March 11-12, 2022

In mid-March we embarked on our first expedition, driving back to Las Vegas, NM on a Friday afternoon and staying overnight at the Plaza Hotel, situated on a historic central plaza typical of many of New Mexico’s small towns, pueblos, and even the larger cities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

The next morning our adventure began with picking up some sweets at Charlie’s Spic and Span bakery cafe, and then heading northwards to Storrie Lake State Park, where Peter R. and Patricia would take what we believed were some of the very first steps on our epic hike. It was a short hike of no more than twenty minutes along the southern edge of Storrie Lake (the lighter blue line in the map above), and Lindsay and Pete O. picked up the hikers on the east side of the State Park. We were psyched – our Trail was underway!

(Click the images for larger maps.)

Piling back into the car, we continued north on NM 518 to Sapello, with a short side-trip to visit an old church. As we went, we explored alternate side roads, hoping that our intended route could avoid busy state highways whenever possible.

We passed grassy pastures of rural farmlands and headed up into the forests of the Pecos Wilderness towards the Sipapu Ski and Resort area. This is really the only way through this rugged territory, unless you want to do several days of cross-country backpacking and camping. None of us were eager to do that. Our vision from the start was more along the lines of hut-to-hut day hikes. Or Airbnb, assuming we could find suitable accommodations to stay along the way.

Heading northwest to and through Sipapu, route NM 518 took us past small villages and towns; Mora, Rio Pueblo, and Peñasco. We stopped for lunch at Sugar Nymphs in Peñaso, and then veered off onto less traveled roads that took us through Rodarte, Llano, and Ojito as we turned our first exploratory road trip back toward home.

The idea had been for the route to continue north up to Taos before turning west towards Gallup. It also included a “spur” multi-day hike for any trekkers that might want to come south to Santa Fe. Unfortunately the highway through the mountains was fast traffic, switchbacks, and virtually no shoulders – a potentially dangerous road for any through hikers. This put a serious damper on our big plan for a hiking route between Gallup, New Mexico and Las Vegas where this day’s first expedition began. Getting past those mountains was going to be a big ask.

For the remainder of this expedition, we traveled southwards along the potential “spur” route to Santa Fe, and the string of small towns we passed through on that stretch were very appealing to us: Trampas, Truchas, Cundiyo, Nambe, Pojuaque, and Tesuque. We would be hiking through these towns on subsequent expeditions.