hiking Bisti Badlands in New Mexico, the Egg Hatchery, Bisti Arch, Petrified Trees, oh my !!!

This is a magical place that I found out about by seeing an image on Instagram. I am going to quote from the BLM website: time and natural elements have etched a fantasy world of strange rock formations made of interbedded sandstone, shale, mudstone, coal, and silt. The weathering of the sandstone forms hoodoos and other unusual forms. More later.

Disclaimer: my images are heavily edited for color.

How to get there ? See the map below; it is pretty easy (other areas of the badlands are not that easy to drive to). I stayed in Farmington, MN and drove south on NM 371. I am pretty sure there is a sign pointing to the dirt road that takes you from the road to the trailhead. A left on the highway and then another left on a T intersection. The road is graded dirt and I bet when it rains it becomes a mess, but it is just 2 miles long.

A cattle guard is the entrance to the area and there you just explore. There are no trails at all. I was there two days, so you will notice cloudy images and sunny ones. The color of rock formations is brought up on the editing of my pictures, there is very little color in the area. For example, I edited this to look a lot better:

The area was once a river line delta that lay just to the west of an ancient sea, which covered much of New Mexico 70 million years ago. The movement of the water kept adding layers and layers of sediments. At some point, a volcano deposited a large amount of ash and that is what gives colors mostly to the area.

These images are from an area right of the entrance (instead of going straight); you enter a bunch of tall sand dunes-like formation and at the tops many have rocks. I just explored the area climbing some, walking around others.

The Bisti Arch

Water slowly receded and prehistoric animals lived off the foliage along the riverbanks. They have dug out fossil from this area (spoiler alert: I found one).

The first iconic rock formation of the area is the Bisti Arch (as of 2020 unfortunately it broke apart). It looks bigger than it is and, again, with little color.

The one place that makes this area famous is the Egg Hatchery …… just a leveled area with rocks that look like egg hatching. You just continue past the Bisti Arch and you will find this area. It literally looks like a dinosaur egg hatchery.

The Egg Hatchery

Once I explored the egg hatchery, I decided to keep going west and explore more. There used to be a falcon nest and larger rock formations. I explored a lot in that area. I think you enter one way and can escape another way. You can’t really get lost but you can definitely hit dead ends.

The large petrified tree

There are also petrified trees and this one is the longest. I edited the image to highlight the tree trunk.

So, the area became dry and the deposits were lifted with the rest of the Colorado Plateau about 25 million years ago. Finally, six thousand years ago the glaciers melting from the ice age started eroding the area.

I wish I could explain this better, but the rocks at the top are resting on a very thin (wide wise) layer of sand. This is north of the Egg Hatchery.

I then came back from the west and decided to explore the north (where wings were more readily found). You have to down down on a ravine (there is a path) to explore that area. But before we get there, look at these ones ……….

The fossil

I found this weird rock and took some pictures of it. When I got home I didn’t edit them since they looked plain, until ………….. someone else posted the same pics and identified them as a fossil of a vertebra. I could not believe that the fossil was standing on plain sight (I am not revealing the location) and when I went back to edit the images, it was obvious you can see it.