9/30-10/3/2009: San Pedro Parks Wilderness, NM

We escaped west Texas every fall for the past several years to backpack in Rocky Mountain National Park to catch the aspen changing. Due to limited vacation with an impending move and a baby on the way we opted for something closer. My original intent was to hike the Windsor Trail into Puerto Nambe in the Pecos Wilderness. There are some tremendous aspen groves in the area and the only time I had seen them in the past was on a snowshoe trip. The more I thought about it I decided for something a bit less steep as my wife was 29 weeks pregnant and we were taking all of the kids.


We left town around 5:30 Friday afternoon, headed for Sumner State Park outside of Ft. Sumner, NM. We arrived right at sundown. We came across a little western diamondback warming itself on the road. I was able to use a trekking pole as a snake hook and lift it up to the car window so the kids could see it well without worrying about them getting too close. I turned the snake loose and we got a campsite along the Pecos River.


Friday dawned to a balmy 55 degrees and we continued our trip west. Around noon we turned back east from Cuba, NM and climbed into the Sierra Nacimiento. I was excited as the oak were a beautiful rust red down low and we could see patches of aspen changing up high. We arrived at the trailhead and were greeted by brisk temperatures in the 40’s, clear skies and shimmering aspen.

The San Pedro Parks is a relatively flat area of uplifted granite that averages around 10,000 ft. in elevation. We followed the Vacas Trail (an appropriate name as there are quite a few cattle which graze the meadows in the area) up a very gradual slope starting around 9,200 ft. in elevation. About two miles into the walk we came across Vallecito Damian, a small area of meadows with a beautiful campsite. We opted to set up camp here and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

The kids played as Jen and I set up camp and fixed dinner. The high stayed in the low 40’s and occasional gusts of wind chilled as the sun set. It was forecasted to fall into the low 20’s so the seven of us piled into our four man tent to conserve warmth and turned in to the music of at least four different bull elk bugling.

We awoke Friday morning to clear skies and a much balmier temperature than expected at 31 degrees. During the night some of the cattle for which the San Pedro Parks are so well known for had moved in to graze our meadow. Their low bellows lended to the pastoral air of the morning.

Our plan for the day was to head up along Clear Creek to explore some of the meadows further in the wilderness and try to find some more aspen groves. The seven of us followed the diminutive creek to some more meadows. We were passed by a lone hiker and a horseman, our only company for the day.

A little over a mile into our walk we found one of those rare magical places, a pure aspen stand at peak color. Golden tinged light filtered through the dense canopy and showers of leaves fell with every breath of wind. We spent several hours enjoying the beauty before returning to camp.

Our evening hours were spent around a nice fire. My oldest two boys and my youngest daughter opted to bivy under the stars with me while my wife, oldest daughter and youngest son retired to the tent. We once again enjoyed the evening elk serenade as the fire slowly died.

Saturday dawned to a crisp temperature of 23 degrees. We fixed breakfast, broke down the tent and packed up. Our solitude was broken by three separate groups of hikers as we walked out. I knew we’d been spoiled when Jen commented about how crowded it was on the trail.

We made it back to the trailhead and headed out. As I knew this was likely our last trip to the Jemez Range I wanted to explore a little. We decided to drive “Hwy 126” east. I put highway in quotation marks as a fair bit of it is dirt road as it travels through the mountains. It was a beautiful and lonely drive with golden aspen seemingly everywhere we looked.

From La Cueva we headed east onto Hwy 4 through the beautiful (but frustratingly restrictive) Valles Caldera National Preserve. We decided to stop by Bandelier National Monument on a whim for lunch and ended up staying for three hours. The boxelders in Frijoles Canyon were a soft yellow and the picnic area was much less crowded than I expected it would be on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. The kids enjoyed exploring some of the ruins, playing along Frijole Creek and spending a few hours outside the car. Finally, we got back in the car and finished the drive back home, arriving around 11:30 Saturday night.