A local Meetup.com MTB group scheduled a mountain bike ride in the El Malpais area last weekend and I decided to tag along.
WikiPedia says this about the area:
“The lava flows, cinder cones, and other volcanic features of El Malpais are part of the Zuni-Bandera volcanic field, the second largest volcanic field in the Basin and Range Province. This volcanically active area on the southeast margin of the Colorado Plateau is at the intersection of the Rio Grande Rift Basin, with its deep normal faulting, and the ancient Jemez Lineament. These two features provide the crustal weaknesses that recent magmatic intrusions and Cenozoic volcanism are attributed to.
The rugged Pahoehoe and A’a’ lava flows of the Zuni-Bandera eruptions (also called the Grants Lava Flows) filled a large basin, created by normal faulting associated with the Rio Grande Rift, between the high mesas of the Acoma Pueblo to the east, Mt. Taylor to the north, and the Zuni Mountain anticline to the northwest. Vents associated with these flows include Bandera Crater, El Calderon, and several other cinder cones; more than a dozen older cinder cones follow a roughly north-south distribution along the Chain of Craters west of the monument.”
I’ve ridden in this area before and thoroughly enjoy it. Viewing the lava flows and old volcano cinder cones is really neat!
This ride was scheduled to be a fairly easy route of about 10 miles total distance.
Apparently, the winter months have not been kind to me or my conditioning (in spite of trying to ride my road bike at every opportunity) because this ride was tough! Making it worse, we went for just over twenty miles!!
We started at the El Calderon parking area off highway 53, twenty miles south of Grants, NM. It was a very cool day (forecast was for about a 40 degree high) and windy. No matter, the beauty of the area and great camaraderie more than made up for the temperature and wind.
By the time we made it back to the car, I was totally shot. My quads were even starting to cramp up a bit. It was worth it though – I highly recommend this area!
I flew over the area the next day and took the following photos.
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