Travelogue: Big Bend National Park
Last fall, my partner Grace and I took a much-anticipated trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. I think I’ve spent enough time in this state now to say it is the best thing Texas has to offer. Absolutely awe-inspiring from start to finish. We hiked through the Chisos Mountains over three days, November 22-24. I hope this description of our experience will be both interesting and informative for anyone contemplating a similar trip.
We drove in from the city of Alpine, where we spent the night after driving six hours from Austin. Alpine turned out to be a lovely city whose main purpose seems to be providing places to stay and eat for visitors headed to Big Bend or other remote locations in West Texas. Most of the restaurants, to our great dismay, closed by 8 PM. Aside from a few chain motels, there were two main options for lodging: The Holland Hotel and the Maverick Inn. Both shared the same owner, and during our visit, there was one unfortunate front desk auditor checking guests in for both locations. We stayed at the Holland on the way in and the Maverick on the way out; by our standards, the Holland was vastly superior. A train passed through town close by around 3 AM, which would have been annoying if it wasn’t so darn charming.
We left town early the next morning, heading south. Even though we had already driven most of the way across Texas, we still had about 2 hours of driving to get to the heart of Big Bend itself. Along the way, I got tagged with a speeding ticket by a cop whose job is probably mostly handing out speeding tickets as we did 60 through a little town arranged on either side of the highway. We passed the entry booth and paid our fee a little while later–little did we know we still had a solid hour of driving to go. This part of the drive, at least, was already spectacular. I had the feeling of crossing the bed of a vast, dried up ocean. On all sides there were mesas and hills rising sharply out of the desert floor.
The charming Holland Hotel. Photo credit visitalpinetx.com
If you look very closely you can see the Big Bend visitor center where we started our hike
Our journey on foot started at the Chisos Mountain Lodge Visitor Center. We had to park about a quarter mile away at the backpacker parking lot, and I did almost get lost on the way back. Not a great start. We got saddled up with our bags–heavy with three days’ worth of water, 15 liters between the two of us–and off we went. The overall route we took is marked above: one day ascending the Laguna Meadows Trail, one easy day hiking around the ridge, and on the last day we would hike up to Emory Peak and back and then descend. In hindsight, the middle day was a lot easier than it needed to be, and the outer days a little too difficult, especially the first one. It would have been nice to stop a little sooner and put more miles on the second day, but we were forced to work around limited campsite availability, and I really wanted to camp at least one day on the South Rim. Even though the last day had a lot of miles and a lot of elevation, it was mostly downhill and our packs were so light by then that it still felt pretty easy.
Grace and Andrew on day one. As you can see, I was prepared for much colder conditions than we actually encountered.
For the first part of the hike, we were somewhat disconcertingly surrounded by lots of families with little kids and elderly grannies doing short day hikes. Its hard not to feel awkwardly overprepared carrying heavy bags full of gallons of water, first aid kits, bug spray, food, cooking equipment, and many layers of clothing while small toddlers stumble in front of you wearing light-up sneakers. Within a few hours, we left the crowds behind, especially following the steep, brutal ascent a few miles in. From researching the trails of the Chisos Mountains, I had gathered the impression that the Laguna Meadows Trail was the easier, more gradual ascent compared with path to the east. This may be true, but it still felt like a sharp, dizzying climb. I think by mid-afternoon both me and Grace were getting a little worried about our ability to finish this hike.
We reached our first camp site, South Rim 2, with about an hour of daylight left. Even though it was November, the days were still pretty hot and dry. After the sun went down, it got cold pretty fast. It didn’t help that we couldn’t build fires. I’m not sure if fires are ever permitted at Big Bend, but they certainly weren’t during the dry time that we visited. I cooked dinner quickly and coaxed Grace out of the tent long enough to eat, wash the dishes and retreat to the comfort of our sleeping bags. For meals, we leaned heavily on the dehydrated prepackaged food available at REI. At $9-$13 per package, they are a pretty reliable solution that doesn’t cost a whole lot–each meal serves two. Along with snacks, we were probably running about $30 a day for food, which really isn’t much when you think you can easily spend that much on food at home as well. Our favorite meal by far was the Butternut Dal Bhat from Peak Refuel (This experience inspired Grace to get into making dal at home). In general, cuisines heavy in spices, such as Mexican and South Asian, seem to do better in this format. I think we also had a linguine alfredo and a mac and cheese one, and both were decidedly among the worst options.
Our second day was mostly about spending time on the South Rim, which offered the most spectacular views of the trip. Here I think I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:
What none of these pictures capture is the sheer drop off the side of these cliffs. Very exciting. We spent a lot of time enjoying the view before proceeding to our second campsite, Colima 2. While the SR and ER sites are among the most popular, I have to say the Colima area is pretty underrated. The actual campsites along the South Rim don’t really offer a view of the South Rim, whereas at the Colima site we encountered another draw: a veritable deer sanctuary.
The last day brought us down Boot Canyon and up to Emory Peak. One of the major questions I had going into this trip was about water supplies. Every resource I checked said essentially the same thing: Boot Spring is pretty much the only source of water in the Chisos Mountains, and it isn’t consistent enough to be relied upon. We brought in enough water for more than the time we planned to spend on the trail, and I also brought along my water filtration system. My plan was to look at our water usage the first day and, if we were going through it quickly, I could walk to Boot Spring from our second day campsite and replenish our supply for the last day. Even if we drank four liters a day and used a lot for cooking and cleaning, we would still be okay. But if the canyon was so dry I couldn’t get water, we would just cut back on cleaning and non-essential use so that our water would last us through the end of the trip.
As it turned out, none of these measures proved necessary. It was warm, but never hot enough to force us to guzzle water. I had a scare with heat exhaustion and dehydration on one of my first backpacking trips (Goodwater Loop) so I was perhaps overcautious. We only drank about a liter and a half each per day, and in fact our greatest water use came with campsite cleaning. What’s more, Boot Spring was absolutely flowing, so we could have easily brought half as much water and filtered what we needed from there. Of course, it wasn’t something we could plan on, so I’m glad we packed the way we did.
Moving as we were with lighter packs and quicker steps, we decided a detour to Emory Peak was, in fact, feasible. We were especially gratified to learn that the Parks Service provides bear-proof storage lockers at the start of the summit trail, so we could do the ascent with nothing except small water bottles weighing us down. The last little bit of the ascent was a surprisingly treacherous rock scramble, but in fact it was considerably easier than it looked.
Emory Peak was a fitting climax to an exciting and humbling walk through mountains, canyons, valleys and desert. We bounded easily through the last few miles descent, both remarking how much easier it was to hike with empty packs than full. My only regret was that I was perhaps too bear-safe in packing up our food each night–if I had been a little more easy going we may have actually gotten to see a bear up close (I’m half joking). On the way out we spied a couple of road runners, exactly where you’d expect them: sprinting across the road. Other than that, wildlife was pretty sparse throughout our trip, but the stunning landscape made up for it.