Hello Skiers,

On Saturday, February 27, Michael Arndt, Bob Moore, and I sked on the eastern part of Los Griegos Mountain in the Jemez.

Last Friday, after Alan Shapiro reported poor snow conditions and down trees along Ladera Trail on Los Griegos Mountain, I cancelled the Club outing to the area scheduled for Saturday.

Michael, Bob, and I decided to check for down trees and snow conditions on upper Elk Ridge Trail and on the Ladera Trail switchbacks between Griegos Junction and Upper Road. We parked on the shoulder of NM-4 about 0.7 mile east of the regular Los Griegos parking area where the thinning contractor constructed a logging road a few years ago. We skied this road to Elk Ridge Trail under the power lines. On the first hill, we found crust that we could not ski with our waxless skis. We put on skins and skied on them all day to make climbing easier and to slow our descents.

We found all types of conditions from no snow to crust, soft snow, and melting snow. We applied MaxiGlide once on the way down. We found about a dozen down trees on Elk Ridge Trail before we had lunch at Griegos Junction. After lunch, we tried to find the marked route in the switchback area below Upper Road. We struggled through brush and over and around logs and finally stopped “skiing” on the traverses after going through three switchbacks.

We returned to Griegos Junction and followed Lower Road to the SE about one-quarter mile to a large clearing where we turned left and started down Big Pine Canyon. This north-facing route is not marked, and much of the way we did glade skiing through the scattered trees. We named this canyon after the large Ponderosa pines found here. Except at the beginning of the route, we found good snow cover most of the way to the highway. In the thinned area, we hiked over a south-facing slope on our way to the vehicles.

Two files of photos are attached – the first one contains a sequence of photos taken by Michael as Bob and I skied through the aspen grove and in a meadow near the power lines. The second file contains pictures I took during the outing.

Sam