Valles Caldera North Rim
Road Canyon Pass to Garita Gate
Introduction. The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) owns the northwest rim of the Valles Caldera from Road Canyon Pass to Cerro de la Garita. The Preserve is closed to unrestricted access, but has offered guided hikes in part of this area for a fee. The Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF) manages a small remainder of the rim through its multiple use policies. Grazing, logging, hunting, motorized trail use, cross country skiing, and unstructured recreation are all permitted uses on the Forest. A reasonably good dirt road, Forest Road 144, (FR144) comes up the west rim from State Road 126 at Fenton Hill and along the north rim from US 285 at Española. Unfortunately, at the northwest corner of the Valles Preserve, the road deteriorates into little more than a bed of rocks, fit only for a hardy 4-wheel drive vehicle with a good skid plate.
Much of the north rim is above 10,000 feet in elevation. At the grassy south-facing meadows on Cerro de la Garita, views into the caldera become truly world-class
Owners: Valles Caldera National Preserve
Santa Fe National Forest, Jemez District.
Santa Fe National Forest, Coyote District.
Description: The northwest rim of the Valles Caldera follows the slopes of Cerro de la Garita above the Valle San Antonio. The true rim is a heavily-wooded, indefinite line of little hummocks rising to the high Garita ridgeline. The entire area was heavily logged in the past. Abandoned logging roads clutter the area. Some are as wide as a two-lane road. The forest otherwise is very dense; it is primarily spruce, with some fir. A few grassy meadows are interspersed throughout the forest. Some may be natural; others were obviously cleared.
The north rim of the Valles Caldera consists of massive, thick and pasty flows of the Tschicoma Formation. Lumpy hills cover the landscape at this northwest corner. Many hills, such as Cerro Pelon and Cerro del Grant, were volcanic vents. FR144 wanders around the northwest corner of the preserve, then east/west amid the hills along the northwest boundary of the VCNP. The slopes appear densely forested even though they hide a maze of logging roads.
In 1966, owners of the Baca Location No. 1 and the Forest Service completed a land sale that relocated the Baca boundary to allow construction of FR144. In places, the new boundary fence appears to closely follow the actual rim and may have been intended as a watershed divide. The fence crosses very wide logging roads that cut throughout the area, implying that logging preceded the fence. Most meadows in the area appear to be true meadows, but some are logged clearings. Debris from old sawmill sites are still piled in some meadows.
Abandoned logging roads cut through the forests. Most views into the caldera are restricted by dense forest.
Road Canyon Pass. Near the northwest corner of the Preserve, the head of Road Canyon lies in an eroded highland of ash-flow tuff. It is a land of steep, narrow ridges and orange cliffs. FR144 detours to the west around this rugged section. The motorcycle trail continues north over the steep ridges to Road Canyon and on to the northwest corner of the Preserve. The Road Canyon drainage has eroded through orange tuff bedrock up to a low pass at the caldera rim. This pass was the original route of the road from the homesteads on the Rio Cebolla to Española prior to construction of Public Service of New Mexico’s gas pipeline in the 1950s. Now the old road is overgrown with grasses and the pass is a lovely little area of meadows and aspen groves. Within the caldera it becomes a welter of logging roads, one of which veers north to Pipeline Road. This area is on the Preserve and is closed to public access at this time.
Pipeline Road runs east/west across the entire Preserve. Just east of its junction with the logging road from Road Canyon, Hilton Road, VC12, branches north off Pipeline. Hilton Road is passable for vehicular traffic but appears to be patrolled mostly by all-terrain vehicles. It wanders through aspen groves, meadows, and spruce forests and passes a cabin to a gate on the northern boundary of the Preserve.
Hilton Cabin. The VCNP named this area after a small, one-room building called Hilton Cabin. It is a newer structure, well-built with good windows facing a lovely meadow. It may have been a line camp for herders; the area has many meadows filled with good grass that could support grazing. For several seasons, for a fee, the VCNP offered hikes to the cabin and up the rim behind it to Hilton Gate. Hilton Road, VC12, runs parallel to the caldera rim, crossing it several times. The rim is so subtle that travelers would only notice if they were specifically looking for it. There are a few high points with views toward the south, principally of Redondo Peak and San Antonio Mountain, with the ridges of the Jemez Mountains extending beyond the caldera. The rim of Valle San Antonio also is parallel to the road. It is a sharp slope-break above a steep, 400- to 600-foot descent to the valle. Here again are seemingly endless logging roads in a confusing maze. Dense spruce/fir forests block any hope of views, with one exception. Near the cabin is a row of sheer cliffs; the forest crowds the rim, but a few promontories give striking views into the Valle San Antonio and the west rim of the caldera.
View of Valle San Antonio from Hilton Cliffs
Loggers essentially stripped large trees from the entire Baca Location No. 1 in the 1960s and 1970s. Estimates run from 1,500 to 1,800 miles of roads in the entire 89,000 acre tract. (I feel that is probably an undercount.) As regards a rim trail, just pick a road, used or abandoned, as a route. There seems to be little advantage in having a separate trail along the rim in this area. The Hilton Road runs very close; it is isolated, has a gentle grade, is covered with grass, and is a pleasant enough walk.
View of Cerro de la Garita on the rim, looking east. Sawmill debris piles still dot the meadows.
Garita. The landscape north of the VNCP fence at Hilton Gate is much the same: rolling hills covered with dense forest, riddled with logging roads, and a few grassy knolls with restricted views hopping over the caldera to the southwestern ridges of the Jemez. We followed the fence westward up the slope to the broad summit of Cerro de la Garita (starting from the gravel pit at the junction of FRs 144 and 99). At the highest point on the fence, a road leads south to the rim on the VCNP to the finest views we found on our 80-mile journey around the caldera. Garita juts out into the caldera and (through a few trees) offers views of the entire caldera. The viewpoint is, unfortunately, on the Preserve and closed to the public.
The boundary fence cuts across ubiquitous logging roads. West end of the Valle San Antonio from Garita.
Valle San Antonio from Cerro de la Garita. Valle Grande and Rabbit Ridge on south rim, upper left.
Amid the logging roads on the eastern slopes of Cerro de la Garita, there are some good viewpoints into the caldera. A wide logging road descends the hill partly on the rim itself. Logging roads run everywhere. The shocking thing about this area is that it can look so heavily wooded while being riddled with logging roads. This area is all Forest Service. The VCNP fence is down the south side on the steep slope; no one would really want to go there. It was in the autumn when the aspens are golden and the sky intense blue. Even without all that, the views from this north rim are truly world-class.
View of Valle Toledo and Pajarito Mountain on the east rim from a Forest Service meadow.
Access: The VCNP provided guided tours in the past, driving visitors to the trailhead from their staging area off State Road 4. This was the only access to the Hilton area of the caldera. Forest Road 144 runs along the north boundary past similar landscape and parts of the rim. We parked often at the gravel pit at the junction of FR 144 and FR 99.
Dorothy Hoard September 2008
Road Canyon Pass to Garita Gate. Red=rim; Purple = public road; Green = Hilton Road. This section is normally closed to public access. Occasionally, the Valles Caldera National Preserve offers hikes for a fee on the Hilton Road.