Getting Lost

So several decades ago, a TWA airplane crashed into a bit of the Sandia mountains that folks reasonably came to call "TWA Canyon."  It's only a few miles out of Albuquerque, but the area was roadless, rocky wilderness, impassable to earthmoving equipment, so rather than collecting all the wreckage and taking it away to some warehouse somewhere, they just kinda shuffled it around so that it couldn't be seen by from the cablecar tram that passed right overhead.

You can hike right there!  Or so I've heard.  Today I tried, but didn't quite manage it.  I wandered around for a bit, and greatly enjoyed it, but the trail in question is not marked, because, reasonably enough, the land managers don't want their trust known for such ghoulish amusements.

I mean, it's not like I wanted to go because 16 people lost their lives on the spot.  It's just that, for reasons I haven't figured out, I really really like sites and scenes of industrial decay, and I think the wreckage of a plane is something I really want to see, even if it was just in some warehouse somewhere.

But as I said, it's strewn across untrammeled wilderness along the side of a big mountain.  Which is it's own bonus, as well as adding a bit of frisson to the image.  So I really wanted to see it!

It was a gorgeous day, perfect t-shirt weather, and I love scrambling over rocks and trees and mud like you wouldn't believe.  But I gradually became less and less certain that I was in the right canyon.  Frequently, I questioned whether the trail I was following was used by anything besides deer and snowmelt.  So after a few hours, I decided to turn around.  No biggie, it was just an awesome hike.  I'll see the rotting wreckage of our once-glorious civilization another day.

Sandias Hike