Hiking A Lava Tube, El Malpais National Monument, NM

Driving from Albuquerque to Phoenix, we stopped at El Malpais NM. We drove out to the lava tubes area for a short hike.

The road out there was dusty! Our car got quite dirty.

The trail is not overly marked. It’s marked with rock cairns every once in a while, so you have to be looking ahead for the rock piles while you are watching your footing.

There are huge piles of lava rock everywhere.

There are cactus everywhere. They were flowering while we were there.

There was a pine tree across the trail at one point, so we took a group picture.

After a bit, you get to the lava tubes. Some of the tops are collapsed. There is one bridge as well.

We walked back, again on the piles of lava rock.

Unfortunately, I left the GPS in the car, so I don’t have any track information.

The nearest water is back at the visitor center. You should wear boots or good shoes, you are walking on volcanic rock a lot, it’s sharp.

The roundtrip we took was 0.8 miles. You can go a lot farther, including climbing down into the lava tubes. If we’d had some more time, I think we would have. Our total time for the hike was about 1.25 hours.

Tags: El Malpais National Monument, Hiking, Lava Tube, NM