Deer trap Mesa with my Mom

 I work up in Los Alamos, but have not actually done very many hikes in the area. There a re a ton of nice trails though, so when my mom and her husband asked about doing a short dayhike, i knew just where to go... Deer Trap Mesa.

My mom's husband, Milo, dabbles in geocaching. It is not something he really is excited about (like me), but whenever we are visiting, or they are visiting, he helps me look for geocaches along our hikes. Deer Trap Mesa had a couple nice old geocaches to hunt.

 One cache in particular, GC2538, was pretty far out on the mesa, beyond where the trail ended. We scrambled our way over to it and found this good old cache. Inside was a note about another few caches, and the note included coordinates. After entering these in, we saw that it was only another 1/4 mile away. But it involved some rock scrambling and possibly also a ladder. Of course I was game for that!

 I made my way over to the "One tree Mesa" but did not find the ladder. instead, i used a rock pile to assist my climb up onto a small rock tableau, maybe 50' long and 20' wide, and protruding 20' or so up from the surrounding ridge-top. There was a scraggly old tree up there festooned with Christmas lights. There were also a few spots where a geocache could have been placed, but I couldn't find any old container. It was a pretty cool discovery though and gave our whole trip a sense of adventure that otherwise it might not have had.

 

These finger mesas are very cool. When I got home I did some reasearch and found the original listing for One tree Mesa geocache, GC19E5X. It was archived when the land it was on was transferred to the San Idelfonso pueblo back in 2014. The more I dug, the more I found a bunch of cool old archived caches that are now on the Pueblo lands, and no longer accessible. Cool hikes and scrambles up many of the neat rocky mesas out here. Of course, there are still lots of neat places that you are allowed to go out here, and I fully intend to do so. Lot's more exploring to do around Los Alamos.