National Parks and Recreation

After our quick trip to Carlsbad Caverns, we took off 30 minutes down the road toward Guadalupe Mountain National Park.

I was flabbergasted with this “highway” as we crossed into Texas. It was an undivided two-way, one-lane-each-way highway and the speed limit was 75 mph!! Insanity.

Since we had crossed back into Texas, I assumed we were back in Central time. But everywhere in the park had clocks showing both times and our phones were all screwed up. Finally I got enough service to see that in fact the western tip of Texas from El Paso to this national park were actually still in mountain time. I feel like I never know what time zone I’m in on these trips.

Anyway. We went straight for the campgrounds to make sure we could get a spot. The camping situation was pretty easy. Basically, you found an empty spot, put your stuff down, and then walked back up to the registration area at the main parking lot, wrote down your info, what campsite you got, and put your money in the envelope. Later, the rangers would come around and mark that you had paid on your site.

There were a few spots still open when we got there around 1pm, which in retrospect was very lucky. It was the day after Christmas, a weekday, and this park isn’t that popular, but still. After seeing the nightmare that was Big Bend a few days later, we could’ve been royally screwed.

We took a quick stop in the visitor’s center to get my stamps and stickers and make sure nothing crazy was happening and decided to make the climb up Guadalupe Peak, the tallest point in all of Texas.

The sun set at 5pm and it was nearly a 9 mile hike, so we grabbed our headlamps, some extra water, and up we went!

On one of the switchbacks we noticed that we could look back and see our bright blue tent on the desert floor. It’s hard to see unless you know where you’re looking, but it was very shocking to see how high we had climbed in such a short amount of time.

Up we continued.

After getting up out of the valley, the trail leveled off a little bit as we trekked through the forest to reach the last push up to the peak.

And that last push was rough. But very beautiful. It felt like we were scrambling straight up the rocks at times. And with the setting sun and incredible view behind us, it was difficult to motivate ourselves to keep going and not just watch the desert change colors around us.

But we did finally make it! And touched the marker on top to make it official. At the time it was only the second state peak we’d been to (we did Mount Mansfield in Vermont a couple years prior.) I’ve only knocked Massachusetts off that list since. We need to start hitting up more states’ highest peaks!

We were also greeted at the top by a guy wearing a Grinch costume. I don’t know why I didn’t get our picture with him, probably because he was talking to other people. But he was a riot. Apparently, he and his buddy climb Guadalupe Peak, dressed as the Grinch, on December 26th every year with a cooler full of beer and just hang out and drink on the peak all day. Not a bad gig! Although, they said that it was a miserable blizzard the year before and they only lasted about an hour at the peak. Just another reminder of how truly lucky we have been on these trips. The weather is usually on our side.

There was a backcountry camping spot a little ways from the top that I assume they must have stayed the night at, because it was getting late and the sun was beginning to set.

So that was our cue! We were rewarded fruitfully for our late departure time on the way back down as the sun set behind us. I couldn’t stop pulling out my phone every few feet to take a picture as the colors of the sky and the reflections on the mountains changed by the minute. It was beautiful.

We lasted quite awhile before we had to put our headlamps on because of how clear it was, but I started getting a little nervous about rattlesnakes so on they went!

The hike back down was fairly easy and we had no issues navigating in the dark. We did pass several people who were not as prepared as us though, using their phone flashlights or nothing at all to navigate down. Come on, people!

The trail started and ended right near our campsite so we downed some food in the car and then stumbled into our tent to pass out for the night.

We got up with the sun the next morning and packed up the tent. No fires allowed in Texas so it was a cold morning. (I’ll have more to say about this in Big Bend, but the low overnight temperatures worried me a little bit. Luckily, it stayed around 30-35 degrees on this night so we were fine in our sleeping bags, the waking up process was just a little rough. But it got us up and moving quickly!)

The last thing I wanted to do in Guadalupe was check out the McKittrick Canyon area. We had to backtrack a little bit to the Northern edge of the park to get there, but it was a quick drive. The visitor center up there was just bathroom facilities and water fountains with some maps on a wall. Fine by us! We took off into the canyon.

The beginning of the trail was very flat as we just followed a mostly dried up river bed deep into the canyon.

We saw a few of these trees, pictured above, throughout the trail and they fascinated me! They looked like someone had poured plastic or hot wax all over them. They didn’t look real. It’s hard to capture in a photo, but they were beyond strange.

About a mile and a half in, we came upon the Pratt Cabin. Wallace Pratt first saw McKittrick Canyon on his way out to West Texas to purchase leases for big oil companies and thought it was the most beautiful place in the country. So he slowly built this cabin with nothing but wood and stone and lived there for nearly 40 years before his failing health led him out of the mountains. He then donated over 5,000 acres of land in the canyon to the National Park Service. Thanks, Wallace!

We took a quick breather on his back porch, looking into the canyon before moving on.

We passed a few more cute pit stops and sights along the way. We didn’t really have an end point in mind. We figured we’d just go until we were tired.

We finally reached the end of the canyon and started hiking up into the mountains on the other side. It was a neat little path.

We ended up turning around after the trail crested over the first mountain range. The trail kept going for miles, but it had flattened out and was about to head back down and we figured the 5 miles we had already come was enough to warrant a turn around.

Story time. See how happy and carefree I look in the picture below? That would not last. Mere minutes after this photo was taken, my nose started bleeding. Five miles away from the nearest civilization. Excellent. Luckily, I had brought a considerable amount of tissues with me because my nose always runs like crazy when I hike in colder weather. However, this one was a doozy and I started going through them very fast. I get bloody noses fairly often, so I could tell pretty quickly that this was going to last a while and I made the decision to save the few tissues I had left and just bleed out on the mountain. It sounds gross (and it was), but luckily we hadn’t seen a single soul in over 2 miles, so I could just do my thing while James watched on in horror. Finally, I got it to stop and we cautiously made our descent back down.

About 15 minutes later, we passed a few groups of people going the opposite direction. I wonder if I had gone far enough off the trail or if they saw my pile of blood as they continued up the trail and thought something awful had happened. Oh well.

I found a little creek a mile or so back down where I could clean up a little bit. Being five miles out, we didn’t want to waste too much of our drinking water on me. It was a mess, literally and figuratively. But as far as bad things that can happen five miles into a hike, it sure could’ve been worse!

The rest of the trail was uneventful. We made our way back to the car, put the Guadalupe Mountains (and mountain standard time) in our rearview mirror, and began heading south toward the Rio Grande.

I really enjoyed Guadalupe Mountain National Park. Hiking Guadalupe Peak alone was well worth it! I was worried that the day and a half I had scheduled here wasn’t going to be enough, but I really felt like we saw everything we wanted to see. Of course there’s always so much more we could have done, but we felt good about the amount of time we spent there. And hey! If you get the chance, make sure to hike Guadalupe Peak the day after Christmas for your chance to meet the Grinch.

I got an AirBNB in Fort Davis, Texas at about the midway point between Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend so we could sleep in a real bed and get a shower before we disappeared into the desert wilderness for a few nights. And the drive out there was absolutely beautiful. I kept pulling over to take pictures.

Our AirBNB was perfect and we arrived right as the sun was setting. And these anti-gravity chairs were perfect for stargazing later in the night. By this point, West Texas had already completely won me over. Little did I know that the next three days were about to blow my freaking mind! Coming up next: Big Bend National Park.