Sandias Photo

Left: Photo of the Sandia Mountains (just east of Albuquerque, NM) in winter (copyright Bruce Warren).


Former New Mexican Bruce wanted to share this beautiful photo of the Sandia Mountains. The photo brought back a rush of memories.

An acquaintance from Puerto Rico described his first encounter with the mountains. Flying into New Mexico for the first time ever, he saw the name on a map (Sandia means 'watermelon' in Spanish), and he wondered how the mountains had come to be called that name. The airliner zoomed over the mountains' crest and began descending into Albuquerque at sunset. Looking out the window from that excellent vantage point, my friend saw the rugged granite face of the mountains painted a brilliant sunset red, with the rim of cool coniferous green on the top, and he knew instantly where the name came from.

My understanding is that the very first Spanish Conquistadors in New Mexico, under Coronado in 1541, gave the mountains its name.

I've hiked up there on several occasions.

One hike, in particular, crossed the ground in the lower right of this very photo. Just to the right of the photo, a tramway from the mountain base to the top allows easy and scenic access for city dwellers to get to the ski area near the top of the mountain on the other side.

What year was this? 1978?

Friend Walt wanted to visit the site of a 1955 airliner crash located in one of the side canyons on the west side of the mountains almost directly below the cables of the tramway. If memory serves, about 30 people died when the airliner failed to turn one winter morning in order to avoid the cloud-enshrouded mountain after takeoff from Albuquerque. Indeed, one of the passengers was the young wife of a college professor known to both of us.

So, one winter's day, we drove to base of the mountains in order to take the tram to the top of the mountains. The start of the trip was odd - we saw a jeep-like vehicle attempt to turn onto a side road off of Tramway Blvd., completely fail to locate the side road, and instead calmly roll off of Tramway Blvd's embankment. The traffic accident seemed so implausible to rational understanding that we didn't even bother to stop and ask if the passengers were OK.

Instead, we got onto the tram, rode to the top, and carefully hiked down to the airliner crash site. In the mid-60's, when the tram was under construction, a team of folks had did their very best to hide the wreckage in a natural cave, and under dirt and tree limbs, in order to disguise it from casual sightseers passing in the tram not far away. We spent the afternoon picking through the shattered aircraft, gawking at items like the landing gear, and marvelling at where fire had melted the aluminum edges of cockpit instruments.

Towards sunset, we started heading downwards again, but we had not reckoned how short wintertime days can be. Suddenly we realized that, given the rugged terrain, we weren't going to make it in time. We were going to get caught in the long, frigid darkness of a Sandia Mountains' night, without any more protection than our clothes.

The sun set as we scrambled across the rugged terrain along the right side of Bruce's picture. We were screwed!

Fortunately (we certainly hadn't planned it), in just a few minutes, a brilliant full moon rose over the mountains to the east. The illumination was sufficient to allow us to continue hiking in the darkness. We were saved!

One big primal fear I have is getting caught in the wilderness by sunset. It has nearly-happened several times (Sycamore Canyon west of Nogales, AZ; on the North Rim's Tonto level within the Grand Canyon, and even in Carnarvon Gorge in Australia) but it actually occurred only this once (so far), and yet we managed to escape the full consequences of the calamity.