Days of miracle and wonder

These are the days of miracle and wonder
- Paul Simon

The desert is a different place. The lack of water has led evolution down different paths than more temperate climes.

Ocotillo are like bundles of sticks with thorns, when it rains they grow leaves and flower and then drop them to go back to waiting.



Bright purple prickly pear cactus with spines longer than your fingers.



Century plants (agave) bide their time for years, storing food and water for one glorious final fling, sending a giant stalk skyward to flower and seed. A final fling that leaves it brown and dead.

Crucifixion thorns and resurrection plants.

Blind prickly pear cactus with no obvious spines, just fuzzy patches which turn out to be spines after all.

Cats claw bushes, also known as "wait a minute", which is what you need to do if you make the mistake of brushing up against them.

Palo verde trees that do without leaves and just go with green stems instead.

Despite the lack of water, the Texas Bluebonnets (lupines) were blooming, although only beside the roads as far as we saw.



Javelinas named after the Spanish for spear, that look like pigs, have feet like deer, and are actually related to hippopotami.



Roadrunners that would rather run than fly and who bribe their girlfriends with tasty lizard morsels.

Other birds are the same as what you'd find elsewhere, like these great horned owls that hung out around the Cottonwood Campground.



Although there weren't many flowers, there were still a few butterflies around. This one was quite small and looked nondescript from a distance, but was actually quite pretty close up.



There were a couple of bright red birds around - vermillion flycatchers around the campground and northern cardinals near the rivers.





Earless lizards have wonderful coloring on their sides if you can see them up close.



The day we left the weather changed and it actually rained a bit.



For more photos, see all 45 as a slideshow or overview

Big Bend Abstracts

I had enough abstract photos from Big Bend that I thought I'd post them on their own.

As usual, I took a bunch of reflection photos - Santa Elena Canyon was good for this. Cactus are also good subjects. Not to mention, mud, trees, clouds, grass, and seeds. In other words, pretty much anything and everything :-)























For more photos, see all 39 as a slideshow or overview

Big Bend Outer Loop

First stop, visitors center to get our backcountry permits. We barely told the ranger our plan before she had to tell us, sternly, that "people die out there!" It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. In all the 40 years I've been doing trips and registering for them, I've lost count of how many times I've run into that attitude. I realize that part of their job is to prevent people from killing themselves (and then suing!) But if that was the goal then you'd think they'd ask what experience you had. But they rarely do. It's as if they send the rangers to classes on how to be negative and discourage anyone from leaving the pavement. Occasionally we have tackled more extreme adventures that I can see them being sceptical about. But these days? Not so much. We were registering for what is probably the most common backpacking trip on the park. Granted, it's the desert and water and heat are factors. So ask a few questions and make sure we're prepared. Don't just give some canned melodramatic line. Sheesh!

She seemed even more disapproving when I said we planned to do the loop in the opposite direction from most people, although she didn't offer any reason why. In terms of doing the steep sections with less load of water, it made sense to me. And it’s a loop, so the overall vertical is the same. Plus, if you're antisocial like me, going backwards means you only see people briefly as you pass them going in the opposite direction :-)

Originally we had planned to to take the shuttle to the park (like we did on our last trip). But then we discovered that we needed to cache water for the hike, so we ended up renting a car. (That wasn’t all bad since it let us explore more of the park after the hike.) We dropped off our water in the bear proof box near Homer Wilson ranch. (There’s also a potential spot to cache at the intersection of the Juniper and Dobson trails, but it requires a 4wd high clearance vehicle to access.)

It was nice to finally set out from the car after shuffling gear into the pack and hoping not to forget anything important. It only takes a few hundred yards to lose most of the people. Soon after you leave behind the noise of civilization. You don't really notice it till it's gone. There was a roadrunner in the parking lot to see us off.



Then just the slow steady comfortable tread. Even with the pack it's quite pleasant. I took the ability to hike with a backpack for granted for so many years, now I wonder how many more years I'll be able to do it. I walk a little more carefully these days, not from fear but simply in hopes of making my knees and hips and feet last as long as possible. I use hiking poles, although I don’t really like how they get in the way of taking photos.



I like hiking in the desert with the bizarre cactus and the stark desert terrain. But by definition there's little or no water which means carrying it. Luckily on this hike the most you need to haul is two days worth - about 8 litres (= 8 kg = 18 lbs). Since our packs are light to begin with (maybe 25 lbs) it's not too bad. And you drink it so you're not carrying the full weight for long.



Coming back from the outhouse at our first campsite we spotted a skunk. It seemed to be staying in the same area so I went and got my camera and came back. Sure enough it was still there. I made Shelley a little nervous trying to get close enough for photos. I guess she didn't want to share the tent with someone who got sprayed by a skunk! The skunk appeared to be feeding. It was moving around slowly, stopping every few feet to dig shallow holes in the ground. Presumably finding insects of some sort, although I'm not sure how it knew where to dig. Smell? Sound? If I got too close or made too much noise it would stop and look at me and its tail would go up. But if I froze it would soon resume feeding and its tail would drop again. I expect skunks to have a white stripe but this one's back was pretty much all long white fur. It reminded me of a colobus monkey.



