Notices and Highlights

Everyone
– We love our mountains!
– FS Road 333 to be closed October 21-31!
– Fall weather is coming
– Adopt-a-highway project completed on October 15
– Ken Born named acting District Ranger
– Forest Service and FOSM trail construction crew finish Ellis Trail reroutes
– FY2024 annual newsletter published
– FOSM volunteers provide services equal to 5 full-time employees in FY24
– Forest Service announces closure for thinning work at the Cedro 4 project area
– Check out new webpages for La Luz Trail safety improvements, Adopt-a-Highway projects, saw certifications, and signage and maps

Members
– Celebration of Carl Smith’s life on October 19
– Tim Brown recognized for 15 years service as FOSM treasurer
– FY2025 officers and board members elected
– Slides from October 1 membership meeting available
– Lou Romero explains why we use the term “Guard Station”
– 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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Forest Service Road 333 Closed October 21-31

October 16, 2024 – From Julie Padilla, Recreation Staff Officer, Sandia Ranger District: Sharing that there will be road work occurring along the paved section of FS road 333 October 21-31, requiring the road to be shut down except for residents. This means that access to La Luz TH, Piedra Lisa TH and the Juan Tabo and La Cueva picnic areas will be inaccessible during this time.

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Fall Weather is (Finally) on the Way

October 15, 2024 – From Kerry Jones: The rumors are true… it’s finally going to feel like “fall” in the coming days. Even better, we all should enjoy a nice soaking rain event later Friday into Saturday with a slushy inch or two of snow at/near the Crest. This late week pattern “adjustment” can’t get here fast enough as the first 15 days of October have been the warmest on record.

As of this writing the models are generally converging on widespread 0.30″ to 0.60″ amounts in the EM region with locally higher totals along Sandia Crest and areas just north. An initial surge of seasonably cool air working into the area this evening (Tuesday) will send temperatures into the upper 50s to mid 60s for most of us Wednesday and Thursday. We briefly warm-up on Friday before the wetter weather arrives Friday PM into Saturday. Highs Saturday in the lower to mid 50s! Depending on how quickly the weather system departs and skies clear out Sunday or Sunday night, our first freeze of the season will be in reach early next week!

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Sad News

Carl’s Celebration of Life will be 2pm, Saturday, October 19, 2024, at 10500 Lomas NE (just east of Eubank). See the French obituary – frenchfunerals.com/obituaries/carl-smith.

From Bet Gendron: We are sorry to announce the passing on Sept 7 of Carl Smith, 86, a long-time friend and sawyer in the Friends of the Sandia Mtns for decades. In the words of Sam Beard, ” Carl and I were friends and colleagues for more than 45 years. We shared our love of the outdoors in the Friends of the Sandia Mountains and the New Mexico Cross Country Ski Club. A skilled photographer, Carl contributed many pictures to my Ski Touring in Northern New Mexico, and he used his chain saw to remove trees from ski trails in the Sandia and Jemez Ranger Districts. We also enjoyed working together using chainsaws to fell hazard trees, cut logs, and clear meadows in projects organized by the Friends.” A former physicist with Sandia Labs, Carl was also a climber and an avid mountain biker as well as a road biker with NM Touring Society. We all knew his sometimes exacting standards and we enjoyed hearing of his many world-wide climbing adventures, which he regaled with old-school amusement, no matter how harrowing it actually was. In addition to photographing for Sam’s book, he contributed to Robert Julyan’s The Mountains of New Mexico and others. Carl was laid up for a few years in the companionship of his wife, Marilyn.

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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.

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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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Tim Brown Recognized for 15 Years Service as FOSM Treasurer

October 1, 2024 – FOSM president Mike Madden presented the first Sam Beard Achievement Award, a plaque made by Jamey Browning, to Tim Brown commemorating his 15 years service as FOSM treasurer.

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FY2025 Officers and Board Members Elected

October 1, 2024 – Jeff Young was elected treasurer replacing Tim Brown, who stepped down after serving in that capacity for 15 years, while FOSM’s incumbent president, vice president, and secretary were re-elected. Susan Gregory was elected as an at-large board member replacing Eric Russell, who decided to step down after serving five years.

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Membership Meeting, October 1

Our last membership meeting of 2024 began with recognition of Tim Brown for his 15 years of service as treasurer followed by election of officers and board members for FY2025. (See above.) New treasurer Jeff Young then educated and entertained us with his presentation of the history of “…people, places, and things of the Sandia Ranger District, how the Sandia Ranger District came to be, history of recreation in the Sandias, hunting and wildlife, and other historical events.” The well-attended meeting was made especially enjoyable by the goodies including a delicious apple dessert provided by Silke Bletzer.

Slides from this as well as previous meetings are available here.

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FY2024 Annual Newsletter Published

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FOSM Volunteers Provide Services Equivalent to Five Full-time Forest Service Employees in Fiscal Year 2024

FOSM volunteers contributed over 9,000 hours of service in support of the Forest Service mission in fiscal year 2024. Weekly crew activities accounted for 6,600 of these hours. In addition, individuals reported another 2,573 hours of service. (Undoubtedly, lots of other individual efforts go unreported.) Using 1,880 hours per employee per year (allowing for holidays and vacation time), FOSM volunteer services equate to about 5 full-time equivalents (FTEs)⏤a substantial augmentation of the Sandia Ranger District workforce.

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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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Lou Romero Explains why we Store our Tools in the FOSM Guard Station Rather than a Tool Shed

Those of us who work on one (or more) of the weekly crews are very appreciative of the neatly organized building in which we store our large collection of tools and supplies. Some have heard old-timers like Sam Beard tell the story of how the building itself was a gift and how Sandia Ranger District provided the land upon which it is installed. Joele Hertel and Sam recently brought electical power into the building and added new racks to better organize the many valuable tools that are stored within it.

Not many of us, however, know the story of why we call it a Guard Station rather than a tool shed. Lou Romero has captured this story in a 5-page document that you can read by clicking on the image below. He also has provided a very personal account of why the term means so much to him.

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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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