First La Luz hike of the year!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014 @ 4:07 PM in Miscellaneous

Erin and I had planned on doing the La Luz hike today. La Luz is a trail that goes up/down the Sandia mountain in Albuquerque. It's about 8 miles each way with about 5,500 feet of elevation gain from the bottom. Since I can't take Canyon on the tram and she loves the exercise, I told Erin I'd meet her at the top and hike down with her (since that was Erin's plan). I got to the La Luz trailhead around 8:30 this morning, paid my $3 parking fee and then started hiking up.

The hike up went fine. I only saw a few other people along the way and Canyon got to run around and even got to play in some snow that was in some shade near the top of the trail. As always, the mile and a half of scree fields was pretty monotonous but we made it through.

We got to the tram station a little before 11:30 and had lunch. I made some quesadillas in the morning and also brought some food for Canyon. The only people up there when I got there were some construction workers who seemed to be working on the new tram station. I text Erin and told her I was up there but it didn't seem like the trams were running. Apparently the tram is closed every Tuesday, which we didn't know about.

Without anyone to wait for now and the cold winds that were blowing really strong at the peak, Canyon and I started the hike back down. We made really good time on the way down, but by the time we were about 3 miles from the car it really warmed up. I kept giving Canyon water and pouring it on her to help cool her down.

My total moving time for the hike today (up and down) was 5 hours and 2 minutes. I think that's the fastest I've done it so far. I was hoping to finish in under 5 hours but didn't quite make it. I'm sure I'll be doing the hike several more times this summer so maybe one of those times I'll break the 5 hour mark.

Now that my legs are completely worn out and Canyon is passed out it's time to think about dinner and a shower.

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