hey guys it's lisa with swifty travels and today i'm going to take you on a hike to travertine
falls this is a 1.1 mile in to the travertine falls here in tijeras just east of albuquerque
you take i-40 east from albuquerque get off on the tijeras exit turn on 337 left under the freeway
and you headed to the canyon estates neighborhood so i'm going to show you this little hike
it's finally warming up in albuquerque we're going to go enjoy ourselves
and take a tour of this area so come along
this is a great trail because it's so close to the city
but yet it's still pretty shady if you hike in the foothills on the western side of the sandias
it's uh there's no shade it can get hot really fast i'm really out of shape i'm panting and
we're not even really this is a very easy trail actually and in some places it's a little rocky
now this is late march so a lot of the little shrubs haven't really started their new growth yet
but i did see a few butterflies and i'm going to keep my eyes out for some different types of birds
butterflies
i didn't clarify this earlier this is actually on the south side of the sandias so
it's in a neighborhood really close to i-40 so it's pretty quick to get to
but it provides a little more shade on the trail than the typical
trails that are on the west side towards town
there's certain times a year that we get tons of butterflies here in the sandias so this is late
march maybe mid-march it's about what the 19th i think and i'm already seeing some of these dark
butterflies with the blue on the wings they're gorgeous and one stopped to pose just for me
actually the butterfly stopped to pose just for you so you can see how beautiful he was
about halfway the trail starts to go up up and away it's not too steep but it is noticeable
when you get to this sign you're about 50 yards away from the fall so just keep on trucking
now i've heard that the falls are dry right now and we came up here
maybe last year or the year before and there was water so i'm gonna try to find some pictures
potentially video clips of when there was water flowing to show you guys what it can be like
depending on the season and depending on how much snow we have for the year
so
so we made it to the top of the falls there's definitely no water it is super dry right now
but if you follow the trail up over top of the falls you can actually see where
the water comes down and then the trail branches two different ways
left and right and you can have some nice views of tijeras once you get up to the top
so here's where the water comes you can see its path
so somebody built an interesting fort up here
past travertine falls we're going to continue on this trail i think it's the south crest trail
that we're on i'll show you on a map but you can see somebody built a little fort here
do
okay so from the top of travertine falls we took crest trail 130 and we continued along 1 30 until
it met the faulty trail right behind me and this is the intersection i'll show you right here
of where these trails meet now i'm pretty sure it's something on the order of a half a mile
to travertine falls from the parking lot when i get back home i'm going to measure this path but
you know exactly how long it is to get here but you can continue crest trail 130 goes for a long
long way all along the sandia mountain so you can really go as long as you'd like here at this spot
pay attention to the trail this path crosses kind of like a creek bed and there were a few
times where i wasn't quite sure which way the trail went and so it's just worth paying close
attention that you don't follow where the water is running down the mountain versus the actual
hiking trail if you have one of those apps to follow the trails that could be helpful