Caja del Rio – Blow Hole Run
By Mark Wolf (Trail Tales November 2012)
On Saturday, October 13, 2012 four vehicles joined Joan and I for a run to see the “blow hole” one last time before it is closed by the Santa Fe National Forest as part of the FINAL Travel Management Plan for that area. The “blow hole” is a natural lava tube blow out that is perched upon a hill and is some 200’ deep (by estimates only) and approximately 20’ in diameter.
I had talked to Dixon about wanting to go on this trail during the Mt. Taylor run and he noted there wasn’t much time. I thought about it and decided to run it parallel to his run on the Tank Trap trail which is near this trail. I hurriedly suggested that I would lead the trail at the same time as his run to Tank Trap. He wasn’t too keen on the idea as he wanted to see this phenomenon as well, but like he said time is running out. So I called him to ask him to post it on the website for me as my modem had died and I wouldn’t get another for several days. He did it for me and noted the run was considered a “1” and was easy. Well, after several years of NON-USE it was a little more than easy, but not really that hard. The worst part was that I had run the trail with Lauri Rector several years ago and never got to do the whole trail as we had a guest break down and I went to help them. So I was left with Glenn Bontly’s GPS coordinates to find my way. If you have never done this before, it isn’t easy. I had no idea how to load them into the GPS, so Joan read them out as we went along. Well, the points listed were not exactly the same as we were reading as we traveled into the woods and we had to guess more than once. But, believe it or not we only made two wrong turns! It was kind of a mystery and fun all at the same time.
We all met at the same location as the Tank Trap people and followed each other to the new “park” with clean bathrooms on FR 24 where we separated to air down and group up. I left first and unfortunately drove right by the turn. A quick U-turn (with all of the Tank trap people watching…AND commenting!) and we found the proper turn to take. It went smoothly from there for a while, but another wrong turn at the pond was easily rectified and we got on the right trail. As we traversed the trail we turned into the gulch and many trees were downed. Several times we had to get out and move them off the trail to continue on our route. We kept going and eventually “topped out” on the mountain. We kept interpreting the coordinates and luckily made the correct turns. I stopped at a spot that looked like something should be there and Travis and I went exploring. After a short hike down the hill we found what we were looking for! I was really happy! I yelled up to the others that we had found the Blow Hole and walked back up to enjoy lunch. Everyone except Mark, who didn’t feel good at the time, made their way down to look at the natural phenomenon and then back to our vehicles.
I heard from Jennifer Jacobs several times that it is no “easy” (or number 1) trail like the website said! However, she is getting to be a veteran driver and her skills as a four wheeler are getting more refined these days. She did great and NEVER got stuck once. In fact, Travis Bakewell brought out his 99 Jeep WJ for the first time with the New Mexico 4 Wheelers and had little to no trouble. His Dad (Tracy) came along as well and we all had a good time. Mark Mullin was also there and his 05 Rubicon had no trouble whatsoever. I took along my Comanche and it did excellent.
We left the blow hole after taking pictures to prove we were there and made our way back to FR 24 and eventually back to the air down spot. However, one of our stops was due to seeing a large tarantula making its way across the road. We had to stop and check it out and take some pictures of it. It was cool! After airing up our tires we all said goodbye and headed back to Albuquerque/Rio Rancho/Los Lunas as was necessary. It was a beautiful day weather wise and we had a good group of people tagging along. Thanks to all who came along and to those who missed it sorry. It may be awhile before we can go back to that spot.
The “blow hole” is a natural phenomenon and protecting it by a barrier to keep people back is a better way to preserve it in my opinion. I guess we need to work with the USFS to volunteer to install barriers and let this be the “mitigation” to allow us to continue to use this trail. It is a really cool spot to enjoy and the trail is pretty fun for stock vehicles. It is not really that hard, but it works the vehicle and that makes it an experience.
