I don’t really know when the idea of: Let’s go to big bend
came to play. We decided it would be a
fun trip to take before we move out of TX (since it is a possibility now). It’s a 10 hour drive from Houston, including
the 80mph speed limit on i-10 past San Antonio! Big Bend is a place I’ve been wanting to go
for sometime, but because the drive is so long it was impossible to do it in a
3 day weekend. I didn’t want to take any
vacation for Big bend since my vacation is limited, so I had decided that
visiting big bend while not taking any days off would be great.
We got a late start on Wednesday, Greg picked me up at
4:00pm, drove all the way to Fort Stockton (north of BB). We arrived a bit past
midnight, small town, small hotel, HUGE bed.
We were supposed to leave by 6:30am since we still needed to drive about
2 hours to get to the park office where they give out the backcountry permits
(Panther Junction). The getting up early
did not happen, we were too tired and ended up getting up at 6:45am, got some
breakfast at a gas station and headed out to the park, we arrived at the park
at around 9:30am. Got the permit and off
to Chisos Basin mountains, this was another 3 miles. It’s 26 miles from the park entrance to the
office where you get the permit and another 3 miles to get to where we were
leaving the car.
Got everything ready, backpacks, hats, water and started
hiking towards our campsite North East
1 (NE1). I knew it was a long hike, but
never really knew what I was getting myself into. Started the hike at around 11am,
the first 3 miles were crazy, all uphill, gained about 2000ft. Made a stop at Toll mountain, used the “toilet”
and rested a bit. We were still needed
to go another 3 miles to get to our destination. The last .5 miles were hard, all uphill
again. Our packs weighted between
40-45lbs each, I had 2 gallons of water plus 2 nalgenes (a liter each). All of that water plus my sleeping bag, sleeping
pad, clothes, pans to cook, 12 eggs and a few other things. Greg had the tent, sleeping bag 4 L of water,
food, lamp, jet boiler, clothes and others.
The packs were heavy. I could
feel my legs killing me along the way.
We finally arrived to our destination at around 3:30pm (Took us about
4.5hrs from the trailhead, through the pinnacles trail). Set the tent, cooked, and got in the tent
again. We saw deer about 20ft away from
us, they were really cute. It started to
get super cold at around 5:30pm, so we were in “bed” by 6:30pm, it was also
very dark by then. We watched the stars
for sometime but it was so cold that it was hard to just be out there without
being inside the sleeping bag.
The next morning we got up at 9:30am, cooked breakfast and
started hiking the North and South rim loop. About 7 miles roundtrip from NE1, the views
were awesome, the mountains were breathtaking, we took a few breaks, got great
pictures. The hike was a bit challenging
but not too bad specially because we didn’t have our backpacks with us. The
second night we camped at the same place NE1.
Another early night and this time an early morning since we got up to
see the sunrise.
On the third day, we packed everything and hiked to Toll
Mountain (about 3 miles), dropped the bags at the bear box and did another 3
mile hike (roundtrip from TM) up to Emory peak.
The view from Emory peak was awesome! But the last 30ft elevation were
pretty much a vertical 30ft. I climbed
without a problem, then I had to look
back to see where Greg was and that was a bad idea. I looked back and there were cliffs on either
side, Greg was stuck since he couldn’t get his leg high enough, he eventually
got it and we made it all the way up. It
was beautiful up there but it was very very scary. There were 3 children up there, and the
youngest one was throwing rocks and pushing his siblings. Note that the drops around the peak were over
400ft straight down. I sat in one rock
and didn’t move from there, it was very scary.
We got some pictures and made our way down, I didn’t want to be up there
too long, fearing I would see someone fall and die. Got back to get our pack and hiked down
another 1.5 miles until we reached Boulder Meadows 1 (BM1). It was still a cold night, and an early/long
night for us. The next morning, we
packed all of our stuff hiked down another 1.5 miles until we made it back to
the Chisos Basin lodge, it was 10:15am by then.
A 9 hour plus, car ride awaited for us to make it back to Houston.
It was an AWESOME trip, another one for the books, another
great adventure. Unforgettable. Greg and
I are very much glad to be back home though, and sleep in a warm and comfy
house. We were able to see nature at its best, the sunrises and sunsets, the
mountains and animals, everything was great even having to dig a hole in the
ground to use as a toilet in an emergency.
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