Tent Rocks National Monument
To celebrate Robert’s birthday, we went to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. Less than an hour’s drive from Santa Fe, the park features a small selection of short hiking trails. The Cave Loop trail, just over a mile long, is named for a small cave inhabited 500-800 years ago cut into the side of a rock face. (I wasn’t sufficiently moved to take a photo). A 1.5 mile spur off of Cave Loop takes hikers up through a dramatic rock canyon.
It begins as a shady path between two tall rock walls (above), but narrows as one continues upstream until the path is barely the width of a footstep. And soon, we found ourselves scrambling over boulders in a slot canyon etched smooth by water (see gallery below). Eventually the path opened again and we were surrounded by the tent rocks for which the park is named. Further up, the trail again turned into a steep scramble and a sign informed us we had another mile of that to go to get to an overlook. Maybe next time we will bring our hiking poles, but this time we turned around.
Once back on the Cave Loop, we saw more tent rocks and many bizarre pillars with rocks on top. The top-rocks are harder than the material below, which is a kind of natural concrete made of compressed volcanic ash and smaller rocks.
Overall, a nice way to spend a morning. Anyone who wants to go should secure tickets both from the national parks service at Recreation.gov and from the Cochiti Pueblo tribe.
Thanks for reading
-Kelly
P.S. Robert has his own photos and once he posts them I’ll add a link to those here.