Albuquerque part 2

 Sandia Peak Tramway

Another iconic area of the city is the Sandia Peak Tramway, located inside the Cibola National Forest. You are required to buy the tickets online and be ready to go on an adventure in the high desert.

there is plenty of space to park your car there, they recommend not to take your pet, nevertheless, they do have some cages in case you didn't know about this, but I wouldn't feel comfortable up there while my pet is stressed waiting for me, it would definitively be a vibe killer.

the tram is very big and secure, and it also has preferential seats, but on every ride, there are at least 35 persons so the ones in the window are the privileged ones, the ride is about 15 mins up to the peak, and the whole ride it's amazing, you can appreciate the geographical forms, due to his altitude you can see the forest remains mostly pines that blend within the desert vegetation, and the rocky terrain, you can see the different layers in the reddish rock that in the influence of the sun make you realize why is it called the Sandia Peak.




During the tram ride, you can see from the top beautiful perspective of the remaining forest of coniferous (Pines, Aspens, spruce, and fir), and the vegetation around being mostly shrubs, cacti, and grasses from this type of ecosystem. It's stunning the contrast between the rocky mountain and the vegetation, you can feel the depth of the canyon here and how small we are in the landscape.









There is a guide on the tram, telling you stories about the construction and history of the forest, also mentioned that sometimes if you are lucky you can see some animals like foxes, deer, and turkeys passing by, I enjoyed the late afternoon ride from 5 to 7 pm which gave me an incredible sunset even to was super chilly, you get multiple views of the city and surroundings, and there is a board with binoculars and an explanation of the iconic places you can see from there, "Totally worthed".

During the winter you can also enjoy the sky area, some years isn't open due to the lack of snow, the place is been closed since 2021 and this year (2022) they already announce they are gonna be closed too, this is a clear effect on the global warming and how temperature is changing the course not just of nature dynamics but also human activities.






From the top of the tram peak, you can visualize different geographical places like:

1. South Sandia Peak, part of the Cibola  National Park, known as Manzano Mountains (apple mountains)

2. Los Pinos mountains

3. San Mateo Mountains

4. Rio communities, Belen

5. Las lunas, Magdalena Mountains

6. kirtland air force base

7. ladron peak

8. National Museum of Nuclear Science

9. Albuquerque International Airport

10. Old town Albuquerque

11. Elena Gallegos Picnic Area









Is honestly worthed to be there, filling up your eyes with these colors and contrasts, it makes sense when you hear the name, "Land of Enchantment", you can imagine how The native Nation was living here in a sacred relationship with The Earth.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nuquí, Chocó Biogeographical Region. Part 2

On the arrival at the bitter-flavored beach,  in a moment you'll see why but for now let me describe what I see that day. The boat manage to ride the waves and the beach showed the violence of the sea, there were some walls of about a meter and a half, exposing some roots of the trees on the shore, and some meters inside, you could see some wooden moldy stairs pretty slimy look and we had two bags of 80 Lt and more each one also those stairs were about sixty steps on it and some of them rotten for the salty humidity, from there, we knew there was gonna be the heavy start of that journey, there was no much help to put our things up in the base so we just figured out our way to climb the stairs. The place is all made of tropical wood, the bedroom we installed had two beds with mosquito net and some shelves where we put some ready-to-go clothes and materials to start the next day, the plan was clear and set before we arrive, we were supposed to be accompanied by a local expert, someon...
Read more

Nuquí, Chocó Biogeographical Region. Part 1

Continuing with the last post, the recent training in Madison was given to me as an opportunity to learn about Monarchs. I wanna make a parenthesis here because you will think I'm here contradicting myself and again making complex for you to understand what a Forest engineer does, we usually work around forests and communities but remember everything is connected and other organisms have been into my interests recently, butterflies, for example, are bioindicators they tell us about the status or health in the surroundings, they always come back to the same breeding or feeding spots so you can monitor the evolution of forests throughout monitoring butterflies population in time. Understanding how they develop and all details in migration processes, makes it even more interesting to see them in the wilderness, makes me see even more colors, and creates a challenge of try to find them in the trees or wild bushes, (an amazing fact about Monarchs, is that while other butterflies live ju...
Read more

Beginning of journaling path

Always when people ask me what is my career about, I have to take a deep breath and rethink what I'm gonna say, its true my career is titled Forest Engineering, but people don't quite associate trees and math, also is more than trees, its an ecosystem, is the system that holds us, is all the dynamic and communication within the living beings on earth at least discover so far until now. that happened just recently in the last training which happened in Madison - WI, the attendants were mostly educators at different levels from primary school teachers, to informal educators (artists, community leaders, advocates), so for them is easy to respond to who they teach,  is either kids between 0 -3 years old or kids from the city of some country living in this determined territory. For us, the forest scholars are a pretty wide population you can influence and that's why I consider our profession so inspiring. Just as an example, we go do some research fieldwork, and some of the dire...
Read more