12.5 miles of hiking • 3000' elevation gain •
From Canyon Estates parking lot we took the South Crest trail to the Faulty Trail, then took Barts Trail up the mountain. Faulty Trail was very wooded with less rocks—much like the trails I'm used to back east. The Barts Trail was rocky and straight uphill for an hour until we reached the the South Crest trail that runs the along the ridge of the Sandias. Went south (coming the opposite direction on this trail from our last hike). The views along this easy trail were amazing and in some places you had a 360 degree view. Along with the cliffside views there were also some wooded areas that had snow still remaining from last week. At one point we ran up a hill to check out its view, and then saw our trail further down a bit which was easily accessible from the hill...so we just walked straight to it. I think this was actually a part of the Embudito Trail, which we hadn't intended on taking, but I'm so glad we did because it ended up being the best part of the hike. We came off the Embudito Trail where it met the South Crest, much to our surprise...then hoped to find the CCC trail which was supposed to be nearby and would take us straight back down, even though it wasn't a normal trail and lacked a marker. We chose a route that looked to be the CCC and luckily we were right. And I'm glad we were going down and not up. Yay, then end.
