Notices and Highlights

Everyone
– We love our mountains!
– Stormy week ahead
– Bernalillo County seeking volunteers for Tijeras Canyon Restoration Project
– Sandia Ranger District completes Tablazon prescribed fire
– Adopt-a-highway project completed on October 22
– Ken Born named acting District Ranger
– Forest Service and FOSM trail construction crew finish Ellis Trail reroutes
– Forest Service announces closure for thinning work at the Cedro 4 project area

Members
– Time to report October hours
– Paint crew leader needed
– Welcome our new members

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Supporting Sandia Ranger District Since 1997

Volunteer Opportunities
Awards and Recognition
History, Strategic Plan, and Board of Directors

We Love Our Mountains*

Take the Tram to the Top⏤an Unforgettable Experience!

Sandia Peak Tramway makes the top of the mountain easily accessible and one-way hikes of La Luz Trail possible, but be sure to check their website before starting your journey.

Weather and Road Conditions

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Three Significant Winter-Like Storms in 10 Days!

November 5, 2024 – Update from Kerry Jones:

Storm #2 is shaping up to bring around a FOOT plus of “snowfall” to many areas of the East Mountains beginning early Wednesday and lasting through Friday PM.

How much of the forecast snowfall will melt tomorrow? What will be the greatest “snow depth” during the nearly 3-day event? Those are hard questions to answer, but regardless there is high confidence in a major snow event, and travel will become difficult (if not impossible) at times.

History is a good place to start. I’ve only been keeping track of weather at our current location since 2012. The last time we had around a foot of snowfall from a single storm event this early in the season was October 26-28, 2020. During that event, our total liquid was 1.22″ and snowfall was 11.5 inches. That is very close to a 10:1 snow-to-liquid ratio, which is just shy of the average at 11:1.

A couple of differences from yesterday’s event…. (1) cold, low-level east to west or upslope wind developing will essentially feed periods of moderate to heavy snow for 36-48 hours. Upslope winds boost overall lift that is critical for heavy snow on the east side of the Sandias. (2) Snow-to-liquid ratios (SLR) will be more than 2X higher than they were yesterday and probably close to the 11:1 average.

As of this writing, models are generally showing widespread liquid equivalent totals between 1″ and 1.50″ with locally higher amounts. That would translate to 9-10 inches of snowfall on the low end and 16-18 inches on the high end. Again, history tells us that some of this snowfall will melt, settle, and compact. Let’s say a reasonable max snowfall depth range between 9″ and 15″ with local amounts up to 18″ and closer to 24″ near the Crest!

Previously, I mentioned 4-8″ as an early guess but we’ll see that amount before sundown Thursday. We are now likely going to double that total during this event and might be our biggest early season event since at least 2012. We’ll see.

November 3, 2024 – From our favorite weatherman, FOSM member Kerry Jones:

Spied our first snowflakes of the season in our neighborhood this morning with reports of an inch or two of fresh snow near the Crest. A lot more wet, cold and snowy weather to come. The East Mountains below 7,500 feet will be impacted by accumulating snow for the first time this season later tonight into Monday morning; however, two additional storm systems that are modeled to follow later this week and early next week are the ones that really have my attention. Thursday-Friday (Thursday night, especially), and early next week could really deliver for us.

Much uncertainty is a given in the world of weather models beyond 4-5 days, but the pattern is going to be dynamic and very changeable as it undergoes a large-scale correction following the unusually warm/dry start to fall several weeks ago. During the next 7-10 days several key models are advertising widespread 2-3 inches of precipitation (rain and melted snow) in the East Mountains. That would be over 2X what is considered normal for the month of November.

Storm #1: Tonight-Monday (4th). The center of the upper level low was gathering strength over northern AZ this afternoon. It’s a cold one, but not extreme. This storm will track across south-central NM on Monday, which is a little farther south than personally desired and we’ll be lacking east to west winds at the surface for heavy snow. But plenty cold enough for slushy snow accumulation in the EM– dusting up to 3 or 4″ mainly on vegetation below 7,000 feet with higher amounts above. The Crest should do quite well and roads could be tricky in some areas for the Monday morning commute!

Storm #2: Thursday (7th)-Friday (8th). Latest models show this system dropping into eastern AZ during the day Thursday before lifting east-northeast across central NM Thursday night-Friday morning. This will be a colder storm system and the potential for 6″+ snowfalls is greater at lower elevations. Of course, the track and timing of the upper level low will make or break the snow forecast. But, anyone with travel plans Thursday afternoon/night into early Friday should keep a close watch on the forecasts next few days. Right now, the trend is 4-8″ for much of the EM with some upside.

