New Mexico Outdoor 

Roughing It In Luxury-Abiquiu, New Mexico 505.901.7321

Vista del La Sotella

This post WAS to be called "Hiking La Sotella Peak"!

There are 2 skools of thought:
1) The Road Less Traveled
2) When you come to a fork in the road..take it (the classic meaning)

Gabriela and I subscribe to both!

About 10 years ago..I crew-ed on a new yacht sailing from Newport, RI ..all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay and home..BUT in a Tropical Storm ..to test the yachts sea-worthy-ness (motor yacht).

The captain had a GPS and it was soooo accurate that when he plotted the next waypoint..we'd always need to be hyper-vigilent not to run into the buoy that was the waypoint!!!

Since then my faith in GPS has been TOTAL! So..when Gabriela and I hit the trail-head..we normally veer off and bushwack to our destination..La Sotella Peak:

Normal View from Our house and Zoomed in!Just 100 yrds from our place is a canyon (La Madera Arroyo) that empties into the Rio Chama a couple miles away and is, from the other side, Canon (canyon) de La Madera.

 This Canon is a Santa Fe NF hike and leads right up to La Sotella. We drove over to the trail-head on that side of the :

Amazing to us..lots of Ponderosa Pine volunteered in the high desert ..lower elevation than our home. The trail is like hiking on a very sandy beach..we decided to bushwack to the high ridges:

The view back to our place and even way up into the 80 miles off in the distance..was spectacular (above).

4 miles in, we ran into this canyon:

We decided to make the hike the La Sotella View Hike OR Vista del La Sotella ..rather than take an extra hour to bushwack/scramble this canyon (above).

I planted and register a Cache with an AWESOME view of the peak in the background:



We hike back a mile or so til there was a reasonable scramble down volcanic stones to the Canon (Canyon):


Spring-Monsoon Watch Out For Flash Floods!The views of the CanyonScape awe inspiring:





Still lots of Ponderosa Pine..amazing:

The very winding and sandy bottom being a longer hike out than in:


And ...back out again near the trail-head ..we found the only similarity to hiking in Switzerland..because if you hike WAY out in the Alps..you're still bound to run into a:

 

 


Want To View A Hi-Res 1-24,000 NGS Maps of the NewMexicoOutdoor.com Area

Click Here To Open in New Browser Window 

Where ever you see this link on this site, there are hikes or other related activites on this map. It should open in Windows Photo Viewer...and can be zoomed to show massive detail/contours.


Santa Fe National Forest Controlled Burn Above La Sotella 5/2009


Wanna live where you can see this inspiring peak daily?  Click Here



Enjoying our adventures? Wanna keep up and maybe share your own adventures?



Click To Join Our Moderated List

Painting By Featured Artist MJAckley "Sunset Behind Fall Tree II"

 

New Mexico Outdoor Navigational Links
      • Biking
      • Canoeing-Kayaking-Rafting
      • Calendar of Events  (Updated)
        • Art Scene  -Updated With With 2012's Featured Artists !! and Featured Galleries

           

        • Fly Fishing  <-- Many 2012 Updates from Devon Fletcher
        • Location
        • Skiing-Boarding-X Skiing
        • Trail Riding
        • Native Culture 
            • Copyright . New Mexico Outdoor Adventures. All rights reserved.