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Red Canyon / Spruce Spring
Isabel Bearman Bucher
go trails
June 17, 1999
Trail thoughts ... Pocketfuls of blessed quiet spilling over everything. A gentle place to be with old friends who know all your secrets. Butterflies flitter round clear pools.
A little bit of history:
The range lies on a bed of Precambrian rock, the oldest on earth.
Meaning "apple tree," the Manzano Mountains are an extension of the Sandia Fault, whose highest point, Manzano Peak, is 10,098 feet. It is one of the oldest place names in New Mexico history, being cited by Chamuscado in 1581, and Oñate in 1598. Old lore has it that the apple trees were planted by Spanish settlers, before Apache raids of the late 1600s drove them out. When things settled down, the area was petitioned for by Manuel Sanchez in 1834. Ore tailings have been found. Stories tell of Indians blocking and hiding, forever, entrances to gold and silver mines, in the southern extremity of the Manzanos, worked by the Spanish settlers.
Quiet and unassuming, the Manzanos offer moderate, unpeopled, five- to eight-mile round-trip hikes, where the tops of the peaks maintain a long, gentle trail at around 9,000 to 10,000 feet. The mountains are also kinder, offering good hiking any time of year. The 36,970-acre wilderness has almost perfect views west to Mount Taylor, north to the Sangre de Cristos and south to the San Mateos and Sierra Blanca.
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