Los Alamos County touts 150 miles of trails, year-round recreation

Los Alamos County sells itself as a place where recreation is not an add-on but part of daily infrastructure. More than 150 miles of trails run through the townsites and surrounding mountains, and the county pairs that network with an outdoor ice rink, an indoor Olympic-size pool and a high-altitude golf course. The result is a compact community where access, maintenance and seasonal availability matter as much as scenery.

Trails are the backbone

The county’s trail system is the most expansive piece of the recreation picture. County open-space materials say the network winds through canyons and mesas and is open to non-motorized use only, with hiking, running, horseback riding and mountain biking allowed. A separate trail flyer says the Los Alamos County network plus routes in the surrounding Santa Fe National Forest offers more than 75 miles to explore, while the county’s broader “About Los Alamos” page puts the total at more than 200 miles of developed hiking and biking trails.

Those different mileage figures are not a contradiction so much as a reminder that the county is describing overlapping systems. One number covers the county trail network, another adds nearby forest routes, and the largest captures developed trails in a wider sense. For residents, that means the practical question is not whether there are trails, but which segment of the system fits the day, the season and the amount of effort on hand.

The county’s trail management plan makes the tradeoff clear: the system is meant to protect vistas, natural resources and cultural and historical resources while serving users on foot, horseback and bike. It also shows how rugged the network is. Only 19% of bike trails and 39% of hiking trails are ranked easy, which helps explain why Los Alamos recreation often looks more like a mountain outing than a casual stroll.

A town connected to the surrounding landscape

Los Alamos sits in a landscape where town and public land run together. Visit Los Alamos places the county beside Bandelier National Monument, Jemez National Recreation Area and Valles Caldera National Preserve, and identifies Los Alamos as the eastern terminus of the Jemez Mountains National Scenic Byway. That geography turns the trail network into part of a larger access system, not just a set of local loops.

The county’s own overview says residents and visitors can also reach Pajarito Mountain for summer and winter recreation, which reinforces the year-round character of the local outdoors scene. In practice, Los Alamos and White Rock function as linked recreation hubs, with trails, mountain access and facilities all within the same small footprint. The county’s visitor materials sum up that identity as recreation “for all seasons and all ages.”

Ice, water and golf fill out the calendar

The best-known facilities are unusually specific. The Los Alamos County Ice Rink was built in 1936 and is the only refrigerated, NHL regulation, outdoor ice rink in New Mexico. County recreation pages say it offers public skating, hockey and skating lessons from mid-November through February, making it one of the few municipal assets that gives the county a true winter season in a high-desert climate.

The Larry R. Walkup Aquatic Center serves the opposite end of the calendar. County materials describe it as an Olympic-size, indoor, high-altitude facility, and Visit Los Alamos describes it as North America’s highest-altitude indoor Olympic-size pool. County project pages say the aquatics center was built in the late 1980s, and that the Olympic pool’s plaster shell is the original surface from when the facility was built and is now well beyond its life expectancy.

That aging infrastructure has real service consequences. The county scheduled Olympic pool resurfacing from March 2026 to October 2026, and updates say the main and therapy pools are closed during the work while the Leisure Lagoon is expected to remain open. For families, lap swimmers and anyone using therapy water, the issue is not abstract capital planning. It is a direct reduction in indoor recreation capacity for most of the year.

Golf also carries more local weight than a typical municipal course. The Los Alamos County Golf Course was built in 1947 by the Atomic Energy Commission, and county sources describe it as one of the oldest 18-hole golf courses in New Mexico. A county community page says it is the second-oldest 18-hole golf course in the state and sits at about 7,300 feet elevation. The course reopened all 18 holes on April 30, 2026 after warranty work, although some temporary greens and tee boxes were still unavailable at that time.

Maintenance is part of the public deal

Los Alamos’ recreation system is not static, and the maintenance burden shows up in county procurement and public engagement. County documents show a 2024 procurement process for an Ice Rink Refrigeration System Replacement and Mechanical Room Upgrades project, underscoring that the outdoor rink depends on significant mechanical upkeep. The county has also carried out public meetings and surveys tied to a conceptual shade-structure effort for the rink, which shows residents are being asked to weigh in on how these facilities evolve.

That matters because the county’s recreation assets are not just places to spend free time. They are municipal services that have to be preserved, resurfaced, repaired and adapted while still serving a community spread between Los Alamos and White Rock. When the aquatics center closes major pools, or when golf work temporarily removes greens and tee boxes, the impact lands on everyday use, not on branding.

What residents actually get

Taken together, the county’s recreation system offers a rare combination: a dense trail network, a winter ice rink, an indoor pool at extreme elevation, a golf course shaped by the Atomic Energy Commission era and access to federal public lands at the edge of town. The tradeoff is that many of the signature features depend on weather, seasonal scheduling or capital repairs. That is the real story of Los Alamos recreation: a strong public amenity base, but one that only works well if the county keeps funding, maintaining and managing it like the infrastructure it is.