El Camino Real Historic Route Trail

Carved Trail Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 16

~10 min drive

From this point forward, you will be walking in a trail carved into the volcanic tuff.  The rock is very soft and malleable.  It is very important to stay on the trail.  In just a very short time, our shoes can do more damage than many years of erosion.  Thank you for helping…

Soda Springs

~3 min drive

Moderate 8-mile hike to natural springs with 709 ft elevation gain.

More Than History Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 1

~11 min drive

No Pueblo people live at Tsankawi today.  However, this place still contains tangible and intangible connections with the past for the descendants of the people who once occupied these canyons and mesas.  A petroglyph (image etched into rock) carved into the soft stone walls o…

Cuesta Colorada

~7 min drive

Easy 2.4-mile trail with gentle elevation gain near Cuesta Colorada.

Intro Tsankawi Guided Hike Stop 0

~11 min drive

Tsankawi is part of the ancestral lands of the modern pueblo of San Ildefonso.  Using the soft volcanic rock to construct houses and the flat open lands between mesas for farming, Ancestral Pueblo people called this place home in the 1400’s and 1500’s.  Life was not easy on th…

Falls Trail Tour - Stop 13

~13 min drive

<p>Are you starting to notice some new plants? Leaving behind the towering ponderosas and scrubby oaks, you are now passing broad-leaved yucca (<i>Yucca baccata</i>), mormon tea (<i>Ephedra viridis</i>), and walkingstick cholla (<i>Opuntia imbricate</i>). The environment here…

Falls Trail Tour - Stop 15

~13 min drive

<p>See if you can spot where Frijoles Creek joins the Rio Grande. In 2011 the massive Las Conchas wildfire heavily burned the upper reaches of this canyon. In the years that followed, several huge floods changed the landscape of Frijoles Canyon. The creek normally flows around…

Falls Trail Tour - Stop 14

~13 min drive

<p>Across the canyon, you can see layered volcanic rock. These are sediments from an ancient maar volcano. A maar volcano is one that erupts through water, such as an underground aquifer. When underground water is suddenly heated, it expands into a significant volume of steam.…

Falls Trail Tour - Stop 16

~13 min drive

<p>Upper Falls was created by magma that cooled in the throat of the volcano as the eruptions ceased. This durable stone was resistant to erosion and withstood the downcutting of Frijoles Creek. This waterfall is approximately 80 feet tall. <br /> <br /> Upper Falls is the fin…

Falls Trail Tour - Stop 12

~13 min drive

<p>This is a boundary of the Bandelier Wilderness. This area was designated as a wilderness in 1976 under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wilderness areas are given the highest form of protection the government can give to a public land to protect them for future generations.</p>