The Jemez Mountains

The Jemez Mountains

Before visiting, I admit to having been painfully naive about New Mexico. I imagined nothing but arid, desert environments and stucco homes—I never would have guessed that it was home to such a lush and vibrant forest.

But I stand corrected.

I don’t remember how the Jemez Mountains ended up on my radar, but I’m really glad they did, because after weeks spent in mostly desert environments, it felt like a literal breath of fresh air to get back into a big, green, mountainous forest. 

On the drive up through the town of Jemez Springs, I passed high canyon walls, impressive rock formations, waterfalls, hot springs and flowing creeks. And before long, as I continued to climb in elevation, the air became cooler, the trees larger and the forest denser. Jemez already felt like coming home and I hadn’t even fully arrived yet. 

All-in-all I spent nearly a week in the Jemez area. The first few days I camped out in the massive ponderosa pine forest, where I found a couple great sites to call home for a while. My days were primarily spent hiking the local trails, taking photos, dipping into hot springs and relaxing in the hammock reading my book. There is a calm, peaceful energy to this place that I found particularly easy to adapt to. 

After a few lovely days in the forest, I drifted east along Highway 4 heading towards Bandelier National Monument—a monument which my parents visited decades ago and still speak very fondly of. Along the way, I stumbled upon the Valles Caldera National Preserve—a place I knew nothing about beforehand, not even its existence, but as I was driving past I felt a particularly strong pull to check it out.  

If you’re as unfamiliar as I was, Valles Caldera is the caldera of an ancient super-volcano that is estimated to have erupted 1.2 million years ago. It’s no wonder that I felt such an intense pull towards this place—it’s powerful beyond all measure! What's left, after the explosion, is a gigantic, green, thirteen-mile-long meadow that's surrounded by volcanic mountains, filled with flowing creeks, and is home to an abundance of wildlife including a massive herd of elk (which were so far away that I could barely even see them through my longest zoom lens) and thousands of adorable prairie dogs that continually popped out to squeal at me before dipping back into their den. 

I didn’t spend more than a few hours in the caldera, unfortunately, but the meadow, and the surrounding mountains, are areas I’d be very happy to explore on a deeper level. After taking a short hike and snapping a bunch of photos, I hopped back in my van and continued on to Bandelier National Monument, where a lower-elevation portion of my Jemez adventure would begin, and so would one of the biggest headaches of my trip so far.

“Valles Caldera National Preserve is located in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico. This 88,900-acre park encompasses almost all of the volcanic caldera created by a spectacular volcanic eruption about 1.2 million years ago. The caldera is dormant, but not extinct, and still displays signs of volcanic life with hot springs and boiling sulphuric acid fumaroles. The juxtaposition of large grassland meadows, or valles in Spanish, surrounded by rounded, forest-covered volcanic domes provides the distinctive natural landscape that led to the name of Valles Caldera. These ecosystems, ranging from 8,000 to 11,254 feet high at the top of Redondo Peak, combine abundant rainfall, mixed conifer forests, and deep, rich soils to support a great diversity of animals, plants, fungi, and other organisms including several thousand elk and healthy populations of mountain lions, bears, and coyotes.” —nps.gov