King of Wings

The Bisti Badlands wilderness area of NW New Mexico is a small, lightly visited area of hoodoos and other oddly shaped rock formations. Though I did want to visit them, I was more interested in two nearby, mostly unknown, difficult to access and seldom visited badlands areas. I had found a few images & location descriptions on the internet and was game to try and find them.

The first area held a interesting hoodoo called King of Wings (KOW) — a large hoodoo with a huge overhanging cap stone, viz. a wing. I only had a GPS location for its access point and was a little concerned about navigating the network of small Navajo ranch roads to get there. But I had no problem finding the final small dirt track that lead to the destination: a desolate windmill and cattle waterhole at the edge of barren badlands. However, I found all the roads to be very slippery — the locale's soil was fine clay & recent rain had turned it into a slick, sticky mess. And little did I know that it was going to get much worse...

The map indicated that the GPS location for the KOW itself was about a half mile from my parking spot. However, I soon discovered that the badland's wet clay was slippery as ice to walk on and adhered to my boot soles in a heavy, inch+ thick layer. And the half mile became closer to a mile as I detoured around all but the gentlest of slopes so that I didn't slip and fall! I finally found KOW at the internet-provided location, with interesting surrounding formations. And fortunately, a light cloud cover helped moderate the otherwise harsh midday lighting.

Panoramas – Tap/click on a pano's thumbnail to show an interactive, moving panorama; use the on-screen control bar or your finger/mouse to move around:

King of Wings surrounded by hoodoos:

Image Gallery – Tap to view an individual image, then swipe to advance; use the top-right controls for auto play & other options (e.g, tap the curved arrow to open sharing options):