A View of the Organ Mountains and T'Dubing around Picacho Mountain

Monday, March 4

This morning, I drove into Las Cruces, NM to run a couple of errands.  Once finished with those, I drove to the eastern edge of town and found a spot near a colorfully decorated water tank for a picture of the Organ Mountains.

I've stayed quite close to the base of these mountains before: LINK, LINK2

After lunch at camp, I got on Yagi, my Yamaha TW200 Dualsport and went wandering down familiar and unfamiliar dirt and rocky trails; eventually circumnavigating nearby Picacho Mountain.

A view of Las Cruces, Picacho Mtn and the Organ Mtns

from the ridgeline to the west of camp.

Yagi and the Organ Mountains

Picacho Mountain

The "back side" of Picacho Mountain.

This was the point where I had to turn around when

I was driving the Sammy during a past trip.

Bypass for the main trail

The above pic is just before the drop off slot in the below pic.  I chickened out and "walked" the motorcycle down the narrow slot.  I walked in the slot and slowly guided Yagi past the drop off.

Once Yagi was safely past the above point, I parked her and walked over to the left where the main trail used to be.

As you can see in the above and below pics, its quite the obstacle/dropoff for 4x4 vehicles!  Looking closer at it, I think if I'm ever on this trail again, I'll try walking Yagi down the slot....it's wide enough though I might have to clear some of the small boulders.

Here's the last pic I took before I debauched onto a flat valley.  It took me a while to traverse the valley as it was deep sand in the trails.  Nearly biffed it a couple of times!

Kept running into locked gates as I tried to access Shalem Colony Road but eventually found a doable hill climb to access Skyline Drive and thence the paved road.  Turns out, there's "no trespassing" signs on this exit road.  Oh well.

The winds were really strong on the way back while I was on pavement!  I could barely hold 40 mph into the teeth of the winds.  Still, got back to the campsite with no issues.