The Gazetteer
New Mexico
Scattered and geologically restless — basalt gorges, granite backcountry, and a sandstone bouldering frontier still being written.
New Mexico’s climbing doesn’t concentrate around one or two famous crags the way its neighbors do — it scatters across volcanic basalt canyons cut into the Pajarito Plateau, granite backcountry ranges (the Sandias, the Organs, Tres Piedras, Questa Dome), soft sandstone and rhyolite sport crags near Socorro and Gallup, and a fast-growing sandstone bouldering frontier around Roy in the northeast plains. Access is a live issue almost everywhere outside the state parks: wildfire has erased entire tuff crags, a rancher’s gate closure has cut off a classic approach, university land acquisition has closed formations near Las Cruces, and the Navajo Nation’s ban on climbing anywhere on tribal land makes Shiprock legally off-limits, not just difficult. No single guidebook covers the state — coverage splits between an old Falcon state guide, a dedicated bouldering guide for the Roy explosion, and a scatter of locally produced online guides.
Plate reserved — hand-drawn map & photographs to come
The rock of New Mexico
New Mexico is the best state in the union for a climber who wants to understand rock, because nearly every process that makes stone is exposed here and the sequence is legible from the road. The state survey divides the ground into six provinces — the Southern Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, the Rio Grande rift, the Basin and Range, the Mogollon–Datil volcanic field and the High Plains — and knowing which one a crag sits in tells you most of what you need to know before you get out of the car.
The floor is Paleoproterozoic: two juvenile crustal provinces, the Yavapai (1.8–1.7 Ga) and the Mazatzal (1.7–1.6 Ga), welded onto the growing edge of the continent and metamorphosed at middle-crustal depths — which is why so much New Mexico “granite” is properly a gneiss. A second pulse of granite went in around 1.45 Ga; the Sandia pluton dates to 1453 ± 12 Ma and is the biggest body of climbable crystalline rock in the state. Above the basement sits the Great Unconformity, a gap of roughly 1.1 billion years you can put your hand on at Sandia Crest, and then the Paleozoic: shallow tropical seas laying a carbonate platform from about 510 to 340 Ma, broken in the Pennsylvanian by the Ancestral Rocky Mountains and their block uplifts and basins. That platform is every limestone crag in the book. Mesozoic dune fields left the Zuni Sandstone at El Malpais; the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway left the Dakota and Gallup sandstones at Roy and Mentmore.
Then the state caught fire. Removal of the Farallon slab drove a continent-scale ignimbrite flare-up from about 40 to 18 Ma, whose New Mexico expression is the Mogollon–Datil volcanic field: 40,000 square kilometres of ash-flow tuff, lava and calderas, active roughly 40–24 Ma and today “dominated by massive cliffs of ash-flow tuffs.” The Emory caldera’s Kneeling Nun Tuff (>900 km³, a VEI-8 eruption) is City of Rocks; the Socorro caldera is The Box; the Nogal Canyon caldera is Luna Park; the Doña Ana caldera is Checkerboard Wall; the Organ caldera’s batholith is the Organ Mountains. Almost every sport crag in southern New Mexico is a piece of one caldera or another.
Meanwhile the crust began pulling apart. The Rio Grande rift opened from about 36 Ma in the south and 26 Ma in the north, peaked 16–10 Ma, and has not stopped: a chain of half-grabens flanked by tilted uplifts. The rift is why the Sandias and the Caballos stand where they do, why their basement is exposed at all, and — through the Jemez lineament crossing its western margin — why the Valles caldera laid the Bandelier Tuff across the Pajarito Plateau at 1.61 and 1.25 Ma. It also floored the Taos graben with the Servilleta Basalt, 240 metres of Pliocene flood lava that the Rio Grande has since trenched into a gorge. South of Las Cruces the rift merges into the Basin and Range. And the state is still erupting on geologic time: the McCartys flow at El Malpais is 3,900 years old.
