Tucked away in the south west corner of Arizona are a few hundred square miles of desert protected as the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Not surprisingly, it’s chock full […]

The Cochise Stronghold is a maze of granite domes and winding canyons covering a hundred square miles or so of south east Arizona. Legend has it that Cochise himself held […]

An unassuming name for an unassuming crag about half an hour West of Las Cruces. …but with a spectacular outlook over the Organ Mountains

After Carlsbad we were chased out of Texas by 60mph winds and a cold front. Dust storms made driving quite harrowing  and the sight of  sheep-sized tumbleweed rolling across an […]

Another 50 miles west along the ancient limestone reef that makes Guadeloupe Peak is another natural wonder – hidden from sight over 1,000ft underground. Carlsbad Caverns are internationally famous, but […]

Guadalupe National Park contains the highest point in Texas at about 8,800ft. A pleasant Snowden-sized hike up from the campground. This actually brings you out a few hundred feet above […]

Hueco Tanks must rank as one of the most famous climbing areas in the US if not the world. Arguably the best Bouldering on the planet, it also has a […]

Heading south we more or less stumbled upon The Box near Socorro. Another win for the Mountain Project App! With little info we just headed for the sunniest bit of […]

Heading south we more or less stumbled upon The Box near Socorro. Another win for the Mountain Project App! With little info we just headed for the sunniest bit of […]

We camped half way up the Sandia Crest, hoping  (rather than expecting! ) to climb on one of the impressive crags at its summit. Temperatures around -5C  overnight put paid […]

We awoke to a steady fluttering of snow and a half inch dusting of white across the campground and surrounding desert. Snow in the desert? Well Santa Fe is at […]

Impending rain and weary arms coincided for once for a perfectly timed rest day. First on the cultural itinerary was the Los Alamos Bradbury Museum, giving an insight into how […]

We were so enchanted by our trip to the Jemez Mountains that we had another couple of days there. Only a 30 mins drive from the gorgeous Juniper Campground at […]

…This is where all that ash came from – about a million years ago an eruption hundreds of times bigger than Mt St Helens dumped a couple of cubic miles […]

… and when it gets a bit chilly to climb the nearby Bandelier National Monument offers the chance to explore ancient ancestral Pueblo dwellings carved from much the same stuff […]

Los Alamos is of course famed as the site of the Manhattan Project to develop the first Atom Bomb. The Los Alamos National Laboratory now dominates the Mesa top with […]

Texas is BIG and of course everything in it is supersized. Just nipping across the panhandle is a couple of hundred miles and there’s very little to break the endless […]