Storm #3: Monday night (11th)-Wednesday (13th). This one could be a real doozy but there is a lot of model uncertainty! I always consider this type of storm in a series as the Caboose. Too early to speculate but if a couple of key models verify, it’ll be a winter wonderland.

Charts below are the NWS Blend of Models and they do not account for melting/settling/compaction of snow!

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Time to Report Volunteer Hours for October 2024

November 3, 2024 – From FOSM president Mike Madden:

All FOSM Volunteers:

We are starting a new Forest Service fiscal year, FY2025. Expect a monthly call for
hours going forward. This is a call for your individual volunteer hours for the time
period September 16 thru October 31, 2024.

*The weekly crew leaders (Bob, Sam, Laura) have already provided their crew’s
hours by individual into our FY2025 FOSM hours tracker, so if you signed an
attendance sheet, your hours are already covered.

*Basically, report any and all individual time spent in a FOSM activity which pertains to
the District.

The attachment provides some guidelines not meant to be a comprehensive list. (FS
clarifications from FY2024 are noted in red.)

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Bernalillo County Seeking Volunteers for Tijeras Canyon Restoration Project

November 1, 2024

Hello Everyone,
      Following is the schedule for final two Tijeras Creek Remediation Project Volunteer Workdays in 2024:
      (A.) The Date and time of the next TCRP Volunteer Workday: Saturday, November 9th from 10:00am – about 1:00pm.
      (B.) Final Scheduled TCRP Workday and Continuing Education event in 2024 to mark in your calendar: Saturday, November 16th. This subsequent event will also be from 10:00am – about 1:00pm. About the last hour of this November 16th event will be allocated to a site related hands-on continuing education activity led by Jim Brooks. Jim promises to share with participants some of his vast knowledge as it relates to developing a new path that contemplates a symbiotic relationship with green infrastructure. If you want to better understand what this means, I hope you will join us on the 16th and be part of the discussion.
      (C.) General TCRP Workday Information: Prior to participating in any event we will all be required to execute and deliver the current Bernalillo County TCRP Volunteer Liability and Waiver/Waiver, Release and Hold Harmless Agreement, a copy of which is attached for your reference.
If you attend an event, please remember your water, gloves, mask (if you so desire), sunscreen, bug spray, tools and closed toe shoes. It would also be helpful if you would print the Bernalillo County Volunteer Liability Waiver Agreement, bring it with you signed and dated the date of the event and deliver it to me at the start of the event. For those of you who may forget your signed form, I will have some of the forms available to be executed and delivered to me before the workday begins.
The TCRP site is located in Tijeras adjacent to the A. Montoya School Complex and there is a small parking area on the west end of the site.
   I currently expect the November 16th event will be the final 2024 TCRP volunteer workday. I personally want to thank everyone who has contributed to TCRP in 2024 or before. Your time, effort and support has been instrumental in turning TCRP into the special place it has become. I hope to see you at the site on November 9th and 16th.

Rick H.

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Sandia Ranger District Completes Tablazon Prescribed Fire

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Volunteers Accomplish Adopt-a-highway Project

October 15, 2024 – Steve Roholt writes:

Today, 14 FOSM volunteers participated in our semiannual trash pickup. This was a volunteer project for the NM Department of Transportation. Two main tasks were taken on.

• First, our required trash pickup. This was completed today.
• Second, brushing along both highway shoulders. The amount of brushing was impressive. The northern and southern 0.2 miles were completed today. The middle 0.6 mile was partially completed. We will have another project in the spring. The long-term goal is to provide sustainable visibility and prevent brush from encroaching on the highway right of way.

Volunteers were Tim Kirkpatrick, Sam Beard, Sim Cook, Dan Benton, Don Carnicom, Mike Madden, Cliff Giles, Rav Nicholson, Karen Greif, Anne Hickman, Jamey Browning, Pauline Ho, Rick Buss, and Steve Roholt. The weather was ideal.

Special thanks to founding FOSM members Don Carnicom and Sam Beard for helping out.

October 22, 2024 – Mike Madden writes:

Today 6 FOSM volunteers continued brushing where we left off a week ago, on our semi-annual Crest Road Adopt-A-Highway clean-up. Yesterday Sam Beard had prepared 6 small chainsaws at the Guard Station for today’s task of finishing the remaining quarter mile of densely overgrown brush along the guardrail between milepost 4 and 5. Sam Beard, Don Carnicom, Cliff Giles, Tim Kirkpatrick, Jamey Browning, and Mike Madden met at our AAH pullout at 10am. I estimated it would take two hours, finishing by noon. 4 certified sawyers handled pole saw & chainsaws, since the trees were up to 5″ in diameter! Our goal was to clear about 6 feet beyond the guardrail. Don used a brush cutter. Cliff used loppers. We finished the job at 11:55am, 5 minutes early! A beautiful day on the mountain… sunny, warm, no wind. Check-out our mile 4-5 handiwork the next time you’re heading up there.

