The Organ mountains are rocky and jagged. They look cool even from a distance since they jut up seemingly out of nowhere. The area is supposed to provide good rock climbing although some of the peaks look nearly impossible to climb. ‘Rugged’ seems to be a good word to describe them. The vegetation stuck out as being different from any other area I’ve been. It’s hard to put into words exactly how it was different, but it was. The area was surprisingly green. I have no clue if this is normal or if we just hit it after an unusual amount of rain. There were also a ton of wildflowers blooming. In some places, the flowery scent seemed almost overwhelming.
The Organ mountains lie east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Highway 70 from Las Cruces to Alamogordo passes through them and I’ve driven this road a few times but didn’t really pay that much attention to the mountains. Highway 70 is important because it leads to White Sands National Park. On a recent trip that included backpacking at White Sands, Sam and I took a few hours to explore in the Organ mountains.
To my great delight, one of the rock formations is named ‘Rabbit Ears.’ I could not pass up the opportunity to get a picture of Hoppy with it in the background.
The trail we took greeted us with a friendly sign, “WARNING MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN INJURED AND OTHERS HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES AS A RESULT OF ROCK CLIMBING FALLS OR ROCK SLIDES IN THIS RECREATION AREA. RATTLESNAKES ARE ANOTHER KNOWN HAZARD. HIKING OR CLIMBING ALONE IS NOT RECOMMENDED. PLEASE LEAVE WORD WHERE YOU ARE GOING AND WHEN YOU EXPECT TO BE BACK. AND BE CAREFUL!” Yes, rugged is a good word for this area.
We hiked about a mile up the trail and then stopped by a very small creek. Well, I’m not even sure that it was exactly a creek. It was a steady stream of water, but not much more than a trickle. The mountains there were steep and it made little waterfalls. We were feeling oddly unambitious for us, so we laid down on the rocks by the creek. There were a couple of small pools of water and we found tadpoles living in them. I thought that tadpoles were baby fish, but Sam assured me they would turn into frogs. We found an almond left behind by a previous person and broke it into pieces, dropping them into the pond in case the tadpoles wanted to eat them. They didn’t. (We weren’t surprised.)
Organ Mountain Pictures
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I’ve written about this before, but one of the things I love about hiking and exploring is just finding small little treasures. Not the sort of treasure that you put in your pocket, but the sort that you watch for a few moments and maybe take a picture of. The sort of treasure that makes you say, “Oooh! Look! A lizard!” This hike definitely had it’s share of those. Along with the tadpoles, flowers and the little creek, we also saw colorful hummingbirds flitting around from one flower to the next, a lizard that looked very camouflaged on the tree it was hanging out on and shiny gold flecks in the creek that made me sure that real treasure was around somewhere. Trying to gold pan with my hands didn’t really pan out for me though.
