Lower Arroyo de Los Pinos

Near Socorro, NM and located off of the incredibly scenic Quebradas Backcountry Byway, this segment of Arroyo de Los Pinos is great for employing your driving skills while seeing much more of the area than you could from the Byway above. As you arrive, the color of the rock and earth are impossible to miss due to the presence of hematite, the same mineral that gives the planet Mars its red hue. The first segment of the trail from the Quebradas road to the arroyo floor takes you through a 400-foot elevation change, providing beautiful panoramic vistas of the region and its surrounding mountain ranges. Moving through the arroyo, bands of red and yellow sandstone, red and purple shale, and white to gray limestone are all exposed. There are many trails along the Quebradas Backcountry Byway, which divides the 6,000-acre Gordy’s Hill Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Area from west to east, providing offroad driving challenges for all experience levels and offroad vehicle capabilities.