Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/15/2024	4 miles	2 hours 21 minutes	177'	1.9 mph	730.8 miles
Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/15/2024	.2 miles	22 minutes	103'	0.8 mph	731 miles
Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/15/2024	.2 miles	19 minutes	39'	1.0 mph	731.2 miles
Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/15/2024	2.2 miles	1 hour 8 minutes minutes	47'	2.0 mph	733.4 miles

Parking: 

• See park map

Map:

• Get at information center

Directions:

• n/a

We left Santa Fe and drove to Petroglyph National Monument. They have an information booth and store, but no real visitor center. Also, there are no trails from the information booth area. We asked for advice on where to hike. The park is in an urban area on the outskirts of Albuquerque. 

Our first hike was the Piedra Marcadas Canyon Trail which has 400 or so petroglyphs. So many! The park has several tiny volcanoes in it. It's a small park, so the thought of 6 volcanoes in it is crazy. As a result of volcanic activity, there are piles of black basalt rocks. These make excellent petroglyph carving material. When the basalt is carved, the carved bits are lighter in color. This makes the most easily visible petroglyphs I've ever seen. Most of the petroglyphs were carved by ancestral Puebloans, but some of them were actually carved by Spaniards as well. Overall, there are estimated to be 21,000-25,000 petroglyphs in the park! This is THE place to see them! We had a lot of fun guessing what they represented. On this first hike, we decided to head up to the top of the mesa, above the petroglyph area. We saw 2 large eared jack rabbits (not jackalopes lol) on the mesa. I was joking to Tara that this seemed like a place where we would see a coyote head popping out of the brush. And what do you know, we encountered a coyote trotting down the trail ahead of us. I tried to get a photo, but it was challenging, as we wanted to give it enough space - and trying to find it when zooming in all the way with my camera. Also, in this section, I was using Gaia to route us on top of the mesa and didn't realize that the loop I planned didn't quite connect all the way back to the main trail. So, we had to bushwhack a tad to get off the mesa, which we probably weren't supposed to do.

After lunch in our car, we drove to Boca Negra Canyon. We did a few short trails here. There were only 100 petroglyphs in this area, but we were so close to them (no ropes between you and the petroglyphs). My favorite one looked like a lizard playing tennis. We did two very short hikes in this area.

Then another drive to the next trail, Rinconada Canyon. This one has 300 images. It's a loop trail, but we did it as an out and back. The first half of the hike has the petroglyphs, so when walking back, we searched for new ones from that direction. 

If you love petroglyphs, this park is a must see!

Somewhere in this shot is a coyote...