The recurring rock types
| Rock | Where | Jointing | Holds | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welded ash-flow tuff | Cochiti, Ponderosa, Enchanted Tower, City of Rocks, Luna Park | cooling and unloading joints; pinnacles and “streets” | pockets from weathered pumice, lithophysae, vapour-phase cavities, tafoni | quality tracks welding grade in bands; poorly welded rock is choss; burnt tuff loses its patina and does not come back |
| Basalt | Rio Grande Gorge, White Rock, Diablo Canyon | columnar cooling joints — long and regular where the lava pooled and cooled slowly | vesicles as pockets; column-bounding cracks | loose rims, severe freeze–thaw, flaring cracks that let cams track |
| Andesite / andesite porphyry | Percha Creek, Dead Cholla Wall, the cliffs of The Box | blocky and irregular — dihedrals and thin corners, not columns | phenocryst knobs, weathered clasts, edges | block failure along joints; weak volcaniclastic interbeds |
| Proterozoic granite & orthogneiss | Sandias, Sandia foothills, Tres Piedras | sheeting joints parallel to the surface; foliation planes in gneiss | crystals, crimps, flakes; splitter and flake cracks | grus — granular disintegration gives gritty rounded holds and loose flakes |
| Quartz monzonite | Organs, Sugarloaf, Rabbit Ears, Aguirre Springs | exfoliation domes with very few continuous cracks | knobs, chickenheads, thin edges | runout slabs: the rock gives almost no gear, and power drilling is banned in the Wilderness |
| Rhyolite lava and domes | Doña Ana Mountains, San Mateos | irregular; weathering picks out flow banding and lithophysal zones | deeply etched pockets and fretted edges | flakes parallel to flow banding; quality varies within metres |
| Cretaceous sandstone | Roy, Mentmore | bedding planes plus vertical joints | crisp edges under iron “merlot” patina; water-polished slopers | loses up to ~75% of its strength wet — wait 24–72 hours |
| Jurassic eolian sandstone | El Malpais bluffs | large-scale cross-bedding; joint-bounded cracks | almost entirely cracks | soft enough that bolts are not trusted; ground-up gear ethic |
| Paleozoic limestone & dolomite | Mud Mountain, Caballo Lake, Palomas Peak | bedding-plane roofs and ledges | solution pockets, huecos, crystal vugs, chert knobs, tufa | “onion skin” — a case-hardened rind detached from the parent rock |
| Quartzite conglomerate | El Rito | matrix-controlled; few true cracks | cobbles and their sockets | loose, wiggling cobbles; bolts must go in matrix, not clast |
Northern NM / Taos
Three unrelated rocks share this country. The gorge crags are Servilleta Basalt, 5.3–2.95 Ma olivine tholeiite that floors the Taos graben up to 240 m thick — and it erupted as three main flow units separated by beds of alluvium, which is the whole architecture of Taos climbing: walls are 45 to 100 feet because that is a flow’s thickness, the sediment interbeds are the ledges and the choss bands, and the vesicles are the holds, “not unlike the finger pockets of limestone.” Tres Piedras is 1.69 Ga orthogneiss on the rift’s western shoulder. El Rito is an Eocene alluvial fan cemented into cobble conglomerate. Roy is Cretaceous Dakota Sandstone caprock calved into an 800-foot canyon by the Canadian River. Questa Dome is the one genuine unknown: climbers’ “beautiful white granite” is either Proterozoic basement or a ~25 Ma pluton of the Latir volcanic field, and the published record we could reach does not settle it — though massive, structureless 76%-silica Miocene granite would explain those runout slabs rather well.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rio Grande Gorge crags (John Dunn Bridge, Dead Cholla Wall, Miner’s Crag, Utopian Vistas, Vista Verde Crag, Wild and Scenic) | Taos / Pilar | Servilleta Basalt, 5.3–2.95 Ma (Dead Cholla Wall: andesite) | Sport, some trad | ~40 at Vista Verde alone | Up to 5.12 | Cliffs below the gorge rim; access to Vista Verde crosses the Taos Junction Bridge. |
| Tres Piedras | Tres Piedras | Tres Piedras Orthogneiss, 1693 Ma — climbers’ “granite” | Trad, slabby sport, bouldering | Not stated | Wide range, beginner-friendly | Mostly Carson NF land; landowner in the area asks no fires/trash/chalk and to close gates. |
| Questa Dome | Questa | White granite — Proterozoic basement or a ~25 Ma Latir pluton; unresolved | Trad | Not stated | Up to 5.11 | 600-ft dome inside the Latir Peaks Wilderness; alpine approach, season roughly May–October. |
