Consolation Hike

A few weeks back I was contacted by DesertRomantic about going after a really cool, and yet unfound, canyoneering Geocache, GC5WZF4. I've been eyeing this cache for a while, so I jumped at the opportunity. The day came that we were to head out for this adventure. i had all the gear I thought we would need: 50m of rope, etriers, ascenders webbing, rappel device, plenty of biners... We were set for hopefully anything this canyon would throw at us. At least that is what we thought. Turns out there was one thing we hadn't counted on. Roads. The turn off from the tiny town of Galina was on French Mesa Road, also known as FR 8. Not even a mile up this road, we encountered quite a bit of snow on the road. And the sections of road not covered in snow were thick mud from recently melted snow. I drove my CR-V through a few patches of this but stopped short at a particularly muddy section. Checking the GPS, there was still >8 miles of this road to go. It was clear to us that if we continued, there was a very high probability that we would get stuck. As much as we didn't like to, the best option would be to turn around and leave this cache for later in the year, when the roads are better.

So what to do? We were far from home, and rearing to go do ... something. One nearby destination immediately sprang to mind, Cerro Pedernal.

Cerro Pedernal in the Distance. A striking peak.

I first saw Cerro Pedernal last summer when the family was visiting Abiquiu lake. It is uncommonly pictaresque. And I knew I wanted to hike up it. Luckily DesertRomantic also wanted to hike it, so it became our Consolation Hike. The road up to Cerro Pedernal, FR 100, was in fine shape, and we were soon at a point where we could begin the ~3 mile hike up to the summit.

The one scrambly bit

Below the headwall

Cerro Pedernal is actually a misleading peak. From afar it looks like it should be a huge mesa top. But in actuality, the summit is a narrow rocky ridge, basically a 200-300 ft high rock wall that tops off the mountain. From some angles it doesn't look like a mesa at all, rather a rocky spire. When we got up to the final headwall we weren't too sure which way to go around the summit wall to find a way up. We started off heading around the north side, only to get stopped by deep snow. So we back-tracked to the south side where we found an easy scramble through the headwall and up to the top. The summit is about a third of a mile from end to end, and offers some incredible views. We ate lunch on the east end, gazing out at the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

We completed the hike in good time and still had a bit time left in the afternoon, so we did one more little hike in the area. I had wanted to go after some unfound caches placed by Desert Romantic, but he had a better idea, to hike up the Rim Vista Trail across from the Ghost Ranch. This trail had a handful of very lonely geocaches and ended up being a fine late evening jaunt.

Rim Vista Trail

Pastel Cliffs near the Rim Vista trail

I still really want to visit Big Canyon, but considering we weren't able to do that, we ended up having a pretty good hiking day.