Getting my butt kicked by the Sandias

Early morning before the sun peaks out over the ridge, looking up at the Knife Edge

Our time here in Northern New Mexico is drawing to an end. My wife's post-doc is finished this summer, and she has job offers in different states. And I am wishing I could get out more and explore parts of the state I haven't had a chance to yet. So many places to go. But high up on that list was to climb the Knife Edge route in the Sandias. Noted by the climbing community as a perfect alpine like adventure, and commonly soloed. It seemed right up my alley. SO I used up one of my last free off-Fridays to take a trip down to Albuquerque and attempt this route. The fact that there are a ton of geocaches along the route, as well as multiple descent options... well that was an added bonus. I parked at the Piedra Lisa trailhead around 7am and began hiking up to the saddle. It was a nice calm morning and I made good time up the trail. Once at the saddle I turned east up the climber's trail towards the Knife Edge. There were a handful of geocaches along the way, all of them at great spots with fantastic views. One in particular I liked was View of the "W" which had some great swag in it. It also had some inappropriate items, such as a melted bag of M&Ms and a Tropical Island Flavored condom. Is that even a flavor? I took those out to throw away, but I suspect they were put there by climbers and not geocachers. Geocachers know better.... But something Geocachers don't know well is the name of the route. They keep calling it "The W", probably because of the cache hidden high up in the route in the location known as "The W", which is a little notch that in profile makes a W shape. It is also the start of the 5th class climbing. But it seems that geocachers call the whole route the "W" because of this hide. Well, climbers know... it's the Knife Edge...

At one of the geocaches before the Knife Edge starts. Feeling good.

 The start of the knife edge route is 3rd and 4th class scrambling along a  nice rocky spine. The wind was starting to kick up already (before 9am!) so I swapped out my outer thermal layer for a windbreaker and began the climb up. The going was easy and the further up the cooler it got, with steep drop offs on either side. Part way up to the "W", is a really cool dead tree where a geocacher left a little pill-bottle hide. Made for a nice rest spot and photo op, although I really wasn't able to get a photo that captured the coolness of this gnarled old tree high up on the ridge.

A bit further up the knife edge leveld off jsut before the "W" and made for a good spot to stop and change into my climbing shoes. A lot of climbers do this route in their approach shoes, or sneakers... but I wanted a bit extra security. There is some very real exposure at the W and beyond and I was unroped, and carrying my rock shoes wasn't much extra weight. Properly booted up, I began the climb of the low 5th class section of the knife edge. It starts with a traverse across the "W". The first step down you can actually do by leaping down from above, but I was not bold enough to do this. I use the "3 points of contact" rule while soloing and a flying leap breaks this rule pretty heavily. To bypass this move you have to downclimb a bit further down the ridge and then traverse under the block. Nothing hard, but really big exposure. Once past that bit it was an easy rope-length to the other side of the "W" notch, and then I had about one more rope length of climb up to the get past the 5th class. The exposure wasn't as great, but the climbing was a bit steeper. Fortunately the holds are all really large and reassuring with good rock and I was soon up above the 5th class section and cruising to the top. A peregrine falcon was riding the morning thermals on the eastern facing side of the knife edge and I got an amaing look at this graceful raptor as it slid through the air right next to me. I summitted on top of the ridge at GC4C77 which is a great old cache placed in 2002 out on this remote ridge. I had all the rock climbing done with and it was before 9am, but little did I know that my dad was going to get much harder for a reason I hadn't fully anticipated.

I made for the North Sandia Crest Peak next and soon encountered deep snow. The snow up on the crest was 1-3 ft deep, and had a hard crust on top form several freeze/thaw cycles. If I was very careful I could sometimes walk right on top of the crust. But more and more I was falling through and it was tough going. I made it to the North Crest Summit, and realized there was very little chance I could find the geocache there. The hint said under a fallen log, but the snow cover made finding the fallen log almost impossible. I did spot the edge of a fallen log and used my boots to kick out the snow around part of it, but it was not fun and I soon gave up on finding the cache. Too much snow. My basic plan was to follow the crest trail south and find caches along the way until I could descend another line of geocaches that led back to the trailhead. I quickly realized that I would not be able to find most geocaches up on the crest. Too much snow. Even caches that were hanging from trees were too much trouble, since they would require post-holing to reach. I made my was as best I could south, at first sticking to the exposed bare rock right on the edge of the limestone cliffs that are on the crest, and then finding the Crest Trail itself, which was thankfully packed by snow shoers, and easy enough to walk. Once on the packed trail, I made good time, especially because I wasn't looking for any of the geocaches up on the ridge. The crest trail is really nice and I'm glad I got to hike a bit of it. As I approached the radio towers I had to make a decision about how to descend. I could continue to the radio towers and take the La Luz trail down, which likely would be packed and easy to travel. Or I could split off to the west and follow a line of geocaches above a canyon which has a nice waterfall at the bottom of it. At home while looking at the maps, this is the route I wanted to take, because it had some very lonely and remote geocaches along it. It was also less overall distance, making a more direct route to the trailhead. But it would mean getting back into the snow for a while. I thought about it for a little while and looked at the maps. It looked like I would have only a 1/4 mile or so of going down the snow slope to reach the ridge, so I decided to go for it. how bad could a 1/4" mile of post-holing be? Plus I was descending... so I could maybe even slide part of the way. So off I went and very quickly the going got tough and unpleasant.

