Rio Cebolla,June 7

This time Byron came with me to catch some native cutthroat trout.

When I told him about running into a fly fisherman on my previous trip and learning about the cutthroats being up above the pond he was all over it.  He had to catch....

some cutthroats.  On the way up to the Cebolla we stopped to see if we could take one of the other forest roads to the Rio San Antonio, along the western edge of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

Unfortunately the road is closed and just viewing the first couple hundred feet of it I am assuming that it may stay closed for the time being.  There were a lot of rocks that came down across the road.  It looks like there will be a lot of grading needed to open the road for vehicles.  Looking on Google Earth it will be about a five mile hike one-way to the river.  It’s doable but not this time.

Seeing as how we have hiked this area before, and had a goal of making it past the pond we made pretty good time.  Usually we are stopping at almost every opportunity to photograph something.  We had lunch at the pond, while we were there a couple rode up on their bikes with attached fishing gear.  They were going up close to the headwaters of the Cebolla, about 3 – 4 miles farther upstream.  They reported that the stream gets narrow but the fish are larger than in the immediate area just above the pond.  We didn’t see them again so we don’t know how the fishing went.  While we were dining we saw what we thought were huge ravens.  They were just soaring and viewing us but we evidently were not very interesting so they went farther down the valley.  Later we saw a few more ‘ravens’ feeding on a carcass and were able to determine they were not ravens but turkey vultures.  We were not able to discern the red head earlier while they were soaring above us.  I’m glad they found us uninteresting being turkey vultures.

I took off upstream and found many different flowers in bloom.  I recognized some but not all.  The next thing on my list is a flora pocket naturalist guide since I am a plant person.  The post has a lot of flower images, sorry to those fly fishermen that may be reading this, wait for my next post.

We also came across a couple of ranchers herding their cattle back down the valley.  I included a photo of them which I converted to black and white placing them back in the Old West.

I found some antique car and other parts in one of the side valleys.  I’ve also found bleached bones in several locations all along the valley.  I’ve tried doing some Georgia O’Keeffe type photos but they didn’t work for me.

All the time we were hiking/fishing we saw clouds building to the north, nothing we had to worry about but they kept getting bigger.  In addition to hiking the Rio Cebolla we decided to go farther west in the Jemez to find the Rio de las Vacas.  Within a mile of getting back on SR126 it turned into gravel, then a fine powder, the type that turns into a wall of dust if someone is coming the other way.  After several miles of climbing we dropped into the next valley finding the las Vacas.  It appears that at least this portion is privately owned with fences runnig along the road and river for several miles.  Where it did open up there were many, many people fishing.  Not quite elbowing each other but close.  We followed the road down to the Girl Scout ranch where the road is closed.  The river in this area is very closed in, lots of trees and shrubs all around making fly fishing more of a challenge.

On our way home we stopped at the Jemez pueblo and had some local food, chile for Byron and enchiladas for me.  The red chile was really tasty.  As we were finishing our supper the wind started up.  By the time we got to Bernalillo the tumbleweeds were racing past us and we were doing 60!  I pulled up the Weather Channel on my phone and saw that the area we left an hour ago was getting pounded by thunderstorms.  Good timing on our part to get out.

This was my fourth trip to the Rio Cebolla.  It’s fun to see it at different times of the year.  With it being so dry and fires in the area we may not have the opportunity to get back here until the monsoon season starts.  If the forest doesn’t close I hope to make it back in July to see what flowers have come and gone.  Maybe next time I will make it a bit farther up the valley.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark