Big Bend NP - South Rim, Day 2

1/17/10
Awaking this morning sometime before sunrise, after a restful nights sleep, the first thing I thought to do was walk back over to the rim and watch the sun rise over the desert, and I made it just in time.  After that I had breakfast, which was just granola and tea; packed up camp, and was on the trail again.

With about 6 miles to go today, I continued down the south rim for about another mile, the trail began to turn to away from the rim and start heading back into the mountains towards the visitor center.  This left just one more side of the rim (the southwest) in which the trail only briefly passed by.  After all the amazing views the rim had to offer the rest of the return hike seemed far less interesting, although there were still a few good views and and still was an enjoyable hike.  After a quick stop for lunch, making ramon, I continued on my way, only to realize after a quarter mile that I left my sunglasses on the log where I had stopped.  Lately I have been going through a lot of sunglasses, so in other circumstances I may have been tempted to leave them, but instead I stashed my backpack under some brush and jogged back to get them.

After I had seen everything there was to see and I approached the visitor center I was about ready to be done with this hike and even though my pack was lighter it felt much heavier.  For the last 2 miles I kept expecting the parking lot to be right around the next corner.  But when I finally arrived, as tired as I was, I was still really satisfied with the entire trip and really glad that I hadn't wimped out stayed home.  Back at the car and without the pack I even felt like doing a little more hiking, and decided to head down to the Rio Grande, and check out Boquillas canyon.  

Boquillas canyon is still within Big Bend NP, but is probably about a 45 minute drive away and about 3500 feet lower in elevation then the Chiso basin.  It is a canyon with steep cliff walls that the Rio Grande River enters after flowing unrestrained throughout the rest of the park.  With the change in elevation it was amazing the change in temperature, which was in the mid-60's in the chisos was now in the upper 70's down along the river.  Boquillas canyon is really cool, there is a small Mexican village not too far away, and several Mexicans will sneak over and place locally made crafts and a jar next to the trail, allowing tourists to purchase souvenirs.  And although the trail does not enter the canyon it leads to the entrance where you can see the magnitude of this canyon.  After hiking down by the river in all that heat I was anxious to hop back in the car and crank the A/C at which point I decided to head home for a full day of rest and recovery before going back to work.

Big Bend NP - South Rim, Day 1

Intro:
This trip kind of snuck up on me, I had been wanting to hike to the south rim in Big Bend NP for awhile, but never had a good opportunity.  Then having a 3-day weekend for MLK Jr. Day, couldn't have been better, but I didn't realize that specific weekend was approaching until 2 days before.  So I spent the first of those 2 days deciding if I still wanted to go and then the other planning the trip.  Therefore there was not a lot of prep before hand.   But I was pretty excited and actually spent a good amount of time weighing my gear and trimming done the weight of my backpack, for my first real "lightweight" backpacking experience.   All said my pack weighed 23 lbs without food or water, but Big Bend being in a desert and all, I ended up having to pack all of my water for 2 days; so with food and water my pack was about 42 lbs at the onset.

For those who don't know Big Bend NP consists of 2 biomes, the first and most obvious when arriving in the park, is the large desert areas, and the second is the high mountainous areas, mainly the Chiso mountains.  The Chiso mountains are a small area of high mountains, the whole southern side of which is separated from the desert by huge cliffs and very steep terrain.  This steep and cliffy terrain is referred to as the "south rim."

1/16/10
Woke up this morning at my apartment in Alpine, much later then I had planned after ignoring my alarm for awhile, rolling out of bed at 8:30.  Fortunately I had packed all of my gear the night before, I only had to get dressed, load the car, and run a few errands before the hour and a half drive down to the park. Skipping breakfast, I dropped Tess off at Charles' house (thanks Charles) who generously offered to take care of her for the weekend.  Then I stopped for gas, grabbed a crappy gas station breakfast and was off. First stop when I arrived at the park would be the visitor center to get a backcountry permit and reserve a campsite.  Since you can't reserve campsites in advance, I started to wish that I had gotten an earlier start,  this being one of the peak times of the year for visitors at Big Bend, I could only hope that I would get there in time to get a campsite right on the rim.

As I got closer and closer to the park, my anxiety about getting a prime campsite led to me driving faster and faster and thinking that every other car headed in that direction was a competitor for that awesome view.  Finally at around 11:00 I pulled into the parking lot, only to realize that I forgot to get some cash before leaving, so my next venture was to find an ATM.  A few minutes later with cash in hand I headed to the visitor center, only to be greeted by a large crowd, hovering over the desk.   Well it turned out they were all in the same group, and when my turn came to talk to the ranger she informed me that there was only one site left on the rim.  I immediately said "I'd take it."  After all that stress it ended up working out pretty good, while not my first choice of sites, it was in my top 3, and was a reasonable distance of 8 miles.  Before taking off I decided to relax a little while I made final adjustments to my pack and grabbed another quick bite to eat before hitting the trail.