There were also a couple of deer wandering around in the area.



We spent a couple of hours at the Dobson ranch avoiding the sun's worst in the shade of the old building. A large wasp had been buzzing around us at lunch and I tried several times to photograph it but it was too skittish. It landed on my foot but as soon as I reached for my camera it flew away. It landed on the wall but when I approached it left. Finally it stopped in the door frame and I got a few shots, but not great. But when I wandered around the building a bit later I found one (maybe the same one) on the grass, a more natural background, where it cooperated for me. The are quite impressive - large yellow abdomen, long legs that hang down when it flies, about an inch long. We saw them throughout the trip.



The next section was a bit more unpleasant - uphill with two day’s water, in +33c, full sun with no shade. When we reached the junction of the Dobson and Juniper trails we were excited there was a truck at the end of the road - shade! We sat and ate our lunch leaning against the tires.



The last day the weight of my pack fell back below the magic threshold where it ceases to be a painful burden and goes back to being a reasonable load. (I have to admit that threshold has dropped over the years!) I've never been much for big loads, for me 65 lbs is half my body weight!



One of the rules for backcountry camping in Big Bend is that you have to be 100 yards off the trail. That's a standard rule and I'm all for it. I have no desire to camp beside the trail. A volunteer ranger we ran into stressed several times not to use the obvious cleared campsites right beside the trail. But the terrain doesn't agree. Everything here has needles and thorns. 100 yards of bushwhacking off trail is going to leave you bleeding and impaled. And the ground is hilly, with few level spots. And even if you find a spot where it's feasible, then what? Rip up all the cactus and bushes? We searched for spots off the trail, but in the end we disobeyed the rules and camped on one of the already cleared, level spots beside the trail. In terms of our impact it seemed the better choice.





The climb up the Juniper trail is quite long and steep, but the trail is good with well designed switchbacks, and with light packs at the end of the trip it went easily. Once we reached the top it was an easy downhill couple of hours back to the Chisos Lodge where we left our car.



For more photos see all 26 as a slideshow or overview

Dry, Prickly, and Cold

We paused our railroad journey to do some hiking in Big Bend National Park in Texas. In three words - dry, prickly, and cold.

Dry - The park is desert. We saw water in a few places (e.g. Panther Springs and Boot Canyon) but none of the water sources in the park are dependable. Even the Rio Grande has stopped flowing on occasion. (The Rio Grande marks the border with Mexico in this area and Big Bend gets its name from a bend in the river.)

Prickly - Just about every piece of vegetation here has thorns or needles. At home you get accustomed to just pushing your way through the bush, with the worst you might encounter being a wild rose bush. Here that would be a serious mistake, you'd be scratched, impaled, and bleeding before you got two steps. Within the first ten minutes of our hike Shelley brushed against a branch of a bush and ripped a hole in her pants. (Much to her annoyance) Later she bumped a cactus and ended up picking 30 or 40 needles out of her leg. And then there was the Agave that drew impressive amounts of blood from her shin. I got off lightly - my arms just looked like I'd been fighting with a cat.

One of the worst bushes was called "catclaw" and that's exactly what its thorns looked like. They are amazingly sharp and snag skin as easily as cloth. If you walk into one by mistake it's a slow process to extract the thorns one at a time, often with the help of your partner.

Experienced hikers in this kind of area wear heavy duty pants and shirts, and leather gloves. We're in lightweight travel clothes. The trick is not to touch anything - hard when you're bushwhacking!

Of course, if we'd stuck to the established trails we wouldn't have had any of these issues, but what would be the fun in that! Seriously, I wanted to get off the beaten path to get a better feel for the countryside. Despite the scratches and punctures, I'm glad we did, partly because we hiked through quite different country. Our cross country adventure was lower down where it's just cactus and low bushes, whereas the other hiking we did was up higher in the mountains where it's more treed.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife - a few deer, a few birds (including colourful but noisy Mexican Jays). No lizards or snakes - presumably still too cool. Lots of signs warning about mountain lions but we didn't see any. The closest we came to seeing javelinas (collared peccaries)  was some chewed prickly pear cactus, which is a sign of them.

Cold - Although it was quite pleasant during the day, around +15c, it dropped well below freezing at night. That wouldn't have been so bad except that we only had our summer sleeping bags rated (optimistically) at 0c. We slept in all our clothes, jackets, and toques and it wasn't too bad. However, with the sun going down behind the mountains around 6pm and not coming back till 9am, we spent an inordinate amount of time ensconced.

Although Big Bend is quite far south (about the same as New Orleans), it's also at a higher altitude - we were between 5000 and 7000 feet. It was warmer in Alpine.

If you didn't want to camp, the Chisos Mountain Lodge seemed quite nice and many of the trails start right from the lodge (next door to the visitor center).

We didn't see too many other people until the end of our visit, when it was a long weekend and lots of people arrived. Of course, there was no one around on our cross-country adventure.

(click to view photos)


See also: all the posts from this trip and all the photos from this trip