You are climbing again — this is Palo Flechado Pass, about ninety-one hundred feet, and it is the last high point of the loop before the long descent into Taos.
The name is Spanish and it means, roughly, the tree stuck full of arrows. The traditional explanation is that this pass was a crossing used by Plains people coming west to trade or to hunt in these mountains, and that there was a tree at the top of it that hunters or travellers shot arrows into — as a marker, a tally, an offering, or a record that they had passed. Nobody can now tell you for certain which of those it was. But the name survived the tree by several centuries, which is a nice thing for a name to do.
This pass was a real corridor. Before it was a highway it was a route between the Great Plains and the Rio Grande valley, used for trade, for raiding, for the Comanchero traders who worked between the Pueblo and Hispano settlements and the Plains tribes.
Ahead of you the road drops into Taos Canyon and it drops steadily for about twenty miles. It is a beautiful descent and it is a genuine one — use a lower gear, give your brakes a chance to cool, and watch for slow vehicles and cyclists on the curves.
Coming down, keep an eye on the roadside. Elk and mule deer use this canyon heavily, especially at dusk.
Photo: Jeffrey Beall · CC BY 4.0