The Narrows, El Malpais National Monument, Grants NM, 4-6-13

Jim, Dave, Mark (from left to right) and I set out to discover the El Malpais badlands region south of Grants, NM.  The hike we chose is called "The Narrow" because the road is squeezed between a towering cliff and the lava bed extending west.  It is a 7-mile round trip stretch with almost no elevation, 3.5 miles to the La Ventana Arch Overlook.

The trail followed the edge of the cliff for a while, giving us a bit of a thrill every time be peaked over the edge of the cliff.

Detail of the lave bed below. 

 

After about two miles the trail veered off a little to the east and away from the edge of the cliff, making the trail decidedly less exciting.  We decided not to go all the way to the La Ventana Arch but to try our luck on a lava trail.

Overlooking the lava beds from the cliffs, they looked flat. Not so from up close.   We had barely walked in a few hundred yard that it was clear that getting disoriented and losing your bearings was very, very easy. The park rangers thought of that...

They made the kearns man-high so that you could see them several hundreds of yards away.

All in all a wonderful spring hike with great friends and stimulating conversations.  Already a warm day along the lava.  A "deju vu" hike for Jim and I as we hiked the lava beds of the Big Island in Hawaii just three months ago.  To our surprise, we found that the different lava formations carry the same names as in Hawaii.  (See blogs: Extreme Lava Hike, 12-13-12.)

Beaverbrook Trail, Denver CO, 3-18-13

We started this hike rather late in the day. The reason being that we set out to do a high mountain alpine hike and ended up turning back because of snow and ice on the road.  So this was plan B. We chose to start at the west end of the trail, called Windy Saddle.  The trailhead was difficult to find.  We ended up finding it, hiding at the end of a lovely 1/2-mile Braille Walk.  The bridge you see above was just at the end of the braille trail.  It was a gorgeous day but it was clear from the start of the hike that this was going to be a icy and snowy trail.  We dug the Yak Tracks out of our packs.

The trail winds its way down a steep ravine for about 1.5 miles with rock falls to cross, as you see in the picture below.  

This trail had several sections with just a little more exposure than I am comfortable handling.

At the bottom, we reached Beaverbrook Creek and found  Chavez trail. A group of hikers told us we could take Chavez trail following the creek part of the way and then back up to the cars.   

Crossing frozen Beaverbrook Creek.  A bit of a trill since it was not clear that the ice was thick enough to hold our weight.

We hiked up the trail for another 3/4 of a mile or so, and headed back.   This hike is actually in a park close to Denver (just outside of Golden) but like the hiking book said, "no part of it is a walk in the park."  I gave it an A rating for a "plan B" hike.