Angel Peak

Another badlands

The Angel Peak badlands are about 25 miles away from the Bisti badlands. They are related, and even share one geological formation, but quite different in appearance.

The Nacimiento Formation is the uppermost formation in the Bisti badlands. It is the bottom formation at Angel Peak.

While the Bisti is mostly clay and flat ground with grotesque hoodoos and other shapes that you can walk around and look at, the Angel Peak area is deeply eroded canyons of sandstone and mudstone. You drive along the rim and just look down, down, down at them. You don’t actually go into them.

To get there, take US 550 south from Bloomfield, New Mexico and hang a left at County Road 7125. It is on BLM¹ land, graveled, and flat. You can do it in a car. Here’s the view at the first viewpoint:

Angel Peak and its badlands, from the first viewpoint

The road continues along the rim of this wash to a primitive campground. Other interesting stuff comes into view on the way. Such as this feature, named Castle Rock:

Castle Rock, in the Angel Peak badlands

Some maps show a trail of sorts going to this thing, but they don’t show it going all the way. I didn’t try it.

The campground is dry and dusty: no water, no trees but there are vault toilets. I, for one, wouldn’t care to camp there except to get those step-outside-the-door crepuscular² shots first thing in the morning. But there is nothing else to do there except sit and stare into the abyss. Which looks like this:

The view of the wash from the campground. Click to enlarge.

This photo is somewhat larger than the usual. Click it to zoom in and look at details. Yes, that is Castle Rock in the upper left. And yes, there are roads down there - lots of them. There seems to be a lot of industrial activity down in the bottom, which I presume to be natural gas wells. I don’t know if any of those roads are open to the public.

And here is the view of Angel Peak itself, from the campground. The snowcapped mountains in the distance are in Colorado.

Angel Peak, as seen from the campground

Desolate places have a strange beauty. If I had it to do over, I’d take the motorhome and spend the night, getting some of that crepuscular shadow action.

1. US federal Bureau of Land Management

2. Morning and evening, when the sun is low and the shadows are awesome.