| Comales Canyon | Questa | Metamorphic — probably Ortega Formation quartzite (inferred) | Trad | Not stated | Not stated | Up to ~10,000 ft; cool-summer option alongside Questa Dome. |
| El Rito | El Rito | Quartzite conglomerate — Eocene El Rito Formation, an alluvial fan cemented into cobbles | Sport, some trad | 80+ over 13 walls | 5.7–5.13a | Carson NF; one of NM’s best sport venues. |
| Roy / Mills Canyon & Mesteño Canyon bouldering | Roy | Dakota Sandstone, ~100–95 Ma | Bouldering | ~1,800 problems, 50+ zones | V0–V13 | Nearly year-round except summer; rock is fragile when wet — do not climb recently-wet sandstone. |
| Philmont Scout Ranch (Miners Park, Cimarroncito, Dean Cow) | Cimarron | Tertiary dacite porphyry and Raton Basin sandstone (which site is which, unverified) | Instructional/rappelling | Not stated | Not stated | Boy Scouts of America property; not a public climbing destination in the normal sense (unverified for public/independent access). |
| Cañoncito → see Apache Canyon | Santa Fe (not Albuquerque) | — | — | — | — | The geology pass found the likely referent: Cañoncito at Apache Canyon, on I-25 southeast of Santa Fe, listed on Mountain Project as Apache (Grasshopper) Canyon Bouldering. Moved to the Santa Fe table. |
Santa Fe area
The famous rock here is the Bandelier Tuff, but most of the climbing is not on it. The White Rock crags stand on the older Cerros del Rio lavas — hawaiite and alkali basalt, principal activity ~2.8–2.3 Ma — exposed where the Rio Grande cut White Rock Canyon beneath the tuff-capped plateau. Diablo Canyon is the spectacular case: rising basaltic magma hit groundwater in the porous Tesuque sandstones and blew a maar, lava then ponded inside the crater as a lava lake, and slow cooling in a thick body produced over 300 feet of vertical columns. That is why Diablo has 300-foot columns and the Taos gorge has 45-foot walls — same magma family, different cooling history. The tuff areas at Cochiti Mesa carry the region’s hardest lesson: the 2011 Las Conchas Fire was hot enough to separate the patina from the rock, and without the patina there was nothing solid enough to climb.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Overlook / White Rock crags (incl. Gallows Edge) | White Rock / Los Alamos | Basalt — Cerros del Rio hawaiite, ~2.8–2.3 Ma (not the Bandelier Tuff above it) | Sport, some bolted/gear cracks | 375+ across three hubs | Mostly 5.9+ | Near year-round on two aspects; governed by a 1989 bolting agreement, amended 2004. |
| Diablo Canyon | Santa Fe | Basalt — a ponded lava lake inside a maar, cooled into 300 ft of columns | Sport, plus cracks | 100+ | 5.8–5.13 | BLM Recreation Area; rockfall risk called out explicitly — helmet recommended. |
| Cochiti Mesa / Capulin Canyon | Cochiti / Jemez Mountains | Bandelier Tuff, 1.61 and 1.25 Ma | Trad/sport, historically | Much reduced | Historic range not restated | Fire closure/damage: the 2011 Las Conchas Fire rendered much of the soft tuff “utterly unclimbable,” permanently. |
| Jemez Mountains and Jemez Valley (incl. Ponderosa Bouldering, The Pond, The Satellite) | Jemez Springs / Ponderosa | Welded tuff, basalt, granite, travertine | Bouldering (Ponderosa), routes elsewhere | Not stated | Not stated | The Satellite’s access gate closes in winter; The Pond can get muddy after snowmelt. At Ponderosa the usual patina rule inverts: thin patina is excellent, thick patina is probably choss. |
| Apache Canyon (Grasshopper Canyon) Bouldering | Cañoncito, 11.5 mi SE of Santa Fe | Sandstone — probably Galisteo Formation, 50–34 Ma (inferred) | Bouldering | 20+ variations on one overhanging chunk | V0–V10 | Surfaced during the geology pass, and the likely referent of the census’s stray “Cañoncito” entry. Rock reported as varying from excellent to total choss. |
Albuquerque / Sandias
One pluton, one unconformity, one rift. The Sandia granite is a coarse monzogranite dated 1453 ± 12 Ma, lifted as the classic rift-flank uplift on the eastern shoulder of the Rio Grande rift until nearly 1.5 km of it stands exposed at the crest — steep broken west face, gentle east dip slope. On top of it, across the Great Unconformity’s 1.1-billion-year gap, sits ~310 Ma Madera Group limestone: the white band at the top of the west face that one climber calls “a half-pitch-thick icing,” and the same limestone that makes the sport crag at Palomas Peak. Climbers’ complaint that Sandia granite is “not as solid as Yosemite,” with rounded gritty holds, is a geologic fact rather than an opinion: a coarse monzogranite weathering in a semi-arid climate goes to grus — granular disintegration — rather than clean exfoliation, because feldspar rots to clay faster than quartz. That is the grit, and it is also the friction.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandia Mountains (West Side) | Albuquerque | Sandia monzogranite, 1453 ± 12 Ma, with a Madera Group limestone cap | Trad, multi-pitch | Hundreds of routes | Mostly 5.6–5.8 | The state’s premier backcountry range; expect a real mountain approach, not a roadside crag. |
