Redondo Peak, NM

Objective:  
Summit Redondo Peak (11,254') - successful.
   no images yet.
Date:  
September 26, 2004
Photogallery:  
none yet.
Party:   Scott Surgent, Edward Earl, and Mouser Williams
Summary:  
A long slog up to the highest point in the Valle Caldera National Preserve.
Route:  
From Los Alamos, NM, 501 to 4 to Redondo Campground. Hiked generally east to the southern foot of the mountain, then straight up the side to the road. Followed road to north side of peak, then straight up again to the summit. Descended straight down southern side.
Noteworthy:   My 74th county highpoint.
Lessons Learned:  
Close-proximity elk bellowing can be creepy.
A Note on Tresspassing:
This peak is on the Valle Caldera National Preserve which, despite it being public land, is not generally open to the public. There are a limited number of trips into the VNCP available for a sizeable fee, and none of them include a trip to the summit of Redondo. Since the VNCP was purchased by "the American people" in July of 2000, I have been trying to contact them with regards to setting up a trip to the summit of Redondo. I was more than willing to pay for the privledge of traveling to this highpoint. However, most of my inquiries saw no response and those that did indicated I should just wait for such a trip to be made available. After four years, I gave up. I signed up for one of their guided hikes, paid my entry fee, and didn't show up. Then, I entered the preserve without permission to hike Redondo.

Saturday, September 25
Scott and Edward, fellow county highpointing afficianados, got a campsite at the Redondo Campground on the western border of the preserve. They choose the campsite closest to the border. I drove out there with them and we scouted the boundary fence near the campsite. As it turns out, there was a fallen tree that had taken the fence out at about the closest point to the campsite. Having determined how we would enter, we retreated for the night. Scott and Edward stayed at the campsite and I returned to my home, only 40 minutes away.

Sunday, September 26
I woke up at an unreasonable 3:15am and had breakfast, leaving the house at 3:50. The drive to the campground got me there a bit before the 4:30 meeting time we had agreed on. The moon had just set and the whole area was fogged in. We headed off into the woods with only starlight and occasional use of a red-filtered flashlight. The goal was to cross the large meadow and get onto the slope of the actual mountain before first light, which was at about 6:20.

Once we got down onto the meadow, we were guiding ourselves using a series of waypoints I had programmed into my GPS the night before. Walking by starlight on uncertain terrain is weird enough, add in the fog and the very nearby bellowing elk and it was downright surreal. Elk bellows sound like a cross between a screaming girl and a car that needs its rotors turned. In the still darkness, it was very creepy. We never actually saw a single elk, but from the sounds I imagine they were all around us and very numerous.

Anyway, we were able to cross the meadow (including two stream crossings) without incident and got onto the 4WD road that heads from this field up to El Cajete. About half-way up this road was the spot we had decided to leave the road and start heading up the mountain on a broad ridge of the south face. We went up about 100 meters and then took a break and waited for a bit of light, which was only about 10 minutes away.

From there, the mountain ascent proceeds in three main stages. Because of its approximately hemispherical shape, Redondo is steepest at the base. The lower stage included some very steep and loose talus slopes and thick mountain oak stands that took a long time to navigate. Once on top of this section, the grade leveled out significantly and there were open grassy fields that could be followed for quite a ways. Unfortunately, these left us at the base of a thick forest section which we had to ascend through for 500'. However, this put us on the summit access road, which we followed for about 120 degrees around the mountain to until we were on the north side. At this point, the gradient of the mountain is quite small and we just walked straight south to the summit.

Contrary to a trip report I had read in the past, there was no radio facility at the summit nor any structures of any kind. We found the benchmark and a single witness marker and took some photos before stopping for lunch. We arrived at about 10:00am, approximately five and a half hours after we left camp. Scott and I were particularly haggard after the long bushwack.

Descending from the peak we took a much more optimal route, having learned a few things on the way up. We followed the summit access road due south from the summit to the point where it was heading due east, then headed southwest through an open slope all the way down to the top of the steep lower section. This was considerably easier than the annoying forest bushwacks that we did on the upper slopes on the way up. Descending he talus was viewed as annoying, so we opted instead to find game trails through the dense and thorny mountain oak/briar patches. Going down in this way was extremely fast.

Once back to the El Cajete 4WD access road, we stayed on a trail slightly above the road on the north side and followed it west to the large field we had come across in the dark earlier. Not wanting to cross the field in broad daylight, we opted instead for a small two-track that skirted the field to the south and worked its way up on top of the southern rim. The rim road was part of the unguided horseback tour available from the VCNP, but we never saw anyone on it.

Unfortuantely, the high plateau above the field to the south is riddled with similar roads and we couldn't seem to find one that headed in the right direction for very long, so we were continuously cutting cross country towards our fence crossing. This ended up taking a long time. The GPS eventually led us to the right place and we made it across the fence and back into real public land without incident. We arrived back at the vehicles at 2:00pm, a 9.5 hour trip.

From there, it was a 40 minute drive back to my place to clean up and eat.

Written by Mouser Williams on 2004.09.27