Ojito Wilderness Hike

Ethan grabbed a to-go sandwich at the Warrior Gas Station in the town of Bernalillo, on the way out to the Ojito. I'd already eaten that morning before leaving, so I had the joy of watching him eat his meal, featuring almost-frozen artifical cheese. Yum!


Our trail took us along the edge of the large mesa (in the background, above), through areas of dramatically sculpted rock formations.


These eroded formations, called hoodoos, are commonly seen in the Ojito, as well as other parts of northwestern New Mexico.


Flowering yucca, the official New Mexico state flower. Notice the strange pentagonal formation of depressions in the rock face behind...


...which is at the base of this hoodoo. Manmade, or otherwise?


Our trail takes us through this stand of ponderosa pines; these supposedly are the lowest altitude ponderosas in the world, fed by some underground springs not readily evident by the dry terrain on the surface.


Ethan came equipped with a Hasselblad and Polariod back, plus a hearty supply of outdated peel-apart film. We both tried our hand at instant landscape photography.


After going off-trail, cross-country, we rested at our destination, this scenic canyon, where we took the majority of the Polaroids.


Ethan scouting for his next shot.


The formation on the right looks like a snail's head. One's imagination can go wild in these badlands.

As I alluded to earlier, I was out of shape for this hike, but glad I took it. This gives me encouragement to keep doing this as often as possible.

A big thanks to Ethan Moses for inviting me along, and being tour guide.

Big Chief Gas Station

Post-Script: Photos via Panasonic Lumix G7. I was also shooting video on my recently acquired Canon R800 camcorder. Yes, an actual camcorder. I'll be making a video about this soon. Here's the This is Not a VLOG video for today:



Typecast via Remington Quiet-Riter and roll of thermal fax paper.