Valles Caldera

Ever since the first time I saw Valle Grande over 40 years ago, I love going there, and especially taking visitors there. The sight of the immense volcanic caldera (over 1 million years old) is stunning. After visiting Los Alamos, I went there with Jake and Debbie on Sept. 10.

On this visit, for the first time, we went down into the caldera on the paved road that goes back a little ways to allow visitors to actually enter the basin.

The views, as always, are just spectacular, but on this visit, we had an added bonus -- we spotted a herd of elk, with the male elk guarding his herd of probably 50 females as they grazed in the caldera. It was really something interesting to see!









The elk herd:




Watching the elk herd with a nice young family we met:




Areas of burned trees were all over the Jemez area near Los Alamos; it was a heartbreaking sight to see:

Stopping to look at the Valles Caldera

The Valle Caldera near Los Alamos, NM, is a 12-mile wide volcanic caldera formed during eruptions 1.47 million and 1.15 million years ago, the eruptions were more than 500 times greater than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The Caldera has a land area of 89,716 acres, with many miles of ranch roads and livestock and game trails. These include a network of trails currently designated for horse riding. The caldera is also a major place for geothermal energy.

It's hard to grasp the enormity of the caldera when you are standing there at the lookout point. It is a place we always like to take visitors because it is so impressive and unusual.

Valles Caldera

Valles Caldera is a 12 mile wide collapsed volcano in the Jemez Mountains near Los Alamos, NM, which is owned by the federal government as a National Preserve. It was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions about one million years ago. It is used to feed cattle in the summer, and elk come there to graze all year long.