The landscape, while bearing less relief than the most dramatic portions of the spine of the continent, is still rugged and thickly vegetated enough to slow down most non-road travel. In the area around El Malpais, forests of Ponderosa and Pinyon pines are surrounded by a great deal of black rock. Out in the open, at lower elevations on valley floors, the rock can be seen covering a wide area, as if it spread out in a flow.
Well, its actually hardened lava, and it makes for quite the interesting landscape. El Malpais is full of lava fields, lava caves, and small volcanoes. Consequently, El Malpais is Spanish for "The bad land", so named by Spanish explorers who passed through the area and had an impression that the vast lava fields were barren and somewhat reminiscent of popular concepts of Hell (talk about being under and over-impressed at the same time). Of course, they also found the area passable and a good way to move between the Rio Grand valley and the lands beyond, and some particularly enjoyed a cool permanent spring at the base of a nearby rock formation. Eastern side lava fields give way to western side points of rest and tranquility, at least at this divide crossing.
This is known today as El Morro National Monument, and many signatures of passing travelers have been etched into the base of the cliffs, leaving us with centuries of written and pictorial records of various peoples. I was not able to see them at the time. As you can see, this particular passage was quite rainy on those otherwise hot and dry July days of the past summer. The funny part is, after I had left the lava fields on the eastern side of the divide, things got quite sunny, and then quite sandy. Even a relatively level region on the Great Divide, it seems, can really knock the weather for a loop, and truly divide the waters in two.
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