Author: bjregan

Our hike this week was one that we have done twice before. For some reason, we call it the “Red Dot Blue Dot” hike when the way that we’ve done it all three times is by starting at the Blue Dot trailhead, connecting to the River Trail, then the Red Dot trail, and finishing on the Canyon Rim trail. At least finishing on the Canyon Rim trail is the goal, but we didn’t manage that goal the first two times on the hike.

The hike leads down to the Rio Grande River at White Rock, NM, where the river cuts through a canyon lined by steep lava escarpments. A series of blue dots are painted on the black lava rocks to mark the trail as it descends into the canyon. At the bottom it connects to the River Trail and about 2 miles further along the River Trail it connects to the Red Dot Trail. This one climbs back out of the canyon over the lava escarpments and is marked with red dots painted on the rocks.

At the top of the canyon the trailhead for the Red Dot trail is on a side street in a subdivision of White Rock. It doesn’t directly connect to the Canyon Rim trail. Walking on the street is required and if you aren’t careful you miss the spot along the ditch where you get off the street and follow a path that leads to the Canyon Rim trail. There are many local neighborhood paths between the houses and it’s easy to miss the official trail. The first time we tried we added some extra walking trying to find the beginning, as well as at the end when we left the Canyon Rim trail too soon and went out of our way to get back to the car. The second time was a really long hike because we took a wrong turn almost as soon as we got on the Canyon Rim trail and then ended up walking back to the car through the town itself. The third time is a charm, though, and now we’ve finally figured out that tricky part at the end.

Below is a map that shows our 3 times on this hike. The purple line is the preferred way that we successfully accomplished on our third try. The blue overlaps the purple on the trip down to the river and back up but then shows how we had to walk through the subdivision. And the red line overlaps the purple except for a couple of extra side trips.

And now for old time’s sake I’m including a link here to the page describing
the first time we did this hike.

Sandstone Bluffs is like an out-and-back hike because the trail follows a line of narrow bluffs for several miles before turning around and heading back. But the fun part is that you have a choice of walking on top of the bluffs or walking through the desert at the base of the bluffs. Since the wind was rather chilly when we started we chose to start hiking at the bottom where we would be more protected from the wind.

The trail at the base is unofficial and the challenge of starting the hike that way is figuring out exactly where to climb down from the bluffs. We wandered back and forth along the edge and finally took a guess at what looked like the best way to get down. After we got home I researched a track of this hike from 2 years ago where we had done it the opposite way. I was surprised to see that we had picked the correct spot because it didn’t seem like it when we were slowly threading our way down the steep, rocky slope.

Another interesting aspect of hiking at Sandstone Bluffs is the opportunity at many spots to find pottery shards left from the time when native peoples lived in the area. It’s against the law to take any of them, but we like to gather them together in one spot to make a nice arrangement for someone else who might be walking this way. A couple of examples:

There are some petroglyphs at the far end of the hike that we have seen on previous hikes here. But we weren’t sure exactly where they were and found out later we hadn’t walked quite far enough.

The next couple of photos are from a previous hike here. We did see the rock bridge on this hike but my picture of it wasn’t very good. And we didn’t get as close to the lava rocks as before and that is another thing that we like about hiking Sandstone Bluffs.