| Sandia Foothills Bouldering (U-Mound, Three Gun Spring/Tres Pistolas) | Albuquerque | The same coarse Sandia monzogranite, as boulders | Bouldering, a few routes | Not stated | Beginner–advanced | Edge-of-city access. |
| Palomas Peak | Placitas | Limestone — Madera Group, Pennsylvanian (inferred) | Sport | 100+ | Up to ~5.13 range | North end of the Sandia massif, 12 named walls; south/southwest exposure gives a long season. Sharp, highly textured rock — tape and resole. |
| New Canyon / Manzano East Side | Manzano | Limestone, probably Madera Group (inferred) | Sport | Not stated | Not stated | Surfaced during the geology pass and new to this census: a small, little-known limestone area in Cibola NF, with modern chain anchors. The Manzanos are the Sandias’ continuation south of Tijeras Canyon — the same basement-plus-carbonate stack. |
Central NM / Socorro
This is caldera country. The Socorro caldera (~32.5 Ma) erupted the crystal-rich Hells Mesa Tuff, then filled — first with Luis Lopez Formation andesite porphyry lavas, later with the La Jencia Tuff, which ponded in the depression to 1,700 feet thick. Which of those you are climbing at The Box is a genuine open question worth printing: every climbing source calls the rock rhyolite, while the New Mexico Bureau of Geology, writing about the same canyon, says the steep cliffs are andesite porphyry of the Luis Lopez Formation. Andesite and rhyolite are opposite ends of the same series, so this is not a rounding error — though a 320-acre canyon may well span more than one unit, and climbers do use “rhyolite” loosely for any hard pale volcanic rock. Enchanted Tower, west of here, is welded tuff of the Oligocene Datil Group — a pyroclastic flow weathered into a formation that overhangs on three sides, with pockets where the pumice was and almost no nubbins, because the tuff is too crystal-poor to leave any.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Box (Box Recreation Area) | Socorro | Volcanic — climbers say rhyolite; the state survey maps the canyon’s cliffs as Oligocene andesite porphyry (Luis Lopez Fm) | Sport, bouldering | 320-acre canyon | 5.8–5.13b | Four sections; Southern Box has the highest-quality routes/boulders. Good winter destination; camping permitted. |
South-Central NM / Truth or Consequences area
Our home ground, covered crag by crag in Part I. In short: the Rio Grande rift tore open along the western edge of an old Paleozoic carbonate platform and tilted its blocks up on the east side, then buried everything west of the river under ash. So the limestone crags — Mud Mountain on the Mud Springs block, Caballo Lake and the Bat Cave on the Caballo rift-flank uplift — are drowned tropical sea floor, Ordovician to Pennsylvanian; and the volcanic crags west and north are Cenozoic: Eocene Rubio Peak andesite at Percha Creek, Oligocene Nogal Canyon caldera rhyolite at Luna Park and Red Rock Arroyo. The Bat Cave, it turns out, is very probably the landmark that the Bat Cave Formation was named after in 1952.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red Rock Arroyo (Luna Park) | Monticello / T or C | Rhyolite ash-flow tuff, Nogal Canyon caldera (~28.5 Ma, inferred) — dark red good, light buff rubbish | Sport, mostly moderate | Not stated | Mostly moderate | NE of Monticello off FS Rd #225, Cibola NF; easy camping. |
| Mud Mountain | Truth or Consequences | Paleozoic platform limestone, Mud Springs Mountains block | Sport | Not stated | Not stated | Winter crag overlooking town; well-bolted, user-friendly anchors. |
| Caballo Lake (incl. Bat Cave area) | Caballo | Ordovician limestone and dolomite — very probably the Bat Cave Formation, named for this cave | Sport | Not stated | Tall, bolted routes | Huge limestone faces; rough roads require 4x4. |
| Percha Creek | Truth or Consequences | Andesite — probably Eocene Rubio Peak Formation (inferred) | Mixed trad crack + bolted face | Not stated | Not stated | 5-minute approach from parking at the old bridge. |
