Roadtrip August: New Mexico?

You have to book early but some of the cave crawls through Carlsbad are pretty cool (in more that one sense).  The book quickly and are limited to ~10-20 people.  Also the bats should be around and that is a pretty cool sight.

Wheeler Wilderness area outside of Taos is BEAUTIFUL! You can park at Taos Ski Valley. Take Bull of the Woods trail to Twining Blue Lake Trail and cross the ridge to Wheeler Peak, top of the Sangre de Cristos. Eventually you have to out-n-back to Wheeler but you can take a very primitive trail with lots of loose talus down to Williams Lake. Its just…beyond beautiful.

I’m not from the west and this was literally my FIRST trip ever in the west maybe 15 years ago and I still think about.

Also I did this trip in late July and it wasn’t too hot at all. Its 7 – 13k feet (which was a rude awakening to a Mainer) but worth every gasping step.

We went to Pecos Wilderness in 2015 (in June) and it snowed on us the first night.  Pecos is almost all above 10k feet so it should stay pretty cool. I highly recommend it.

. New Mexico Enchantment .

As you can tell from my trip report, New Mexico has plenty of high elevation areas.

All my NM posts:

https://pmags.com/tag/new-mexico

As past partner and I had two memorable cultural trips to Taos:

https://pmags.com/wild-rivers-recreation-area-rio-grande-del-norte-nm

https://pmags.com/two-years-celebrated-in-taos

Taos is more laid back and less crowded than Santa Fe imo.

Santa Fe is at 7,200 feet making it considerably cooler than other spots in the desert southwest (Phoenix is 1,000 feet in elevation.  Every thousand feet, the temps drop 3.5 degrees F.  If you hike up from those elevations, early in the morning, you beat the heat until you’re on your way back down.  But watch out for sun exposure – light colored long pants and shirts are safer than shorts with the intense UV at elevation.

I had a fabulous tip to Carlsbad Caverns by being first in line one morning for a ticket, hurrying on over to the natural entrance (versus the elevator), thereby being near the front of the line (of 20 or so) as they ranger gave a safety talk and then let opened the gate.  While others oooh’ed and aaah’ed around the large natural entrance, I took long strides down the path and had the cave seemingly all to myself for almost an hour before I saw any other visitors coming the other way.  Similar to leaving for Half Dome at 3 am and being on top before dawn, all by yourself.

It won’t be too hot in August in northern New Mexico. That’s because it’s during our monsoon season and there are usually thunderstorms (often in the afternoon) to cool things down. The temp can go from 85 or 90 before a t-storm down to 50 degrees in a short period of time. If you hike, try to head out early in the day to avoid the storms.

great valuable comments, thank you :)

Link – amazing Pecos trip report! I would LOVE to get back out there next year.