Ruidoso, NM: A Return to Pine Forest Hiking

We've spent the last few nights in Ruidoso, NM, enveloped in pine forests. Ruidoso is a resort town that sits at 6,920 feet in the Sierra Blanca Mountains. There are two ski resorts nearby and lots of hiking trails, so the town has many lodging and camping options, as well as lots of restaurants and touristy shops. We never did walk through town or try any of the eating and drinking establishments, our main objective was to hit the trails, enjoy the forest and start to acclimatize to the higher elevations we'll be in for the next couple of months.

The Ruidoso Chamber of Commerce has done a great job putting together a trail map for the area, you can get an excellent hard copy at their office or use the links here to view the maps online (though the maps would be hard to read if you printed it out yourself...do yourself a favor and stop by the chamber office for the hard copy!).

We hiked a number of the easy fitness trails around town, some are paved, all are convenient and pretty and perfect for a nice evening stroll or quick workout. We also hiked a couple of wonderful loop trails in the nearby mountains.

For our first hike we drove North of town into the White Mountain Wilderness. From the Argentina/Bonito trailhead we did a wonderful seven mile loop going up Argentina Canyon, across the Crest Trail, then down Little Bonito and Big Bonito trails. We did the loop counterclockwise, which seemed to be a tad easier than clockwise, with a gentle ascent of about 1,300 feet. We sure felt it though...we hadn't hiked at 8,000 - 9,000 feet since last fall!

Many of the trails in the area look like this - small streams and forests of mixed conifers and some stands of oak.

Once we reached the Crest Trail the views opened up.
The fence protects Argentina Spring from livestock.

Long distance views to the North.

This wonderful view included the tallest point in the Sierra Blanca range at about 12,000 feet.

Nogal Peak is a hard-to-miss point on the horizon to the East.

There were many stream crossings on this hike, but not enough water to make any of them too difficult.

We played 9 holes of the 27 hole Grindstone Park Disc Golf Course. This was a terrific course with lots of variety of terrain, we just weren't up for a long game that particular day.

Hans contemplates his strategy...the basket is far into the trees across the ravine.

After disc golf we drove up to Grindstone Lake hoping to take a little hike...
it turns out the dam is having a liner installed to minimize leaks.
It's quite an elaborate and interesting project, but also killed our desire to hike there!

Our second long hike started on the edge of town and took us up a spring touched canyon, then along a ridge amongst giant alligator junipers and ponderosa pine, just beautiful! The Perk Canyon (T93) and Perk Ridge (T92-1) trails make up a five mile loop that includes a mile of strenuous uphill to the ridge, and then equally steep downhill from the ridge.

Love this waterfall!

The flowering apple tree in the center of the photo was the only one we saw on the trail...Spring is here!

One of many giant alligator junipers!

There were not a great many flowers along this trail,
but along the ridge were a few large patches of "Locoweed", poisonous to livestock.

Sierra Blanca peak through the trees.

There's going to be a bounty of strawberries in a few weeks in these mountains!

There are many campgrounds and RV parks in and around Ruidoso and we decided to stay at RV Resort of Ruidoso. It's a fairly new park and we just about had the place to ourselves. Only one other neighbor out of 66 RV sites during our entire stay! There is some highway noise but it's pretty quiet at night; the sites are terraced up a hillside creating views and getting you away from the road.

The RV park roads are paved (except the top tier, that's gravel) and the sites are gravel, there is a bit of slope to some of the sites, though management seems to be working on fixing this. Very few of the sites have picnic tables. All facilities are clean and new. We had good 4G Verizon signal.

Hans is showing Rosie the deer in the RV park.

Next up: We return to Santa Fe.