[NMCCSC] Report of Mistletoe Canyon outing, Sat., Feb. 16

[Sam via NMCCSCeGroup]

Hello Skiers,

On Saturday, February 16, Carl Smith and Sam Beard scouted Mistletoe Canyon Trail to check snow and road conditions in preparation for leading a Class II Club tour there when the snow is better. This route is located in the East Fork area across NM-4 from the Los Griegos Mountain parking lot. As you can see in the photos in the attached Word document, we had wind and blowing snow in the morning and a temperature of 26 F.

We skied up the Las Conchas Burn Trail from the highway about 200 feet east of the Los Griegos parking lot. When we got to East Fork Ridge, we found that Mistletoe Canyon Road had been plowed as part of the major thinning and logging project there. This work is scheduled in the winter when the ground is frozen so that the heavy equipment tires and tracks do not disturb the soil as much as they would in the summer. We walked carefully down the road until we found snow we could ski in the wide upper canyon bottom.

After skiing across a wide meadow, we started down the narrow part of the canyon on a former logging road with better snow conditions on the north-facing mountainside. We were fortunate to be skiing in a wide snowshoe track made by local residents. We did not find any trees down across this part of the route. The trail leaves the canyon and goes to the west end of a former pumice mine in order to avoid private property. After skiing to the highway, we hid our skis, walked about a mile to our vehicle, and retrieved our equipment on our return trip to Albuquerque.

We propose that on a Club trip down Mistletoe Canyon, we would park at Los Griegos and enter the canyon just west the parking lot. On a Club outing, we would ski the western part of this route that joins the East Fork Ridge Trail about one-half mile from the west end of the ridge trail. On such an outing, we would leave a car at the west trailhead to avoid a long walk or ski back to Los Griegos.

Carl and Sam

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