You can hike just to the historic headquarters area or continue and head south down VC02 until you connect to the trails that take you up south mountain. You could stop and turn around anywhere along the way.

It's not a loop hike so you go back the same way you came, but I am sure in the future it will be connected into a fantastic loop back to the Valle Grande Staging Area.

Get out there an enjoy this new opportunity to hike the VCNP!

Here is the link to the VCNP's site with info on this hike:
http://www.vallescaldera.gov/comevisit/hike/hike_routemaps.aspx#south

A Great Hike

Saturday, Greg Kendall led a hike on the "East Rim" of the Valles Caldera that was sponsored by Los Amigos de Valles Caldera and co-sponsored by the Pajarito Environmental Education Center. It's an incredible hike that goes into land that is normally closed to the public, but we were approved to enter for this special hike. We had a large group of 34 people and one baby!

The group of hikers rode the ski lift up Pajarito, jumped the VCNP fence, hiked down the South face of Pajarito to Valle Canyon Pass, then up the North side of Cerro Grande, up to the top and then after a good snack, hiked on to the Bandelier route of Cerro Grande back to the Cerro Grande route parking lot near the junction of Hwy 4 and Forest Road 289.

You can view photos from the Trip HERE.