The rocky wash leading to the bench between Comanche and Candelaria.
The old red flag was flying again today, so instead of cycling Herself and I scrambled into the neighboring Sandia foothills, working our way along bits and pieces of the Candelaria Bench Loop.
Herself bouldering upward. There’s a bit of singletrack off to her left but it’s a slippery sonofabitch.
It’s only a four-mile hike, but there’s a fair amount of vertical at the beginning and the end, much of it on crumbly gravel switchbacks lined with sharp rocks and cacti.
After the first steep, loose climb east of Comanche we stuck to a stair-stepped, boulder-studded wash that was a whole lot more fun than the narrow singletrack I took a digger on last year, slamming my left thigh into a big round rock.
Oddly, the winding descent to Trail 365 near Candelaria seemed less challenging than I remembered.
Once I met another hiker on that stretch who said she simply sat and slid down some of the steeper sections (glissading, for the aficionados among you). I’ve done this a time or two myself, but never on purpose, or without consequences.
Didn’t happen today, to either of us, so yay, etc.
And we didn’t see another single solitary soul, either. Unless you count the three circling crows who seemed to be tracking our cautious movements downward and providing an appropriate soundtrack. Haw … haw … haw.
Herself inspects the Greater Duke City Metropolitan Area
from the Candelaria bench.
