Nash Draw, New Mexico

PART FOUR

A Walk South Along The Edge of Livingston Ridge

The rim walk led to several nice views, aided by a sun hanging low in the sky by now.  These first three pictures represent a walk around the first canyon in the ridge coming from the north.  Notice the hint of a second canyon right behind the first one, by a slightly higher peak:

We have now passed that first ledge and are looking back to the southwest facing edges of the first and second canyons:

Of course an objective in going to the ridge is to look down into Nash Draw and its lakes:

The view changes slowly as we go south along the ledge:

On the way south there is incision after incision into this ridge, with erosion slowly taking material from beneath the caprock until a piece of it falls, like is about to happen here:

There are numerous incisions into the ridge like these, but they give me the impression of being quite stable over long times:

Dramatically different vegetation occurred in two places where I presume the nature of the soil and its slope and aspect with respect to the sun allowed this spiky, fuzzy plant to flourish (where the fuzzy plants were was quite dark, so the rest of the photo is overexposed):

It seemed these promontories/canyons would never end when all of a sudden I came to the last one.  From that last rounded promontory I again looked into the draw, to the southwest, and saw I had made progress moving south:

Looking straight to the south now showed that if I were going to get back to my car, I needed to get back to the jeep road to the left:

I slogged through much dense vegetation back to the jeep road, and then up to the pole road.  I took the pole road back to where the car was parked:

When I returned to my car, it was just a short wait to see the Guadalupe Range in front of a fantastic yellow and red sunset!

What is hanging in that tree?  One of these, there are a few of these around.  Looks like a lot of work to me, especially if I had only a beak to grab one twig at a time with and with which to weave it in just right.  I marvel at complex engineering well done:

Hope you enjoyed this walk, I did except for all the burrs that my clothing picked up.  It took a while to pluck all of them out of socks, and off coat, shirt and pants. But hey, burrs are much to be preferred over ticks. (There is always a bright side, you know.)

Return to Part 1: What is Karst, What is Potash, What is Nash Draw?

Return to Part 2: Central Nash Draw

Return to Part 3: A Walk North on Livingston Ridge

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