Adventure Cycling Association

Our loop starts in Las Cruces (or just plain “Cruces” to the locals). Downtown features a Saturday Farmers Market with numerous food trucks to sample local favorites, including the region’s famous Hatch green chiles. Pop in at several historical and art museums like the Farm and Ranch Museum. Then we’ll kick off our tour of the enchanted lands at our first map meeting where we talk about the logistics for our ride, meet fellow riders, and eat dinner while enjoying a night of indoor lodging.

Climb and descend St. Augustine Pass (5,719 feet), go through White Sands Missile Range, and touch the southern end of White Sands National Monument with an easy side trip to the visitor center. Ride near Holloman Air Force Base to experience the sound of flight from the ground as the pilots fly overhead before settling into our campground for the night.

Just off route, go get an up-close view of one of the Southwest’s best — and most accessible — examples of prehistoric rock art at Three River Petroglyphs Site. Tonight, we’ll be thinking more about rock as we camp in the middle of an ancient lava flow. Approximately 5,000 years ago, Little Black Peak erupted and filled the Tularosa Basin with molten rock six miles wide, 160 feet thick, and covering 125 square miles. We can walk a nature trail showcasing the flowers, cacti, and trees of the Chihuahuan desert. Birdwatchers should keep their eyes peeled for roadrunners, quail, cottontails, great horned owls, burrowing owls, turkey vultures, hawks, golden eagles, and more.

Ride by the White Sands Missile Range Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. This sparse desert landscape should offer some of the widest skies you’ll ever see en route to our indoor lodging for the next two nights.

Leave the driving to us, as we offer an optional shuttle over 80 miles roundtrip to visit Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the El Camino Real Historic Trail Site. Tens of thousands of migratory birds gather each autumn and stay through the winter at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. With its huge flocks of sandhill cranes, Arctic geese, and countless other birds, this refuge is one of the great bird preserves of the world. On your own, visit the mineral museum at the New Mexico Tech Campus displaying collections of minerals, fossils, gemstones, and mining artifacts.

We climb from the Rio Grande Valley through the Plains of San Agustin. Continue near the awe-inspiring Very Large Array (VLA) of 27 radio telescopes (giant dish antennas), used by more astronomers than any other in the world; the visitor center is just a mile off route. Movies filmed here include Contact, Independence Day, Terminator Salvation, and a rock video by Bon Jovi. You’ll proceed through Magdalena where legend says that in the 1500s, a Spanish soldier saw the face of Mary Magdalene on the north side of the mountain. The “Livestock Driveway” stretched 125 miles to eastern Arizona where as many as 150,000 sheep and 21,000 cattle per year were driven. If your legs are up for it, there is hiking at Datil Well where we’ll camp for the night.

Today we’ll cross both Adventure Cycling’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and the Continental Divide (7,312 feet). The terrain will change before our eyes today as we enter the Gila National Forest and make camp for the night.

We’ll ride Saliz Pass (6,444 feet) and begin our circle of the first designated wilderness area in the U.S., the Aldo Leopold and Gila Wilderness Areas. Consider taking a short side trip to visit the picturesque Catwalk Recreational Area near Glenwood before spinning into town for a night indoors.

Cross the Continental Divide (6,230 feet) for a second time just before our destination for the night. Silver City is where the Great Divide and Southern Tier routes meet, so watch for touring cyclists whether on slick or knobby tires while we spend two nights in this postcard-pretty New Mexican town.

Enjoy an off-bike day in what the locals simply call “Silver.” Hop in the van for a 90-mile round trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, where a settlement was built into the rock walls in the 1200s and hiking trails abound. Or stay in town and mosey through the local restaurants, coffee houses, galleries, and bike shops of Silver.

Silver City to Hillsboro, 56 miles. We'll ride by an open-pit copper mine and watch for the Kneeling Nun rock formation. Even though you have already crossed the Continental Divide twice, your biggest climb is to come as you ride up Emory Pass (8,228 feet) -- the highest point on this tour and the entire Southern Tier! The traffic is light and the road surface is good despite a lack of shoulders -- and the views are awesome! The lookout on the other side is as thrilling as it is well deserved. Soon we'll arrive at our overnight indoor lodge where the West was truly wild. You, however, will find it now relaxing and peaceful.

It will be a slow start this morning as you can enjoy the serenity at the lodge before pedaling the day’s 32 mostly downhill miles into the Mesilla Valley. We’ll celebrate our unique journey in the southwest at dinner and camp beside Caballo Lake.

Ride through Hatch, the Chile Capital of the World, and just try not to stop to sample that local delicacy — impossible! Fort Selden State Monument is close by the route as we pedal back to Las Cruces and head our separate ways after an enchanting two weeks together in New Mexico.