Deer Trap Mesa Hike

Yesterday evening, six of us went out on a hike before going out to our monthly "Ladies Night Out" dinner. We decided to go on Deer Trap Mesa (beginning of trail on left photo), which was a challenge at first because of so many rocks to climb straight up or down before getting to the actual flat mesa top trail, which is high above Barranca canyon on the right. I found the stair pathways up and down the rocks fascinating because of the foot marks ground into the soft tuff rock (photo, above right). I imagined the Ancestral Pueblo Indians carving those steps as they walked the route every day. Another fascinating structure was the "Deer Trap" that was roughly a 6 x 8 foot rectangle at around 5 foot deep (photo, left). I imagine that the Pueblo people would cover the trap with grasses or twigs and wait for an animal such as a deer to walk over it and drop into the trap, unable to get out and becoming the meal of the day. After walking on top of the rocks for a while, the mesa top does widen out and a really nice trail takes you to the end. At the end of the trail is a lovely view of the mesas around Los Alamos, the Rio Grande Valley, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beyond (photo, above right). The round trip was just under 3 miles and took us a bit over an hour.

After our hike, we went out for a quick dinner at Bob's Bodacious BBQ here in town. Good BBQ for a reasonable price (try their pulled pork) and the perfect kind of food after a hike. I really like their macaroni salad...not too much mayo and was mostly the macaroni without all that extra crap some people put into it.

~~~~~~~~~
Neat