Car Wreck Canyon

Car Wreck Canyon, originally uploaded by craptastica.

A couple weekends ago I headed into the mountains to see the sights and walk the day away. I planned to finally get to the Dome Wilderness; the small, isolated wilderness area on the southeast portion of the Jemez District.

It was a long walk just to get to the Wilderness boundary. You see, I am quite handicapped when it comes to mountain travel - or at least my car is. The foot or so of clearance afforded by my Carolla will get me only up the most cared for mountain roads. The Dome road, however, is not one of these and I had to abandoned the low-rider at the first gully.

This left me with a sack full of food, a couple of eager feet, and a long, uphill dirt and gravel road. I walked for a few hours through pinon-juniper woodlands and a road strewn with old beer bottles, cheap beer cans, and other random metal car parts and food wrappers.

Eventually I had walked far enough that the junipers gave way to ponderosa pine and eroded rock forms towered above the road on either side. Trucks and motorcycles were passing me every two seconds leaving billowing dust clouds in their wake.

I usually don't see anybody on my hikes, and the trash that covered the sides of the road pissed me off. I can stand that shit, so I headed into the woods to get lost.

About a mile or so further up, after several hours. I saw an old car wreck and the Dome Wilderness boundary. Since the sun sets at about 4:30 pm so late in the season, I decided to forego my auto investigation and check out the Dome wilderness. After all, that was the plan.

The Dome Wilderness is a rather small wilderness area, which shares a boundary with the Bandelier National Monument. In 1996, a wildfire swept across most of the forests within the wilderness boundary and burned the living crap (literally) out of this area. This fire burned hot, and even many of the giant 'yellow pines' (thought to be fire resistant) were crushed by the relentless wall of flame.

Ten years later the evidence of this conflagration are still obvious. About a mile in the wilderness fire-blackened trees and 'snags' surround the trail. Where trees once dominated, there is now more grass and shrub cover and there are fallen giants covering every slope.

A small creek runs through this part of the Dome forming Sanchez Canyon. The canyon is a small and indescript one except for the fact that is harbors a hidden 120-foot waterfall. You can hear it on the trail, but it hides out of sight between giant igneous crags and behind towering pines. You have to risk breaking your neck to climb down the almost vertical slopes to the bottom of the canyon, then scramble back up over a boulder field (caused by the runoff after the fire). Just about at the point when you are just under the water, you can see it's 120-foot curtain waving from the rocks above.

After checking out more of Sanchez Canyon, I got back on the rough foot trail that wandered through the wilderness and headed back out. On the way down, the trash seemed even worse.

I also saw several car wrecks and investigated each one closely. What type of car is this? When did it happen? How did it happen (drunk driver or is ice the perpetrator?)? And why the hell wasn't any of this cleaned up?

The last one I saw on my way out, right before I reached the National Forest boundary, had fallen off the road and crashed on the slope below. The slope was littered with all sorts of trash, car parts, and a cross bearing an inscription with plastic flowers at its base.

It appears that a truck with a camper had slid off the road and everything but the beaten pulp of the truck itself had laid where it had fallen. A radiator there, the camper there, and the striking reminder that Justo Rosas Enriques had missed his turn.