City of Socorro Secures State Land Lease

 The City of Socorro is supporting our outdoor recreation community with the recent execution of an outdoor recreation lease of 640 acres adjacent to Box Canyon. You can read a nice little article about it in the Defensor Chieftain.

The areas included in the lease are shown in the figure below. You can see the Blue Canyon, Black Canyon and Gramont Peak trails just above the lease area. 

We're really happy that the city government has chosen to participate in this formal capacity in developing outdoor recreation around Socorro. We'll be working with our partners in the City on the 'stewardship plan' that proposes the development of trails, climbing areas, and other amenities within the leased lands. If you have ideas and want to engage in that process, please contact us. 

Descansos Trail Build - Day #1 Done!

Wow! The Socorro trail crew steps up again - 50 volunteers with six crew leads built the first half mile of the Descansos Trail at Box Canyon. We were mostly too busy with trail tools in our hands to take photos, but here are a few highlights.

Fifty volunteers muster for the safety briefing before the work starts. 

The next generation of trail stewards!

The next generation at work!

Proud crew show off their work building a key section of tread through a boulder field. 

More photos from Nick's Crew here. 

More photos from Francie, Steven, Justin and others here. 

Volunteer Trail Build Day - Saturday March 4th

Our BLM friends have secured approval for our next trail out at Box Canyon and would like to hold a volunteer build day on Saturday March 4th (in two weeks!). Please spread the word and consider pitching in if you're available.

You can see our work area in the image below. We will start at the parking lot west of Black Canyon, hike up Gramont Peak Trail to the ridge, and then start working our way north. 

The plan is to have our work briefing at 9am and wrap up around 1pm. The BLM will provide trail tools and we'll have burritos delivered for a lunch break!

If you're willing to pitch in, please contact us (link to the right) so we can generate a headcount. We'll also send out more detailed information to volunteers the week before. 

Thanks everyone! This is going to be a really fantastic hiking/biking trail, perhaps our best yet, and I think you'll love it too. 

La Jornada Ultramarathon is coming on February 25th!

 

La Jornada De Las Quebradas is a 53 km ultramarathon through the rugged, colorful desert landscapes east of Socorro. Registration is open and the race takes place on February 23rd. Come join us for a brutal (but fun) race!

Socorro Trails & Trailhead Plan out for Public Comment

The BLM has been working diligently to expand and formalize our Socorro area trail network and they've put out the trail plan for public comment. This is a critical juncture - we need as many supportive comments on the trail plan as possible to make this happen. 

The plan is expansive - it formalizes and develops the Socorro Single Track segments that are on the BLM, adds new trail loops connecting off Blue Canyon Trail and around the Box, and even formalizes the Chupadera Crossing Loop too. We'd protect what we have today and get 20 miles of new hike/bike/equestrian trails and up to five developed trailheads if this goes ahead!

Please submit feedback; you can submit your comments here: 

https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2022862/595

Gramont Peak is Official

Gramont Peak was officially named in late 2022 after Bertrand (Bert) Gramont (1958-1996) who was a Tech graduate student (MS 1990 in E&ES) and also the climbing instructor.  Bert was from France, and he helped introduce safe sport climbing to The Box with bolt-protected routes.  The BLM recently marked the peak, so make sure to go sign in on the peak log. You can also add your own contributions for way-markers to popular climbing spots 😄

There's a nice little article in the Defensor Chieftain about it if you're interested. 

Gramont Peak Trail

We had another successful volunteer trail building day out at Box Canyon on Saturday June 4th, to celebrate National Trails Day. Approximately 20 volunteers built the 0.6 mile trail to the overlook at Gramont Peak. It'll be on the BLM trail map shortly!

Now that we've made it up to the ridge line, the next project will extend the trail to the north, connecting to the main Box trail head. We'll continue after that to the North-East, ending at a trail head near the 'shrine'. This will make a nice loop at the end of Black Canyon for mountain bikers, hikers and equestrians.