New Mexican rites of passage:
1) Buying Hatch green chile [1] in the smoky parking lot of the local grocery.
2) Riding high on the tweaked hydraulics of a lowrider [2].
3) Facing off a rattlesnake, cougar, coyote, or an Espanola sheriff [3].
4) Hiking La Luz [4] trail.
Shockingly, I managed to make it through my entire coming of age in Corrales, New Mexico, without ever even attempting rite 4. While I could blame that on my preoccupation with rites 1-3, the truth is, I was sure I would die on the trail. An 8-mile trek from the base to the peak of the Sandia Mountains [5], La Luz cuts across four different ecological life zones and climbs a whopping 3,600 feet. Each of which I reckoned with last week. Presumably, because I wanted to die of embarrassment.
How else to explain the fact that at 6:45 A.M., I was catching a ride with Woody and Jeannie, my thirty-years-senior hiking companions, who, I had been warned, could jog up the trail backwards while singing the soundtrack to The Sound of Music? Having spent the last decade sea-level with wilderness-challenged New Yorkers, I knew my lungs and ego were no match for what was to come. Still, watching the pale hint of dawn creep up over the mountain filled me with the buzzing excitement I've had for the Sandias since I was a kid.
Though not as dramatic as the Tetons [6] or as expansive as the Sangre de Cristos [7], the Sandia Mountains are a spectacular portion of the Rockies, and an anchor to the east side of Albuquerque. Every kid growing up within sight of them has sooner or later been told that the mountains were actually the ocean floor some 300 million years ago, a fact that's no less boggling to the small mind when shown the fossils of sea creatures imbedded in the crest. The Sandias of today—a huge block of granite and limestone that was uplifted some 10 million years ago during the formation of the Rio Grande valley rift—have a split personality: the craggy, barren face that gazes out over the city, and the alpine, sloping back that runs gently eastward.
Of course, we were headed right up the face. While Jeanie and Woody stretched and chatted about which of the fifteen times they had most enjoyed the ascent, I checked my water supply and muttered a quick, delirious prayer that ran along the lines of Please don't let me die alone on the rocks while baby boomers lambada up the trail, please don't let me embarrass myself, please don't let me break my ankle or anyone else's, the hills are alive with the sound of music, Amen.
Starting before the sun had crested the mountain was not really a choice, but a necessity. La Luz begins in the Upper Sonoran Zone, where arid grasslands, scraggly pinons, and the occasional juniper or prickly pear cactus offer no hint of real shade. And though this is some of my favorite kind of land to see from the safety of a car seat, up close, we had to move fast across a succession of switchbacks to avoid being caught out in the bare desert. Pacing with a sunrise that was spreading rapidly across the city, I found myself moving faster than I thought I could, if only for fear of ending up cooked. But still, after the seventh switchback, I couldn't help feel a little disappointed. So this was it? The great La Luz? The trail of New Mexican legend?
Then we turned a corner and the desert as I knew it disappeared. In its place was a huge, jagged rock field, threaded with fast moving clouds and thick fingers of sunlight. Across the field, gray pines, victims of the recent drought, rattled and swayed like skeletons. A mist surrounded us and then receded, offering glimpses of the cliffs, the foothills, the sparkling city, the west mesa.
Here's what no one ever told me about La Luz: its views are remarkable enough to numb physical pain. Standing in the shadows of the big rocks, I felt small, and oxygen deprived, and absolutely amazed. As we moved through the blue spruce and ponderosa pines of the Transition Zone, I watched the face of the mountain shift and shift again, becoming something new at every angle. Even as we began the real ascent, the sharp, two-mile incline that pushes through the Canadian and Hudson Zones while throwing down a wall of screed, nineteen switchbacks, a sprinkling of aspen and a carpet of wildflowers, I was too stunned to pay any real attention to my throbbing legs and lungs. And this, more than anything, is the best reason I can think of to hike the La Luz trail: to let the planet show you how to exceed your expectations. Well, that and to impress the hell out of yourself.
Which is not to say that you should even attempt to impress the hell out of your ridiculously fit, pushing septagenarian-status hiking companions. At least a few times on the trail, I felt the thin headache and cottonmouth that accompanies altitude sickness [8], and needed to sit down and drink water to acclimatize. In response, the boomers nodded sympathetically, stretched out their steely quads and jogged quietly in place. And me, I let the shame of it all pass. Jeannie and Woody might have been generationally and physically superior, but I was finally coming of age.
Trail length: 8-9 miles
Level of difficulty: Difficult.
Altitude range: 7,080 to10,678 from trail head to crest.
Best time to go: Fall (trail is lost to snow during winter and much of spring, and summer is too hot).
Precautions: Bring at least 2 quarts of water per person, snacks, and clothing for unexpected weather, including rain gear and warm jackets.