Glorious Glorieta

It has been a really nice day today.  I went to church this morning and enjoyed the music, sermon and visiting with other Methodists.  I quickly changed into hiking clothes when I got home and off we went to the glorious Glorieta Canyon!  This has to be one of my favorite hikes ever, not because it was easy or difficult but because we were in a narrow slot canyon with walls that surrounded us with desert plants and boulders as we walked along sandy path.

I forgot to bring the hike directions with us so we just followed the footsteps of previous hikers which, of course, led us down the wrong path!  According to the hiking book, we should have gone 1/2 mile and then turned right so that we could loop around the hill and end up back at the parking lot.  But when we got to the intersection, I chose to go left because that seemed to be where all the tracks were going!  We hiked a mile before we realized that the trail would take us down a steep hill and then we couldn’t see where it was heading due to all the boulders and shrubs.  We were afraid that it would not loop around but head on into the mountains so we turned around and returned the way we had come.  That was not as easy as it sounds either!

Glorieta Canyon has a very narrow sandy path of about 5-8 feet in width most of the time with walls that slanted up on either side and were covered with the same desert plants and rocks that blocked our path. It is not a straight nor obvious trail as we had to negotiate the many large rocks and boulders as well as the desert plants that blocked the path. We walked around and through cholla cacti, century plants, and the very vicious catclaw acacia bushes which are covered with claw-like spines ready to grab your shirt or skin and hold on. The fishhook barrel cactus was the most colorful plant with its pink spines, but the ocotillo were starting to green up and one of the bushes sported red blooms.

Back to the hike, we thought we were being smart and tried a short cut which found us both slipping and falling on our asses.  Luckily I fell in a non-sticky bush and John just slipped down the gravel hill. Along the way both of us collected numerous scratches and scrapes. When we  got back to the intersection we went right but by that time we were tiring of the hike so we again turned around and walked back to the Jeep.  It was a truly Glorious Glorieta hike of only three miles in 3 1/2 hours.