An intense storm cell hit just as I got in the van coming home from errands... gusty winds and little pellets of snow at first, then hail (fortunately not large) -- this photo is from Camino la Tierra, all the white stuff is hail!

We hiked up to a local peak last week when the weather was unseasonably warm and gorgeous; Otowi peak is only a dozen miles or so from our house, next to the Rio Grande. We drove out to the trailhead, and hiked up a wash to where a very skinny and steep goat track heads up the edge of the mesa, thence across the flat mesa-top to another scramble up the remnants of the lava cone that is Otowi.

We've moved (the blog)! After almost 20 years of using Blogger to host the Chad-o-Matic blog, we're now located at https://chad-o-matic.chadfrost.com!… ...more