A Great Outing with Friends

My friends Jeff, Anders, and Tommy met me at my house in Albuquerque at 8:30 am and we got going at 8:40. We drove as if we were going to Cabezon but took a right at the fork and continued for a couple of miles. We managed to get within a mile of the peak and parked on the side of the road. We started the hike at 10:15 am. It was fun navigating up the series of ravines called arroyos (in New Mexico) to an area with gentle slopes to let us out. We crossed a fence 200 feet to the south of the arroyos and beyond that is a flat area leading to the base of the butte. There were tons of millipedes 2-5 inches long on the rocks on the way up. The top offered gorgeous views of Cabezon, the Rio Puerco valley, and the volcanic necks in the area. After we reached the summit, we followed the main ridge, which was thin and tricky at spots, across to the south summit. From the south summit the Rio Puerco can be seen a lot clearer as it snakes between the buttes to the south. We descended off the main ridge several hundred feet to the north of the south summit. After getting to the bottom of the scree slope, we traveled across the rocks left by a huge landslide and followed our tracks down to the car from beneath the main summit.