On the ridge above the Shield. Not much snow here... but there will be soon enough.

Crest Trail

Finally below the worst of the snow. Ooph, what a terrible descent

View of the Needle, a peak I may never get to climb... looks pretty sweet

 If the snow had been soft, it wouldn't have been bad to bash my way through. Or if the crust had been a little harder allowing me to kick steps on top of it and descend without breaking through it would have been ok. But it was right in between. I couldn't stay on top of the crust, but the hard crust would catch me after I broke through, scraping against my legs and arms. It was slow and painful going and I was soon regretting my decision. I considered trying to climb back up to the ridge, but at that point I had descended far enough where an ascent up the snow seemed horrible. SO I kept going, cursing myself every step of the way. My boots soon became soaked through, my feet were getting numb and my shins were bruised and scraped. But somehow I made it to a geocache on the ridge, and some exposed rock. This geocache is one of the lonelier ones out here, with only one find since it was placed in November 2017. So at elast that made me a bit happier. But the route down from this cache wasn't any easier. WHile the south facing part of the ridge got more sun and had more exposed rock, it also had steep drop offs that needed to be avoided. I stuck to the rock as much as possible, but I found myself needing to skirt around the north side of the ridge several times, going back into the nasty crusty snow that I now hated so much. It took seemingly forever to get to the next waypoint on my route, a cache called Way above and beyond the falls. At one point on my way to reach this spot, I was trying to stay on the rocky ridge and scrambled up what turned out to be a rock pinacle, with no good way down the other side. I had to make some sketchy down-climb moves and then head into the snow to bypass this obstacle. All this hard work was making we concerned about the time. I had made great time on my ascent up the knife edge, and figured I would have plenty of time to make my way down (which is usually faster) and find some lonely geocaches. But this was miserable going. Still I kept on. The description of "Way above and beyond the falls" mentioned that the Cache Owner had needed to do 5th class climbing to reach this spot, which got me worried again. I just wanted an easy scramble down the rock ridge, but instead I was having to route-find and dodge 5th class down climbing. I intially chose the wrong descent route down from this cache and ended up at the top of a steep 75' climb. I found a ledge where I could change into my rock shoes and looked at down-climbing it, but decided against it when I couldn't see how hard the terrain really was. The last thing I needed to do was get myself in a bad situation. I made the steep climb back up to the cache, cursing all the wasted energy, and then looked for another way down. Another hidden gully appeared and I decided to give it a go. There was actually a hand-line fixed in the gully, but it was hardly necessary, I was able to scramble down the whole chute with nothing more than 3rd class scrambling. Upon reaching the bottom of this obstacle, there were faint trails I could see, and the going got much easier. Not easy mind you, but there wasn't as much snow, and what little snow I did encounter was soft and I could bash through it without too much trouble. The little trails appeared and disappeared, and sometimes I ended up in some brush oak bushwhacking situations, but overall I was making forward progress at a reasonable clip again, and following a path defined by a bunch of geocaches down to the waterfall.

pointing to what I climbed in the morning, quite a nice route

Checking the time, I was cutting it close with getting back to the car when I needed to. I had to be back by 4pm in order to drive back up to Santa Fe and pick up my kids from their afterschool program. I made it to the waterfall canyon and thought I would have an easier time once there, as my maps showed a trail leading down from the waterfall. There was indeed a trail, but it was all over the place too and sometimes would end up in dense willow thickets. Argh... when would I get a nice easy to walk on trail?! The answer turned out to be when I was a half a mile from the trailhead. I managed to reach the car at 3:55. Just in time. I was bruised and exhausted, but happy to have had a terrific adventure in the Sandias. They sure kicked my butt today. I'll miss these mountains when we move.