| “Truth or Consequences Area” (general MP region) | Truth or Consequences | Mixed | Mixed | Not stated | Not stated | Mountain Project’s umbrella region for the above plus sub-areas not individually detailed here. |
Southern NM / Las Cruces
Three products of one Eocene–Oligocene magmatic episode. The Organ batholith — quartz monzonite, emplaced beneath the Organ caldera within about a million years at 33.7–32.8 Ma by the best dating — weathered into the Needles, Sugarloaf, San Agustin and the Rabbit Ears. Exfoliation is the word that explains the climbing: an intrusion unloaded by erosion cracks in sheets parallel to its surface, giving domes and slabs with very few continuous cracks, which is why Sugarloaf’s 1,800-foot North Face goes at 5.6+ R with 50-to-60-foot runouts, and why a hand-drill-only Wilderness ethic makes the Organs feel serious at moderate grades. North of town, the Doña Ana caldera (~36 Ma) filled with ash-flow tuff and rhyolite — Checkerboard Wall is “deeply etched rhyolite,” not granite. West at Deming, City of Rocks is the Kneeling Nun Tuff off the Emory caldera: hot ash welded into a sheet, cooled into columnar joints, then unloaded and weathered along those joints until the sheet became streets of pinnacles. Every boulder’s shape there is controlled by a joint.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organ Mountains (incl. Sugarloaf) | Las Cruces | Quartz monzonite of the Organ batholith, 33.7–32.8 Ma | Trad, multi-pitch, some bouldering | More than a lifetime’s worth | Wide range | Off-trail wilderness approaches; power drilling prohibited in the Wilderness — expect sparse rap anchors, loose rock. |
| Doña Ana Mountains (incl. Checkerboard Wall, Pizza Boulders, Bear Boulders) | Las Cruces | Rhyolite and ash-flow tuff, Doña Ana caldera ~36 Ma (monzonite porphyry on the high peaks) — not granite, as this census previously had it | Trad, bouldering | Not stated | Moderate–easy highlighted | BLM/NMSU land; NMSU has closed some acquired areas including the Columns and North Boulder Field — respect closures. |
| City of Rocks State Park | Deming | Kneeling Nun Tuff, Emory caldera, ~35 Ma | Bouldering only | 100+ problems | V0–V8 | No bolting or other fixed protection permitted, limited chalk; $5/vehicle fee; hosts BoulderFest each Halloween weekend. |
Gila / Southwest NM
No additional major established areas beyond City of Rocks (listed above) could be verified this session. Unverified — gap in this census; a targeted follow-up of the Gila National Forest / Silver City sub-tree is needed.
The geology at least tells a future search where to look. This whole region is Mogollon–Datil volcanic field — 35 million years of volcanism, “dominated by massive cliffs of ash-flow tuffs and exposures of shallow batholiths.” The Emory caldera, 15 by 34 miles at the southern end of the Black Range, is the easternmost caldera in the Gila National Forest and its Kneeling Nun Tuff caps a huge area. The other target is the Gila Conglomerate, a late Tertiary to Pleistocene volcaniclastic unit whose nature is such that “many cavities, overhangs and caves formed within the unit” — which is why the Gila Cliff Dwellings are where they are, and which describes, in geologic language, a bouldering and steep-sport rock. So: welded tuff cliff bands along the canyons, and conglomerate overhangs. Not the granite one might expect of a wilderness range.
Western NM / I-40 Corridor
Sandstone, in two very different ages. Mentmore is Gallup Sandstone, Late Cretaceous barrier-bar and delta-front sand — “uniform, very well sorted, fine-grained,” which is exactly the recipe for a friction sandstone, and why climbers here report little to no choss and are not wary of holds breaking. Routes are 25 to 45 feet because that is the thickness of the resistant shelf. El Malpais is Zuni Sandstone, Middle Jurassic dune sand, 165–175 Ma, standing in 400-foot cliffs capped by Dakota along NM 117 with the 3,900-year-old McCartys lava flow at its foot. Eolian sandstone is the Wingate–Navajo family: large-scale cross-bedding, and cracks rather than faces, which is precisely the climbing that exists there. Both areas run on the same rule — wet sandstone loses up to about three-quarters of its strength, because water attacks the thin cement holding the quartz grains together. Mentmore’s locals ask for 48 hours after heavy rain.
