State of the Canyon

Adventure Location: New Mexico
Adventure Date: April , 2018
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This canyon view was getting in the way of the OFM’s thinking. He seemed to think it was his duty as the Blogger to head into the canyon and report on the latest State of the Canyon. It had been a year since our last trek into the Canyon. 

We reminded him that his knees were not in the best of shape for canyon meandering. He promised to be extra carefull, so off into the canyon we went. To our extreme amazement he was extra careful!

The trail first runs into the canyon as a notch in the canyon wall. One wrong step when trying lean over the edge to get “THE PICTURE” could lead to a trip to visit a coroner. But the canyon is very inviting.

Before long you start to see a small flow of water along the bottom of the wash. Soon you get to enjoy this view of a pond among the rocks and trees.

Depending on amount of water flow there can be several very nice ponds along the wash. 

As you get near the end of the upper trail, there are nice flowers growing from the wall you are walking adjacent to. On this day the main flower was this one.

They are definitely very pretty and bright.

Soon after the flower wall you will arrive at a table. We recommend that you take a few moments to sit quietly and adsorb some of the beautiful sounds of nature all around you.

At this point the OFM wisely stopped to access the knee abilities. The trail enters the wash (bottom of the canyon) at this point. The trail goes upstream and downstream. Last year the OFM was able to head upstream for a ways and it was great fun. Then when returning we went downstream for about a  half mile. The scrambling required at that time was just about the most he could do.

This time Mr. Being Careful OFM took his time to try going down to the wash from the table. First he tried the upstream trail and decided it was out of his current ability. OK now to try to get down to the downstream section. He decided that the only way he could get down to it was to fall off the rock onto the wash rocks. So that was also a NO_NO.
Here is a view of the wash entry point where the OFM was careful today. 

We were very proud that the OFM showed some sense today but it was a major surprise. From our last trip down the wash we are sure a knee or two would have given out. Then we would been in a bad fix being down in the wash without a rope to pull us out. Our guess we would have been stuck in there until a mountain lion got bad indigestion from eating the OFM.

So we turned back on the upper trail and enjoyed the views from the opposite direction. It is always amazing how different the same scenery looks when coming from a different direction. Looking both directions is good for trying to have tooooo much fun.