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.)