There’s a great network of trails east of Santa Fe that doesn’t quite connect to the northern National Forest trails that in turn connect to the Pecos Wilderness. Today we set out to discover if the connection can be made cross-country.

It starts well in open piñon forest. Then we hit an old barbed wire fence, then a newer non-barbed fence, and finally a barbed-wire-topped rabbit fence. This one looks meant to keep people out, so but it runs kind of northward, so we follow it. This does the job. At the end we have a steep descent into Little Tesuque canyon with one more fence crossing. So it’s doable, but much more trouble than just hiking the Hyde Park road, which we take back.