We have been very apprehensive about climbing over the mountains at 8259 feet at Emory Pass ever since we mapped this ride last summer. It’s been said before that worry is a waste of imagination. How true it is because this section was beyond description. Yes, it is hard to do more than 4,000 feet of climbing, all of it at 5,000 feet or higher. I don’t have enough synonyms for beautiful and spectacular to describe the natural beauty in this part of New Mexico so I will post the pictures we took and hope you can appreciate what we saw. The smell of the pine forest and the lack of machine noise (except a slowly passing car once in a while) made this a ride I would do again if I could.

A few miles from Silver City. This might be The Twin Sisters.

Another huge strip mine on Rt. 152

The views are getting better as we go higher.

We are in a canyon here. After climbing above 7,000 feet we came back down to 6,000 and then made our way up to 8,200 at Emory Pass.

There is a woodpecker in this picture.

We made it to the top. We were very happy and proud of ourselves. From here it is 6 miles down to Hillsboro.

Emory Pass vista is a few hundred feet off the main road.

It was a perfect clear day. Temperature around 50 degrees.