| Area | Near | Rock | Style | Size | Grades | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mentmore | Gallup | Gallup Sandstone | Sport, some trad, top-rope | 100+ | 5.0–5.13 | Two sub-areas; sandstone weakens when wet — wait ~48 hrs after heavy rain. |
| El Malpais (Hwy 117 sandstone bluffs) | Grants | Zuni Sandstone — Middle Jurassic dune sand, ~165–175 Ma, capped by Dakota | Trad/ground-up, bouldering | ~12 mi along Hwy 117 | Not stated | Climbing is prohibited inside El Malpais National Monument itself; the climbable bluffs lie on adjacent BLM land near Acoma Pueblo reservation land — respect closures and cultural sensitivity. Season Feb–Nov. |
Zuni Mountains (Grants/Gallup) is extensively developed for hiking and mountain biking but turned up no evidence of an established climbing area, and is dropped from this census as unconfirmed for climbing. It is worth a line anyway as the state’s cleanest exhumed Proterozoic core: a northwest-trending uplift of ~1.65 Ga granite and metamorphic rock, raised first in the Ancestral Rockies as part of the Zuni–Defiance uplift and again in the Laramide, with some 20,000 feet of cover stripped off its crest.
Tribal lands and closures — do not climb
Shiprock (Tsé Bitʼaʼí), San Juan County, is on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation banned all climbing on tribal land, including Shiprock, in 1966; enforcement went from lax to strict after a fatal/serious-injury accident in March 1970, and the ban was announced as “absolute, final and unconditional.” Climbing — and even hiking, camping, or driving the access roads — is illegal here, and the ban applies Navajo Nation–wide, not just at Shiprock. Do not climb here.
Geologically it is the throat of a maar-diatreme volcano of the Navajo (Diné) volcanic field: fractured volcanic breccia cut by black dikes of minette — an unusual potassic rock of alkali feldspar, biotite and diopside — with wall-like dikes radiating from the central plug, dated at roughly 27–30 Ma. What stands above the desert today formed 2,500 to 3,000 feet below the surface of its own time; everything over it has eroded away. We describe it because a geology chapter that omitted the most famous volcanic neck in North America would be conspicuous, not because anyone should go.
Areas not verified this session
- Sitting Bull Falls (Lincoln National Forest) — widely known as a swimming-hole recreation site; no established climbing area could be confirmed either way (unverified). The geology is at least clear: a canyon in the Guadalupe escarpment cut into Permian limestones and dolomites of the Capitan reef complex (~265–260 Ma), where mineralised spring water has built a massive travertine bluff over the picnic ground.
- Aguirre Springs — no longer a mystery, and the census’s guess was wrong. It is the BLM recreation area on the east side of the Organ Mountains, beneath the Rabbit Ears, on intrusive rock of the Organ batholith; the Rabbit Ears pinnacles are quartz monzonite and Mountain Project carries a Rabbit Ears Area. It belongs with the Organs above, and it is roped climbing on pinnacles as much as bouldering.
- Cornudas Mountains — geologically well documented, climbing still unconfirmed: nine mountains of Eocene–Oligocene nepheline syenite and syenite laccoliths and plugs on the New Mexico–Texas line, intruded in two pulses (37.1–34.5 Ma and 32.5–27.0 Ma). The census’s instinct that this is syenite was right; the family resemblance to Hueco Tanks is real but they are separate intrusive centres.
- Mountain Project’s own catch-all regions, “New Mexico, other Northern Areas” and “New Mexico, other Southern Areas,” clearly exist but their contents were not enumerated; expect additional minor areas inside those two nodes.
Guidebooks
- New Mexico Bouldering — Owen Summerscales, 2016. Credited with driving Roy’s bouldering growth; publisher not confirmed this session.
- White Rock / El Rito route guides (online) — Los Alamos Mountaineers (lamountaineers.org); functions as the de facto guidebook for those areas.
- Enchanted Tower guide page — Tom Grundy (electricant.net); an actively cited informal online guide.
- “Jemez Rock & Pecos Area” — distributed as a Mountain Project custom book listing; likely a locally-compiled guide, contents unverified.
- Rock Climbing New Mexico (Falcon Guides state guide), commonly attributed to Dennis R. Jackson — unverified this session, recalled from general publishing knowledge rather than confirmed by search; author, publisher, and edition year need checking against a physical copy.
Coverage of Diablo Canyon, the Sandias, the Box, Organ Mountains, City of Rocks, and Mentmore likely exists in older Falcon editions or local pamphlet guides not surfaced in this research pass.