Skiing at the Valles Caldera

We finally went skiing at the Valle! We have been driving by the Valle for 10 years and we finally planned a trip and went. We will be going back in the spring. It really is an amazing place on earth. We skied for about 4 hours. The image below is about .8 mile into the trail. Looking down the fence you can see a little black line - that is the visitor's center.




We took a trail that went up into an historic stand of trees.




This picture was taken at our furthest point. We really wanted to ski down to the building seen in the distance in the image below. And beyond that there is a movie set we were hoping to see, but we needed to turn back. All skiers and snowshoers have to be back at 4:30 - or they from the visitor's center looking looking for you. We have our work cut out for us on our next trip.


The picture below was back in the historic stand of trees.


The picture below is from the highway leading to the preserve. You can see the visitor's center just to the right of the little hill, and the historic stand of trees we skied to are just appearing at the very right edge of the photo.

Virgin Mesa in the Jemez - our firewood trip

We went to the Jemez today to get firewood. The area we were directed to by the Forest Service was the Virgin Mesa way above La Cueva - near Fenton Lake. Below is the "nice" part of the road we took - Forest Road 607. We spent the day cutting in this area - we didn't see a single person all day once we arrived at the firewood fuel area.

Joel cutting some of the downed wood.




The truck - almost full.




Our wood with the permit.


We took these on the way out. The Sandia Mountains are off in the distance. This was a burn area - probably from the fire in the Jemez 4 years ago.


In the burn area looking east.



We drove through White Rock (where we took this picture) on the way back to Santa Fe. A snow storm was coming in over the Sangre de Cristos and the sun was setting.