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Forest Service and FOSM Trail Construction Crew Finish Ellis Trail Reroutes

“In my opinion, Ellis has gone from a trail to avoid, to a trail to enjoy.”
…Bob Lowder, October 7, 2024

October 15, 2024 – Canyon Young writes: Another big thanks to everyone involved in what became one of the most major trail projects on the Sandia Ranger District this year.

As many of you are likely aware, the Ellis Trail historically followed an old road bed in the clearcut for what was originally going to become a spur road going north off the Crest Hwy decades ago. And thus, the trail had a lot of unnecessary, unsustainable, and rather unpleasant ups and downs.

Several years ago, Kerry Wood and the SRD Trails Crew, in conjunction with NM Volunteers for the Outdoors (and possibly FOSM, I don’t recall), completed a handful of reroutes that successfully bypassed some of these unnecessary steep sections. I and my old crew were a part of the construction of this first phase, back when I was the seasonal trails crew lead. However, I distinctly recall while hiking back and forth between the trailhead and those initial reroutes and realizing that more would likely be more necessary at some point in the future.

Fast forward to this year, I found “Ellis reroutes” on the Cibola National Forest’s Recreation Program of Work, and found out that the entire trail had a 30-meter archaeological clearance corridor as cleared through the 2018 Sandia Hazard Tree NEPA Project. With this knowledge, combined with knowing that other priority trails projects would be in limbo while awaiting approval from other resource areas, I saw a prime opportunity to keep my crew’s and FOSM’s Thursday trail construction crew’s momentum uninterrupted, all the while accomplishing meaningful work and continuing to whittle down Cibola Recreation’s currently-gigantic POW.

It can be difficult in many scenarios to successfully design sustainable, quality reroutes with the standard 30-m corridor that we as USFS trails staff often have to deal with, given the steepness of our local mountain terrain combined with sustainable trail design parameters. However, I knew that in this case, with the sections I would want to bypass and how Ellis was laid out, I essentially had a blank slate to get the entire remainder of Ellis where I wanted it, so long as I put in some careful effort with my design and flagging. Two of the nine total reroutes did have to dip a bit outside the 30-meter corridor in order to make sense and be sustainable; however, Sandia’s archaeology staff was able to quickly and painlessly write an addendum for these since there were no known cultural resources in the area.

In addition to my ever-present objective for all SRD trails of making the entire length of Ellis more sustainable for our mountain ecosystem and more enjoyable for all trail users, the big-picture outcome I had with this project was to make Ellis more mountain bike-able, and thereby aid in better dispersing mountain bike traffic around the district as a whole. By replacing the old, steep, eroded sections with quality reroutes that ride well both ways, this effort will combine with the reroutes done on 10K North over the past several years to create a quality loop opportunity on an area of the district that was largely avoided by many cyclists in the past. And, this will hopefully result in a bit less hiker/mountain bike conflict on Challenge and other nearby. Even if as little as 5% of the bike traffic on the district is diluted through this effort, that’s a victory in the grand scheme of building SRD’s trail system into a network that can handle the ABQ area’s ever-increasing, multi-use recreational demand with minimized future management input from both the USFS and volunteer groups.

Again, thank you to everyone involved for being a part of this major project, and thereby part of SRD’s big-picture mission!

Laura’s 12 reports summarizing the project can be found here. In them you’ll find not only details about the project but also some wonderful photographs of Sandia wildlife.

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Ken Born Named Acting District Ranger

October 10, 2024 – Ken Born, Acting Sandia District Ranger, sent the following message to Julie Padilla and FOSM members: Thanks so much for the “virtual” introduction, Julie.

I’ve heard so many great things about the Friends of the Sandia Mountains and look forward to working with you all. We are extremely grateful for your support of the Sandia Ranger District and this mountain range, which is a treasure to so many in our community and beyond.

October 9, 2024 – Julie Padilla, Sandia Ranger District Recreation Staff Officer, sent the following message to FOSM members: Hello Friends of Sandia, please see below and join us in welcoming new Acting District Ranger Ken Born!

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Forest Service Announces Area Closure for Thinning Work at the Cedro 4 Project Area – North of Forest Road 462

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Volunteer Opportunity – Paint Crew Leader

Thanks, Anne Hickman for your years of faithful service as leader of the paint crew. Anne has stepped down due to other commitments. Please use the form on the referenced pages if you would be interested in assuming this leadership position.

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Welcome, New FOSM Members!

*Life sponsor

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