Some days it just doesn't pay to do a trail run

Neal

TJ Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 15, 2016
Messages
502
Location
Albuquerque, NM
My wife (Jeep Girl Extraordinaire) and I got up this morning and decided that we would head out to 4th of July Canyon to check out the fall colors. The Torreon-Tajique Loop that runs past the canyon is just your average forest road, nothing that would require 4 high at any point, but it's out in the woods so that makes it a good trail. As we got close to the turnoff from the highway we stumbled across a group of 15 or so TJ's, JK's, JL's, XJ's and a single Range Rover that call themselves the Team NM 4x4 Group. They were assembling for a run up to the canyon themselves and invited us to join the fun. We headed out and soon found ourselves dodging every kind of SUV, CUV, pickup, van, sedan and subcompact you could imagine. It appeared that about half the population of Albuquerque woke up with the same idea. The dust was thick, the pace was slow and the chances of having a quiet day in the mountains had dropped to zero. We got to the parking area for the 4th of July Canyon trailhead and found it packed with more of the previously mentioned non-4x4's. The parking lot normally holds about 20 vehicles, I counted over 100 in the lot or parked along the road for a half mile in either direction. It was obvious that stopping for lunch and a hike was out of the question, so I thanked the folks in the group for letting us ride with them and headed down the forest road to find some peace and quiet. We ended up at the Spanish mission ruins at Abo and had a nice, relaxing hike. The real downer was that we picked up a new and annoying body squeak that has me scratching my head as to its exact location - it seems to move around the right side of the body more or less at random. Overall, it was a somewhat less than stellar off road experience. We have been up that trail a half dozen times over the years and have rarely seen more than a few other vehicles. Today's crowd was a seriously unwelcome surprise. I get that folks just want to get away from all the COVID craziness these days, but do they really have to all get away to the same place? I need to find some harder trails for day trips...

A pretty poor photo by any objective standard, but illustrative of the trail conditions. It has been very dry around here for weeks, we could use a good soaking rainstorm.
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The parking lot at the hiking trailhead. We didn't even slow down, just kept going deeper into the woods. Kept finding cars parked along the road, too.
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It got a little better down the road a bit.
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The Team NM group pulled over for lunch. We decided to keep going.
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Obligatory poser shot.
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Abo Mission ruins. About 5 cars in the parking lot, almost no one in sight. Paradise.
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I love to wheel NM. If you want isolation, just head West on the 60 past the VLA. I've nearly lost it out there out of cell range a few times. The line of sight for radio is pretty far out there, though.
 
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Generally when you have a gatherings of that size we would send the Jeeps out in groups of 10 and space them out about 15-20 minutes apart to decrease the possibility of traffic jams....