We headed north from Albuquerque on this rainy morning, hoping that the weather would break by the time we reached Tent Rocks.

8:47 a.m.
Entrance Station

When we arrived at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument it was still drizzling. This is a fee area, and we were met at the entrance station by a Ranger. To get to this point we had to drive through both the Santo Domingo and the Cochiti Pueblos. It is a paved road until just before the entrance, then the road becomes gravel.

Parking Area

About five miles down a dirt and gravel road there is a nice parking area among the pinyons and juniper. By the time we reached this location it had stopped raining and was 51 degrees. There are clean modern restrooms near the trailhead, but there is no drinking water. There are also picnic tables set among the trees. The GPS Coordinates for the parking area are: 35 39.447N; 106 24.700W; at an elevation of 5,759 feet.

There are two main trails: The Cave Loop Trail, which is 1.2 miles round trip, and the Canyon trail, which is 1 mile round trip. We took them both.

Canyon Trail

The Canyon Trail is really spectacular, as it passes through a slot canyon which opens now and then to provide amazing views of the tent rocks and tipi shaped formations. Most of the rock is tuff in this area, with a hard layer on top, making for some amazing formations and color combinations.

There is a bit of a climb near the upper end of this trail, up to the Vista Point, but it’s well worth the effort. The views are great, and the climb back down provides a really different perspective on what you’d just climbed up through. On this day it was cloudy, occasionally rainy, and very windy. We had to be careful on top not to get blown off the edge. The cliff edges are very high and steep.

The "tent rock" formations (similar to those in the photo at the top of this page) are amazing and provide plenty of material to fantasize about their origins. This is a little fantasy paradise in the middle of the desert.

Cave Loop Trail

On the way back down we took the Cave Loop Trail, where we began running into a few other tourists. This trail is not as interesting as the Canyon Trail, but is still has some great views, and towards its end, back near the parking area, you once again encounter a different variety of tent rocks (see the photo at the top of the page).

11:07 a.m.
It had rained lightly on and off during our hike, and by the time we finished it was cold and windy. While we were here there were only a few people around, and since we were the first in for the day, it made exploring a little nicer. We wore our fleece jackets, but they weren’t quite enough. We ended up with our rain jackets on top of those.

12:09 p.m.
From Kasha-Katuwe we drove back to I-25 and then north to just south of Santa Fe, where we located the At La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site.