Almost trapped!

As we mentioned at the end of yesterday's blog, we decided to abandon Angel Fire and head south, back to the ABQ area, to escape an approaching cold spell with possible snow. We almost didn't make our escape.

This morning when we awoke, we were greeted with blizzard conditions and 6 inches of snow on the ground. This was a big surprise because the weather forecast that we checked yesterday didn't say anything about snow. Our NOAA weather app showed rising temperatures through the morning and the snow diminishing around 8 am. Wrong! The temperature remained around 32 degrees and the snow kept coming. The campground owners, a young couple, knocked on our door about 9:30 am to tell us that the road back over the mountain pass to Taos was closed.

I was keeping an eye on NOAA's satellite weather picture for the area and the blue snow pattern seemed stuck over Angel Fire. By about 11 am the snow lessened and it looked like there would be a pause in the snow from about noon to 2 pm. We went online to NMroads.com to learn that the pass was open but that there was a warning of only "fair" driving conditions. We decided to make a run-for-it at 1 pm.

Snow pictures from around noon.

As you can see, the pass was down to bare pavement with some patches of ice.

We inched over the pass going about 15 - 20 mph. Fortunately there was no one behind us for most of the way. Note the highway sign, an indication of how winding the road was.

After cresting the pass, the other side was less steep

and...

we were able to increase our speed to 25 mph.

Then, all of a sudden, we were below the snow line and the trees were green. 

It took us over 30 minutes to drive the 14 miles from Angel Fire to Taos. Then it was back over the road we came up on yesterday. The scenery was the same, only in reverse. There's the Rio Grande Gorge.

The Rio Grande.

Camel Rock doesn't look so much like a camel going in this direction, but...

here's a picture of the Camel Rock Casino.

We drove past Santa Fe and 37 miles later were greeted by the Sandia Mountains on the east side of ABQ. We were happy to see them. We heard on the news tonight that it is supposed to go down near freezing in ABQ this Saturday night. We'll take that over the 12 inches of snow and 15 degrees predicted for Angel Fire.