As I approached the trail my excitement only grew, unfortunately I had already hiked the first 3 miles of the trail before, so none of was exciting or new to me.  I ended up hiking that segment very quickly covering those three miles in about an hour and a half.  Once again things worked out pretty good for me with this strategy, that large group that I saw in the visitor center was one of many that I ended up passing at this time, so that by the time I reached the new horizons, except for the occasional other hiker, I had the trail all to myself, which gave me time to stop now and then to enjoy the sights and a take a few pictures. As I slowed down, I was able to appreciate the uniqueness that the Chiso mountains are, they are covered in pines, tall junipers and oaks, and but a few exceptions are unlike any other place in West Texas, which is mostly just desert.

After coming around a bend I was greeted with live water from the recent rain, it also made me kind of sad, because instead of carrying 15lbs of water I could have brought a filter and gotten away with carrying quite a bit less.  Nevertheless, it was nice to enjoy seeing a river in West Texas that actually has water in it and is surrounded by large trees.

I reached a trail intersection about an hour later, and nearly went the wrong way, thanks to a poor trail description on the sign, which called the Northeast rim trail simply the East rim trail, but after verifying this mistake with my map I diverted missing some great vistas.  Further on down the trail, I approached the Northeast rim, which after hiking through the woods for awhile, all of a sudden up ahead on the right side of the trail you can see the earth dropping away rather steeply, down to a much lower part of the Chiso mountains.  This I would later learn was only a taste of the magnificent views yet to come.  So while hiking along the Northeast rim amazed by the view, stopping occasionally to snap some photos, I finally approached the South rim.

The first impression of the South Rim is, off in the distance is a large rock outcropping and then nothing but vast desert below.   The gravity of how high this rock outcropping is only becomes more and more impressive as you approach it.  Until finally you get the ledge and can look straight down for at least 1500 feet.   The south rim is made even more remarkable when you look at the abrupt change in ecosystems, which goes from a mountainous pine/oak forest on top of the hill, to nothing but bushes and shrubs 1500 feet below in the desert.  From this initial point where the trail meets the rim, it continues following the rim for another couple of miles.  All the while you're hiking with this huge cliff only a few feet away, you can't help, but constantly stop every few hundred feet to take it all in again.

My campsite was located about 3/4 of the way down the south rim and after an hour or so of hiking the rim, I finally arrived.   Not wasting anytime, I immediately went about setting up my camp.  First I set up the tent, and got everything situated inside, and then I went about making some supper.  This consisted of typical backpacking food, a Lipton pasta side (chicken I think) with some packaged salmon that Hannah had given me from our recent backpacking trip in the Porkies (thanks Hannah, read previous post) and a hot cup of tea.  After that was finished I cleaned everything up and spent the remaining daylight hours sitting on the rim, enjoying the view and watching the sunset.  Later I went to my tent and read awhile before going to bed.

The rest of the photos from my trip can be seen at my Picassa page linked here

Porcupine Mountains

(I apologize for the lack of photos, I didn't bring a camera along but you can read Hannah's account of the trip at asuperioradventure.com and she included a few photos)

So, since I was back in Wisconsin visiting family for my Christmas vacation, I decided to take some time and go back up to Houghton, MI (where I went to school) to visit some friends that I hadn't seen in a while.   A couple of days before I left to drive up there, Matt (one of my friends) called me about possibly going backpacking into the Porcupine Mountains wilderness area at the western end of the UP, that to me sounded like a great time, and I instantly went along with it, especially when I found out we would be staying in a couple of Yurts, instead of tents.  For those that don't know a yurt is a semi-permanent circular shelter, and there are several of these in the park that they rent out; and they come stocked with firewood, pots and pans and bunks to sleep in.

Tue Dec 29th 2009
I left Wisconsin this morning and drove the 5 hours up to Houghton where I met Matt & Hannah. We then proceeded to drive up to Calumet where their house is.  Here I was able to grab some quick food, consisting of Christmas leftovers, and then I unloaded some stuff, since I would be sleeping here tonight. After seeing Matt & Hannah’s house, which is very peculiar to say the least, we drove back into Houghton and met some of our friends at the KBC (local microbrewery) where we hung out for the evening.

