Agua Sarca Hike

Tunnel Spring Hike

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Notes about the Google Earth screenshot: the graph at the bottom shows elevation of the track (pink area) and speed (the blue line).

Driving to the trailhead(s) we first  encountered the sign for Agua Sarca, with an arrow pointing on to Tunnel Spring; we chose to go up Agua Sarca. It was many years ago that we last hiked this trail, so it was like new to me.

• From parking, the trail was a smooth incline — for a quarter of a mile or so.
• But .. the sides of the cañon began to close in and the trail became nothing but rocks.
• That was okay for a while, but then the incline went from 5% to 17%.
• I’m not yet in condition to be strong enough for a trail like this, so I decided we should turn back at half a mile and check out the Tunnel Spring Trail.

Tunnel Spring must be one of the only trails that Jay and I have not hiked over these past 13 years hiking together. But it was more favorable to me than Agua Sarca – mostly a rock-free trail surface with moderate elevation changes.

• From the parking area, a signboard with a map of trails in the Sandias introduces this trail. Not acquainted with the details, we inadvertently set out on what is the North Crest Trail (a fact that I discovered while writing this BLOG entry).
• For the first half mile along this slope of this northeastern corner of the Sandias the trail is quite easy going.
• Throughout the trail passes through the juniper/piñon “forest” typical at this elevation.
• Past the half mile point and for the next half mile, the trail makes an easy  descent from 6,400 to 6.200 feet, then climbed a bit until we chose to turn back to make our goal of 3 miles for the day.
• Noting on the map a parallel trail just downhill from our trail out, we descended (north) off of the North Crest Trail onto -the real- Tunnel Spring Trail (also discovered while reviewing details on GAIA, also on AllTrails). So then on the Tunnel Spring Trail we returned to the trailhead – still a nice trail with some elevation changes.
• Note: Scrutinizing again the GAIA version of maps with trails etc., I can now see that -the- Tunnel Spring Trail (on which we returned to parking) would continue east from where we joined it, for only .2 mile to what GAIA depicts as .. a tunnel entrance. AllTrails also shows this extension as the “Tunnel Spring East Trail”.