I was only able to head to the high country once back in July with my son for an ascent of Mt. Massive. It was a blast and I have had the bug all year, wanting to do another significant hike before I have to call it over for the season. My wife and I had planned a trip to Albuquerque to visit her sister, sister's husband and our new nephew in late October. Once we had a date set for the trip I started researching Sandia Crest as a possibility for a good hike if time allowed. Sure enough, my brother-in-law was up for it also, he has hiked around the mountain, but not to the top yet.

He picked Wednesday to do the hike, that gave my wife, my daughter and I a day and a half to chill with the family, hang out with our new nephew and relax. We arrived Monday afternoon, Oct. 22nd to a beautiful Autumn day, low to mid-60s, sunny and a light breeze. Then, right around 5 pm that evening it clouded up and lightly rained off and on. Then a heavy onset of thick clouds came in and sat over the city and the mountains to the east all day Tuesday and into the morning on Wednesday. The weather forecast was calling for light rain until about 11 am Wednesday morning, so, with that info and the fact that afternoon storms during this time of the year are rare in that area, we decided that we would plan on being at the La Luz TH somewhere around 10 am and just plan on starting in the wet weather and hope that the forecast would hold true. It did not....at least not on the mountain. In town it was a more accurate forecast.

We did arrive at the alternate La Luz TH right around 10am, the road was under some construction and we were directed to an alternate parking area about 200 yards from the true TH. The La Luz Trail is marked as 7 miles one way and we added another mile or so in case we decided to hike the Tram Trail......We figured it would take about 3-4 hours to summit, we planned to see if the clouds broke and decide on what to do about the descent. Take the tram down if the weather was still crappy or descend the trail if the weather improved or if we felt like it.

Now, my thoughts about the hike: First off, water....you will want to take plenty of water if you are going on this hike. The La Luz Trail is about 7 to 7.5 miles long and on a normal day there will be almost no water sources along the way. I'm sure there will be more during times of snowmelt and rain, but we came across very little water even though it was raining for almost the whole hike. I highly recommend doing this hike in the late fall or spring, the temps in and around the Sandia Mountains can be extreme during the summer and winter and I don't think I would enjoy it in the extreme heat especially. The hike itself is quite mild, especially by the standards I've come to expect while doing the Colorado peaks. It's never really steep, the trail is well defined for about 99% of it's duration, but you do still gain somewhere around 3800 total feet of elevation. However, the trail does have some exposure in the form of sheer drops on the sides of the trail in places. The trail is always solid, but it is narrow in a few spots and folks that are uncomfortable with heights may not like some of those locations. If the weather had been clear we would have gone on up to the Crest House, but there really wasn't any reason to...nothing could be seen and we were soaked, the wind had picked up and we were actually starting to feel some solid precipitation hit us with that wind. We ended up taking the tram down and catching an Uber from the tram station back to the trailhead parking area. It was late afternoon and we were ready to get some dry clothes on. I would call this trail Class 1, it's a little long, but having the tram for the descent is always an option if you are exhausted or running low on fluids. There is a little exposure, but not enough to classify it as a class 2. Hopefully the pics will help and the descriptions will give a little insight as to what to expect. It's a great hike that I may do again on a clear day just so I can see the views that this hike and this mountain are known for. It was definitely a different feeling being boxed in by such dense clouds throughout the hike, we never felt like we were as high up as we were.