Wed Dec 30th 2009
After waking up this morning, and after having a little grub the three of us began to prepare for our hike in the porkies, which entailed me mostly watching Matt & Hannah making sure we had the appropriate gear as well as making a list of all the food we would need for this adventure.  Since we would be staying at the Yurts, which eliminated the need to carry a lot of excess gear, we decided that instead we would bring glorious amounts of food, in which we could gorge ourselves with.  That being said the next stop was the store in which we racked up a pretty large bill with all the food, but once we had everything we needed, then one last quick stop at McDonalds and we were finally on our way.


After the hour and half drive down to the park, we got the keys to the 2 yurts (and the cabin that Matt, Hannah and Scott - who would arrive later - would be staying in after I left), and we began preparing our packs for the trip.  This was my first debacle, while Matt and Hannah had most of their stuff put together earlier that morning, this was the first time I began to even think about what gear I would need, and as late as we were I didn’t want to hold us up any longer so I ended up just throwing a bunch of stuff in the backpack and was left carrying a lot of extra weight in unnecessary items.  The second debacle was I thought that putting backpack in a sled would be easier to pull rather then carrying it on my back.  This was alright at first, but as soon as we started doing a lot of uphill climbing the sled became a nightmare, and I ended up carrying the pack anyways.   But since I packed the backpack in haste it was very bulky and weighted unevenly and was still miserable to carry, plus I still had to pull the empty sled.


Joining us on this trip was Tessa and Rainy (my dog and Matt and Hannah’s dog) they were both extremely excited to be out in the snow and on the trail and were constantly running ahead and playing.  Unfortunately they kept running to far ahead and were difficult to control and it became a hassle to have to keep calling them back.


The hike to the yurt was about 7 miles, the first 4 miles or so was on nicely packed x-country ski trails, the last 3 miles were on a small single track snow-shoe trail, which was compounded by the seemingly never-ending up hill climb, and Matt constantly saying we were almost there.  Finally with only about a mile to go I had to stop and get something to eat, Hannah stoped whit me, but Matt and the dogs kept on moving, convinced that the yurt was just around the corner.  Soon enough we reached the cabin, just before it was beginning to get dark, the dogs were just as relieved to reach the cabins as we were, especially Tess who having shorter legs had to work so much harder then Rainy in the deep snow.  Once we got the yurt warmed up, we were finally able to relax and dry out and start make supper.  That evening we enjoyed a delicious meal of venison steaks, and although they were kind of tough, they tasted great after a hard days work.  Later that evening we sat and played cards on the floor before finally going to bed.

Thu Dec 31st 2009
After a peaceful nights sleep, which was interrupted twice, the first time being my decision that in the early hours of the morning to get the fire going again, so that when we finally got up it would be warm and then later the Dogs got up needing to be let out.  We finally slunked out bed probably sometime around 9 and began to prepare breakfast, which consisted of bagels.  Shortly thereafter Matt took off with an empty pack for the cars, where he was to fill up with food for the next couple of days.  Meanwhile, Hannah and I stayed at the yurt and continued cleaning it up for the next visitors and got all our gear together to bring to the next yurt. (We had to change yurts because, they are booked so far in advance that it's hard to get a yurt on short notice for consecutive days)  


Once everything was set we began the 5-mile journey to the next yurt where we were to meet Matt and later Scott.  After the previous days exhausting hike, today’s was much more refreshing.  Upon arriving at the second yurt we were happy to find that it was still pleasantly warm inside, and that there was still a fire going in the stove from the previous nights occupants.   Shortly after we had gotten there Matt arrived and having underestimated the weight of all the food he would be carrying back from the cars was pretty exhausted. So, it was time for lunch, which we made brats, and then began to be lazy for the rest of the afternoon.  I'd like to write more about that afternoon, but there isn't much too say, we pretty much just sat around.  Hannah got bored and made some unusable cards out of cardboard, and then later made a rinky dink scrabble game that kind of worked.  We were also kind of waiting for Scott to arrive, which he never did, so we were kind of worried for him, but not having a phone or anything could only just wait for his arrival, which never came.  Finally we went to bed. 


Fri Jan 1^st 2010
This night, like last the fire went out again, but this time Hannah was gracious enough to get it going for us.  When we all finally got out of bed this morning we went about making breakfast, this time we had bagels with sausage.  We then went about cleaning the Yurt and I got ready to hike out, and Matt and Hannah prepared to hike to the cabin for another night in the porkies.  Since Scott hadn’t shown up that night Hannah decided to hike back out to the cars with me in order to find a phone and get a hold of him, while Matt went on to the next cabin.  As a short cut to get back to the cars quicker we decided to hike down the snowmobile trail, but this meant that Tessa would have to be on a leash (Rainy stayed with Matt) After arriving at the cars I went on my way back for a night in Wisconsin, before making the trek back to Texas.