While many of you were eating (Super Bowl) party food and getting fat(!!), I was out enjoying a bike ride at Ladron Peak.
I always keep my eyes open for good places to cycle when I am flying. I spotted this road a couple of months ago and had traced it from the air. It is called County Road 12 and is a very long dirt road that works it’s way near from Interstate 15 south of Belen, NM along the north side of Ladron Peak and then south to the ghost town of Riley along the Rio Salado river. From there, it is called “Forest 354 Road” and it runs south into the town of Magdalena, NM. In all, about 50 miles. It’s always a little hard to get a good read on the actual conditions of a road from several hundred feet in the air and 150 mph but this one seemed pretty good.
I had a few hours on Sunday afternoon and the weather was reasonably good. No wind, the temp slightly north of 50 degrees, but there was cloud cover and it sorta looked like it could rain – except it doesn’t rain in New Mexico (at least not very often). So, good enough – off I went.
I found a reasonable parking place, unloaded and hit the trail.. Er.. Road. It was mostly hard pack with some wash boarding but overall pretty good. The real concern here in the desert is sand. I found only one or two very minor sandy spots so no worries there. From east of Ladron Peak, the road steadily climbs from the Rio Grande River “basin” up into the mountains. The area is very dry with lots of cactus – very pretty.
On this day, my ride was only about fifteen miles but I enjoyed every mile. I’m still in a post-winter, get back into the saddle mode. I rode 19 miles on Saturday so 15 on dirt on Sunday was plenty enough to cause the “wear points” on my behind to get the message that riding season has arrived and to “toughen up”!!
I saw a total of two vehicles – both farm trucks and I didn’t see a single person – lovely solitude!! Another ten or twenty degrees higher outside temperature would not have bothered me one little bit but ya gotta take what you can get!
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