Chokecherry volcano rim

“I wonder if that is Capulin.”

Roaring through Texline, one of the many towns along the Texas border touting its location, I noticed a pair of volcanic hills or mountains rose from the plain across the New Mexico border. Of course it had to be New Mexico.

It’s funny how borders announce themselves. Some seem arbitrary, but the terrain shifts at this northern part of the Texas-New Mexico border. Most of the Panhandle was washboard flat. The land west was flat but broken by conical mountains. Farmlands of the Panhandle just stop. The dusted beauty of New Mexico takes over. Some people call it boring – I call them ill-informed.

The first peak was not Capulin Volcano National Monument, but the Rabbits Ears, a pair of mountains westbound migrants used as a landmark due to the presence of nearby water.

Winding through Clayton, a series of pronghorns grazed alongside the road. A large mountain loomed ahead, one I assumed to be Capulin Mountain. It was conical and clearly volcanic in nature, although foliage was limited along its inclines.

Sierra Blanca from the Capulin crater rim

Only when the road circled around it and exposed a forest, extinct volcano did I realize the error. I found out that the earlier mountain was Sierra Blanca, the large dead volcano in the Clayton-Raton Volcanic Field that covers much of northern New Mexico. It might seem bleak to some, but not me. This was new landscape, foreign landscape and I wanted to enjoy all I could.

Several hours out of Amarillo, I figured I should at least grab a few pictures of Capulin before I finished the drive. The monument might be closed but I could snap photos from the road. I got a few then decided to check on the monument’s status. Not only was the gate open, but the road to the caldera and the visitor center were too.

Since I moved to Colorado, Capulin Volcano had become my national parks white whale. Every time I wanted to go, a new obstacle arose. First 2019 storms washed out a portion of the volcano road. You could tour and hike around the volcano base, but that omitted the marquee attraction. Then came limited winter hours. Then COVID-19 closures hit the national parks. I checked until I left for Amarillo, then gave up for this trip.

I had not counted on a soft reopening for the monument. The road to the crater was open. I was elated. I got a new NPS annual pass and a few stickers before striking up the volcano. At the visitor center I could not hide my elation at Capulin being open. Capulin is almost perfectly symmetrical, standing 1,500 feet above the plains. The Spanish named it Capulin, their word for chokecherries, which grow on its upper reaches. 

Across three miles and a short one-lane portion of the road, I reached the small lot at the caldera’s edge. There was only room for a dozen cars but even on a Saturday tourists turned over quickly enough to keep a half-dozen spots open at any time. The second I left the car, the sense of wonderment hit me – this silent volcano was a special place, its crater covered in trees and shrubs.

Without hesitation I set out for the caldera loop trail, the air instantly reminding of the 8,000-foot altitude. Hesitation came soon enough as the trail, a paved relic of the NPS’s ill-advised Mission 66 modernization plan in the 1960s, wound to the crate rim at a steep grade. I huffed and puffed, moved in small strides, remembering the 5-plus miles from Pale Duro with every step.

Every time I stopped, the views got better. Then everything leveled off, as the trail rolling toward a peak across the caldera. Pine trees along the path bloomed. The wind roared but didn’t reach me through the forested rim. Insect hummed around other blooming plants, with spring temperatures just now reaching the top of Capulin. I arrived a few weeks too early for Capulin’s well-known swarms of ladybugs covering all the flowering plants atop the volcano.

Few people circled the whole rim. I don’t feel bad saying they missed out. This was the peace that mountaintops deliver for the short time we can claim them. It was a peaceful place on top of a mountain we cheated to reach. Let’s face it, hiking from the parking lot to the rim top was a change of 300 feet in elevation. Imagine if the road had never been built and achieving the caldera base required an intensive hike – it could have been much harder. The park superintendent who crafted the road was a forward thinker. Had a steep four or five-mile hike been required the reach the bottom of the caldera, few would oblige.

Looking north from the Capulin rim

That few visitors bothered to reached the top of the rim didn’t concern me. The 360-degree views highlighted the volcano field in a way field nothing else could. The park service advertises that one can see into Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. I cannot say I saw into any of them, but the view atop Capulin showed me the tops of mesas and mountains I previously drove below. My car was a pinprick among the other pinpricks in the parking lot.

Bottom of the crater

To finish the mountaintop tour I descended into the caldera on a short trail that stopped at the volcano’s vents, which last erupted about 60,000 years ago. Across the lava field, only Sierra Blanca stood taller, but it the misfortune of an antenna farm at its summit, not a landmark to dry hikers. The rock field at the caldera bottom was unquestionably volcanic. A chipmunk or rock squirrel darted across the trail and disappeared into the unnavigable fields of rock.

I stood for a long minute at the base of the caldera, a place once running molten flows that would melt me in an instant. On this day, it was placid, filled with blooming plants and pollinating insects.

Capulin followed me almost to Raton, where the mountain pass crossed to Colorado. Sangre de Cristo Range appeared in the distance beyond the local mountains, which impressed at every turn. Whenever the wind gusted through the window, I hurtled back to top of the dead volcano, its jagged ridge and gnarled pinon pines and chokecherry bushes trembling in the breeze.

A near-panoramic view of the crater