W5N/SE-018 Cerro Pedernal

Cerro Pedernal is one of the most striking mountains in New Mexico. The mountain was made famous in many of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, as her ranch had a great view of the mountain. We left the house early, since the afternoon weather was questionable. Allison decided that she didn't want another day of hiking, so stayed back.

View of the peak through the trees.

 The trail head is easy to get to, and we had no trouble finding the road to turn down. I drove up it as far as I felt comfortable, then we parked on the side. The first part of the hike is along roads, and someone with a better car could probably get farther. We didn't mind the walk, however.

Contemplating the climb.

The road passes through a flat meadow, and this is where we turned off and started bushwhacking. Joe let me go first, assuming that I had some route finding superpower. We got to the base of the steep scree slope, and started climbing.

The cave was easy to see from the meadow.

There is a weakness in the cliff band that is about 100' to the left of the small cave. We could easily pick out the cave from below, but it is invisible on the slope. We climbed up, drifting left so that we would know which way to turn when we got to the bottom of the cliffs. After some serious climbing, we reached the bottom.

Climb up here.

As other recent trip reports had noted, there was a large stick leaning against the rock at the weakness, along with the painted arrow and "cal". We took a break at the bottom to have a snack, then Joe offered to climb first. We both made it up without any trouble and decided that it is an exposed class 3 climb.

Starting up.

On the top there is a bit more trail before you reach the high point. As you would expect, the top is very narrow. We hiked to the high point, then set up along the path. We each worked one band, then started hearing lightning in our radios, so decided to pack up and get out. The down climb was similar to the way up. We made a small detour to see the cave. Not very impressive. It was a slog down the talus slope back to the road.

One of those peak is Chicoma, our next destination.

Back at the car we drove out, and headed around the mountain for the drive up to the Chicoma trailhead.

Trailhead: Road in Temoline Canyon, off of Forest Road 100.
Website: SOTA Site.
Maps: AA6XA SOTA Hikes map.
Route: Hike up the road to the meadow. Bushwhack up to the bottom of the cliff band. About 100-150' to the left of the cave is the spot to climb, marked with an arrow, "cal", and a stick. Climb up this class 3, then follow the trail to the top.
Red Tape: None.

Its hard to see how steep it was here.