I have been working on the third edition of Walks in the Black Range. This is a big effort which will combine the four volumes of the 2nd Edition into one volume of just less than 300 pages, covering more than 70 walks in the Black Range with maps, photos, information on natural history, and a bit of human history on occasion. The third edition will also include many links to material on this website and to the videos included in our extensive Vimeo library. Over the last year I have been augmenting our video collection with the “Walks” linkage in mind. A set of drone videos has been added to the Mines of the Black Range showcase, for instance, bringing the total number of videos in that offering to 15. New additions include mines in the Hillsboro, Fluorite, and Lake Valley mining districts. In all cases, the videos provide an aerial perspective of the trails in the area.
A new page, Follow the Contours, has been added to the site as part of this overall effort. When the third edition of Walks is published it will be added to this page and the current “Walks” page will become history. Follow the Contours incorporates all of the ways of getting around in this country in one place. Although still under construction, you can view the page at the link above. Note that it has linkages to “road videos”, informational pages, and external resources.
At the top of the page there is a section of video links for a new series of “walk videos”. That section now includes several videos of walks up side canyons on the north side of the middle box of the Percha. Included in this section are some 360° video clips which allow you to use your cursor to explore the video in ways you may not have done in the past. And, lastly, and to the point of this blog entry, there will be aerial videos of the canyon walks. In addition to being time-consuming and technically demanding it can be strenuous (oops!- invigorating) and involve a fair amount of stumbling around. Just to say that things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes you just have to pick yourself up out of the sand and keep on trucking. It is in that spirit that the following embedded video is offered.
But most of all, remember the foothills of the Black Range are dramatic and beautiful. As seen in the framegrab from the current effort, shown above.