Sarah & Becky heading into the slot canyon at Tent Rocks National Monument

Back in July I wrote a post on my All-time Top 5 Favorite Hikes. This past weekend I got to revisit one of the best: Tent Rocks National Monument near Cochiti Pueblo.

• The Slot Canyon Trail is located at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, about 40 miles west of Santa Fe. Google Maps The national monument is open daily from 8 a.m.
• When you get to the back of the canyon, the trail heads up the side of the canyon. You can see some of the tent rocks for which this area was named. As you climb up the back of the canyon, you can look down on the tent rocks, and see the layers. The views from up on the mesa top are great.

Hiking at the Tent Rocks in Santa Fe Traveling along the Tent Rocks Cave Loop Trail is the most popular thing to do at the monument. The foot-travel trail is 1.2-miles long and provides fantastic views of the rocks and the nearby mountains. Along the way, you’ll also find great spots for bird watching, geologic observation, and plant identification.

This hike, less than an hour south of Santa Fe, has everything you could want in a desert trek: slot canyons, wicked rock formations and incredible views. The first half of the trail winds through a slot canyon so narrow you can touch the walls on either side, then the canyon opens up beneath the 90-foot conical hoodoos that give this National Monument its name. Finally, the trail switchbacks up to the top of the mesa to an overlook of the slot canyon and tent rocks as well as sweeping views of the Rio Grande River Valley to the east and the Jemez Mountains to the west.

This amazing place is a short drive from Cerrillos. I used to frequent Tent Rocks a lot more often back when the monument still allowed dogs. Since they closed it to pets in 2010, I’ve been back a handful of times to show it off to out of town friends. This trip I was in the company of Becky, who I brought here once before, and Sarah, who was here for the weekend on her first trip to New Mexico.

The slot canyons and hoodoos at Tent Rocks are formed from volcanic ash that blanketed this region of New Mexico in a series of explosive pyroclastic eruptions around 7 million years ago and then again between 1.6 and 1.25 million years ago. Over time the ash hardened into two formations: the older, finer Peralta tuff and younger, coarser Cochiti formations.

Tent Rocks Slot Canyon Hike Rim

Boulder wedged in the slot canyon

Tent Rock’s volcanic tuff is quite crumbly and readily carved by wind, water and people. Differential weathering of the layers has produced the distinctive pointy hoodoos as well as the sinuous slot canyon. The 4-mile round trip hike also boasts a cave dwelling similar to the famous cliff caveats at Bandelier National Monument, just northwest of here. The caveats were carved by hand by the Ancestral Pueblo People between 1150 and 1600.

Now that I’ve gotten another look at Tent Rocks, I’ll probably be going back for more. I love hiking with the dogs, but some places are worth seeing, even if it means going without them!

Overlooking Tent Rocks

Slot Canyon Trail

Tent Rocks Slot Canyon Hike South Rim

Tent Rocks Slot Canyon Hike Grand Canyon

Tent Rocks Slot Canyon Hikes

The 1.5 mile (one-way) Slot Canyon Trail is rather more interesting, one of the best short trails in the state. This branches off the Cave route and joins a stony wash that soon narrows to a proper slot canyon through the tuff. The ravine has curvy walls just a few feet apart but many feet deep, long, shady passageways through generally smooth rocks containing embedded pebbles, and just a few obstructions caused by dryfalls and chokestones; the maximum height is about three feet. The pretty slot opens out quite suddenly after a quarter of a mile, to a still narrow gorge that contains a few tall trees growing in the streambed, after which the canyon ascends more steeply, through another brief narrow part then climbs even more sharply to the top of the plateau, where it splits into several paths that lead to viewpoints looking out over the Tent Rock formations, down Peralta Canyon and across to the far away Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains. The total elevation gain is 640 feet. The plateau is more sparsely vegetated than the valley floor, bearing grasses, wildflowers and manzanita bushes. The most spectacular rocks are all around the last part of the trail, where they rise up to 90 feet, pure white, smoothly tapering and altogether very impressive. The path is popular, and despite the above average difficulty, most people manage to get to the end.