Volcanic Peak
My wife told me of this peak with a communications tower on it's western end in 1995.
While she was driving between Las Cruces and Deming, NM on Interstate ten she was at mile marker 116 and looking south when she spotted the mountain.
In 1997 we drove to the base of the tower but the road up was terrible with sharp volcanic rocks. (She named it, Volcanic Peak.)
I'm sure other pilots from the area knew of this place and checked it out and they may call it something else.
Cell phone coverage was non existent and even today (12/2016) with the Verizon network it can't be relied on but sometimes will work from the base of the tower.
About two years back Hadley Robinson and I went on an exploratory camping trip of the area and I told him that because of the road's condition it would be a waste of time driving up.
BUT -- Yesterday Robin and I were checking out a tow road area and a dry lake bed near the same mountain and since it had been nineteen years sine I was last there we checked the road up for improvements.
Sorry Hadley--- the road is now two wheel drive to the top. Many truck loads of dirt were hauled in to cover up the tire cutting lava rock.
Robin and I estimated that the site would take a north wind and after checking Google Earth back at home it would take a north wind.
The ideal wind direction is 025º
High point is 4,742' msl.
On Google Earth the tower location is:
32.177916º
-107.204110º
I would for now think that this site's ability requirements might be H2 or H3 and P1 or P2 but Hadley should give us his opinion.
Launch is near the base of the tower at 4,650' msl.
The closest landing zone (LZ) is at 4,366' msl at a 5/1 glide to the northwest of the tower.
The soaring ridge line is 0.2 mile long.
There is a power line to the north west the goes up to the tower.
For a short way there is a road that follows the pwr line that can be used for retrieving the pilot.
The mountain is on State land so permits may be needed for recreation. This will need further investigation.
Below I made a Snipping Tool capture of Google Earth:
The yellow line is the soarable ridge face.
The two parallel red arrows show the wind direction 025º.
The red line to the northwest is the power line but the road following the poles disappears part way up.
Access is by way of the Afton railroad crossing to the east southeast.
From Las Cruces it takes about an hour of driving to do the 35 miles to the tower.