Found in: | Outside | Hiking | Where to Go | Wilderness |
". . . these odd rocks add a whimsical quality to the walk."
Getting Started
WHERE Turn west off U.S. Hwy 550 onto paved N.M. 197 just south of Cuba village. Follow it around the mesa's southern edge for about 5.5 miles to a small dirt road on the right which heads north for about 4 miles up the mesa's west side. Public lands extend the whole way so you can stop anywhere and hike over to the mesa base for exceptional formations.
WHEN Year round, depending on recent weather. Significant precipitation turns the road into a quagmire and makes hiking at least unpleasant and possibly even dangerous due to potential flash floods in the narrow arroyos. Snow, on the other hand, can be quite beautiful and much easier to walk through.
INFO Kathy Walters, BLM recreational specialist, Albuquerque BLM Office, 761-8700; The New Mexico Mountain Club, P.O. Box 4151, University Station, Albuquerque, NM 87196
Walking slowly along the base of Mesa De Cuba, we pause frequently to admire the myriad shapes, colors and textures surrounding us. I'm reminded of a mysterious city with a winding lane that passes bazaars and side passages filled with exotic art treasures, larger-than-life statues, and lavishly decorated buildings. The topography of the Mesa De Cuba badlands is different from the other San Juan Basin badlands I've explored. Rather than scattered over a large area, the hoodoos stretch along the amazingly convoluted mesa base. If you followed all the dry washes carved deeply into the mesa, you'd be walking up to four actual miles for each linear mile traveled - and each wash is packed with formations.
Strangely shaped hoodoos grow from knife-edged promontories. Rock turrets soar skyward, some split by vertical crevices wide enough to climb through. Maroon colored stone spheres lie scattered by the hundreds like neglected marbles, ranging in size from inches to a yard wide. Technically known as "iron concretions," these odd rocks add a whimsical quality to the walk. Petrified wood is strewn in pieces and full-fledged logs. In places, huge, intricately pitted boulders have rolled down from the mesa sides to form labyrinths guarding overhanging amphitheaters.
Cross-country hiking through this combination obstacle course and amusement park is as relaxing or strenuous as you make it. The easiest route hugs the mesa base where the surprisingly even terrain is interrupted only by arroyo channels. If you decide to enter an arroyo, the going can get tougher, requiring picking through boulder slides and up overhanging ledges as the passage gets increasingly steep and narrow. Scaling the walls via the ubiquitous little ridges and channels can access better vantage points.
The Mesa De Cuba badlands takes its name from an oblong, upraised chunk of sedimentary rock that stretches for seven miles south from the continental divide along U. S. Highway 550 due west of Cuba. Thickly forested with huge ponderosa, the 7,600-foot-elevation top is part of Santa Fe National Forest. The BLM administers the land at the southern end and along the western base where the most accessible badland formations lie.
The colorfully sculpted, 800-foot-high Mesa De Cuba walls are composed of just two sedimentary layers formed in sequence starting about 63 million years ago. Made of sand and mud sediments carried by rivers from the then rapidly rising and eroding San Juan Mountains just to the north, they span the time period when early mammals were expanding into the environments left empty by the dinosaur's sudden demise.
Exceptionally rich in fossils, the younger sandstone top was deposited during Eocene times about 55 million years ago when the mammal revolution was gaining momentum. Known as the San Jose Formation, the sandstone ranks among the best in the country for early mammal fossils, including a fox-sized animal that was the first step in the evolutionary development of the horse.
Equally rich in even earlier mammal fossils, the older, thicker multi-colored base, known as the Nacimiento formation, was deposited during Paleocene times just after the dinosaur's abrupt disappearance. Together with the underlying cretaceous sedimentary rock, these layers make the San Juan Basin one of only a half-dozen places on the planet where paleontologists can study a terrestrial fossil record spanning the transition from dinosaurs to mammals.
After the easy walking past constantly changing formations, we decide to try reaching the mesa top via a promising arroyo. Scrambling over boulder slides and pockets of crumbling soil, we slowly ascend the V-shaped chasm incised into the rainbow-striped rock walls. Dark gray seams of low-grade coal hint at the lush, swampy environments that once existed here. At times, we find ourselves climbing through petrified logjams. What seemed a steep arroyo is actually a series of hanging balconies and hidden sculpture galleries featuring mini-hoodoos and colorful petrified wood chunks. After getting stopped by a high cliff face at the top, we savor the aerial perspective and marvel at the complexity of just this formation-filled arroyo. There are countless more carved into the mesa, most larger and more branching, assuring further exploration in this amusing maze that is the Mesa De Cuba Badlands.
Writer Michael Richie never tires of exploring local adventure spots, in particular places where his discoveries can help to increase public awareness about the effects of limiting mining and development. In 1982, his Sierra magazine article on New Mexico's Bisti Badlands lent support to the fight to stop the efforts to strip mine the Bisti and get it declared wilderness. More recently, his articles on Ojito Wilderness supported efforts to make it the first officially designated wilderness in New Mexico in 18 years.
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