Images of El Malpais National Monument – New Mexico, taken in March 2016.

El Malpais (mal-pie-EES) means “the badlands”, so called by the Spanish explorers to this region because of the difficulty they had attempting to cross the jagged ancient lava flows.

I drove to this area from where I was staying outside of Albuquerque confident that the worst weather I would encounter would be partly cloudy skies. It turns out that that forecast was indeed correct but I also learned that like thunderstorms I was accustom to out west snowstorms could occur as a burst surrounded by those partly cloudy skies. It all made for an interesting experience and some interesting images. I hit my first snow along The Narrows where the road winds along the 500 foot high sandstone cliffs on one side and the McCartys lava flow on the other. Driving through that was easy enough and once I arrived at my destination, the Lava Falls Trail, I was in the clear and I took off on the 1.1 mile loop trail to explore the flows. At about the farthest point from the parking lot flakes began to fall and in no time it was upon me. The sky darkened, the flakes became progressively larger and more numerous until the snow started to accumulate on everything including me! Not accustom to snow and with the memory of the night in Atlanta that I spent in a grocery store the last time I saw the stuff still vivid in my mind I did the only things I could do, take pictures and speed walk my way over the rest of the trail…not necessarily in that order! Obviously I survived to walk another trail and again came away with some interesting images.