Our search for exotic peaks Beyond the List now takes us north from West Texas, across the westernmost "extension" of the Mason- Dixon Line into New Mexico. And, although we have enjoyed the soaring palisades of the Guadalupes and the hidden splendor of Big Bend, those of us who love the freedom of the West are thrilled to see once again plenty of open, unfenced, unposted country - it's good to be back in the land of the BLM.
Where to begin singing the praises of New Mexico? While all the Western states have their particular wonderful contrasts, only New Mexico shares with Utah a descent within its borders from the alpine tundra and glacial cirques of the Rocky Mountains to genuine serious DPS-type desert. The contrast in New Mexico is even more extreme than in Utah, because there are scenes in the southern part of the state which are quite similar to landscapes in the Death Valley southern Nevada area - barren striped gray and tan limestone fault blocks with creosote and yucca. Around Las Cruces, the red flowers of ocotillo spike the landscape, and the town of Las Cruces even boasts of a few palm trees.
Between those palms and the subzero winters of Taos and Chama is a delightful variety of geography and peaks, livened and leavened by the Spanish and Indian influences. Albuquerque may have freeways, ugly concrete slab warehouses, mini-malls, urban sprawl, and defense contractors aplenty, but the state as a whole retains an exotic, offbeat, off-the-beaten-path feel - far more so than its more urbanized, homogenized-Americanized sister state, Arizona. And the food!!!!! I can say to this group that climbs on its stomach that nowhere outside the borders have I found the equal of the earthy, sensuous, body- and soul-warming New Mexican food. There's a place on the wrong side of the tracks in Lordsburg called the El Charrito Cafe whose green chili stew is almost worth the drive from LA. The so-called "authentic New Mexican food" I've eaten in California is just pathetic by comparison; it's like the difference between André and Moet et Chandon.
Luckily, there are plenty of places to work off the posole, pintos, and flat blue-corn enchiladas with fried egg. The linear north-south fault-block ranges so reminiscent of Nevada extend into the southwestern "boot-heel" corner of the state and parallel the Rio Grande from Las Cruces to north of Albuquerque. The highest peaks in these ranges reach to a little over ten thousand feet; Sierra Blanca, east of Alamogordo (the southernmost once-glaciated peak in the United States), is an exception at 12,003'. Although not the highest of the fault-block ranges, the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces are by far the most spectacular; Organ Needle (9000') would absolutely be an emblem peak if it were closer to LA.
Southwest of the Sangre de Cristos - which are the Colorado Rockies with a Spanish accent - are gentle, massive volcanic mountains rising to over eleven thousand feet; the Jemez Mountains behind Los Alamos often form the background of Georgia O'Keefe's dreamlike paintings, the finest art ever to be inspired by the