April 22, 2005, Lake Pk, New Mexico

Well Monday and Wednesday morning atop 10,441' Pajarito Mountain, 5 miles from Los Alamos National Lab, were great.  At 9 am the corn was just soft enough (except maybe for a snowboarder) and I enjoyed 1,400 feet of cruising as an alternative to breakfast.

Today I wanted a little more.  Last night I drove to the parking lot for Santa Fe Ski Area, at 10,350'.  I was glad to have my down bag as overnight temperatures dipped into the upper twenties.  I slept very comfortably in the front seat of my Mom's big Lincoln.  There's a little bit of a funny story behind me having the Lincoln.  She took me to the car rental place Sunday, and when I went to get my rental car to drive to Los Alamos, I realized I had forgotten my driver's license.  No Amar, my license wasn't revoked.  Wonderful woman that my mother is, she got the rental and loaned me the boat.  Oh yeah, now I'm styling.

So I started booting up the ski area at 6:30 am.  I didn't know how long it would take me to climb Lake Peak.  It's a beatiful 12,409' peak in the Sangre de Cristos, somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 a mile up a ridge from the ski area's top lift at 12,000'.  This hike was special for me, since Santa Fe was where I first started linking parallel turns during Spring Break when I was 8 or 9 years old.  

The views from the top were spectacular.  Now I'm looking forward to trips to LANL next year, if and when they happen.  12,633' Santa Fe Baldy was just a hop, skip, and a jump away, not to mention thirteeners just a little further north.  There are some nice little steep shots down to Nambe Lake, but I needed to get to the car.  Things were a little too icy, and I realized I should have slept more when it was only 8:30 as I returned to the parking lot.  Oh well, the views were great, and I had a good time.  More to explore later...