Valley of Fires | Carrizozo, New Mexico - A Place to Revisit

Shame on me!  During the 14 years I lived in El Paso, the only time I visited the Holocene Carrizozo basalt flows was on a return from a family visit to NW Oklahoma.  (It might have been from my first wife's maternal Grandfather's funeral in 1985.)  The three photos below are scanned slides from that visit.  

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

That was about the time I started my Master's Thesis project near Aden Crater, Doña Ana County, NM.  Prior to my grad school "burn out" in the very late 1970s, my abandoned original Thesis project was the Southeastern "quadrant" of the Eagle Mountains, in Hudspeth County, TX. 

As we were driving past the Malpais Carrizozo flows, a Thesis Project idea came to mind, though the distance from El Paso (Carrizozo, NM is about 145 miles NE of downtown El Paso) and the unknown feasibility of a "Malpais Project" were major negatives for me.  

My imagined project was to seek out one or two marginal areas where the flows were thin and "dig under the edge", looking for burned vegetative matter (the best of which would be IF there were any charred, buried tree trunks or other logs), for radiometric age-dating.  

From the time of grad school until currently, I have heard and read of age estimates from 800 years b.p. to 8,000 years b.p., with the 8,000 being the most recent estimate I have heard (or read, I think).  (I haven't done an internet search yet to see if any NMSU, UNM, or NM Tech Thesis Projects have been done.  It would be extremely odd if none had been done with the obvious youth and easy access to the flows.)  Also, due to the youth and geographic location, the flows are likely related to the Rio Grande Rift, though I haven't consulted any rift-related literature in years.

At the very least, I would like to have an excuse to wander through the flows with a camera during the Spring wildflower season, before the furnace-like summer temperatures arrive.