Big Bend National Park … East Side … the Chisos Mountains Basin and More

Sunday, 13 February 2016 (Part II)
Rio Grande Village RV Campground — Big Bend National Park, Texas
Temps: Hi 75F (24C) / Lo 39F (4C)

The previous post covered the first three days of our visit to Big Bend National Park (BBNP).  Now for the story of exploring the Chisos Mountains Basin (and more) here on the east side of the park.

10 February — Balanced Rock & Chisos Mountains Basin

BBNP is big … very big … 800,000+ acres (324,000+ hectares) big.  Ideally, we would have moved to the Chisos Basin Campground to explore the basin and mountains, but the road to this campground is limited to RV’s no more than 24 feet in length — we don’t qualify.

Chihuahuan Desert landscape from the road to Dugout Wells — Nugent Mountain (left) and the Chisos Mountains.

So, we stayed put at the Rio Grande RV Campground, and drove the 30 miles (48 km) or so to explore the Chisos … with a few other stops en route.

Our first detour was at Dugout Wells … not much to see here unless you do a desert walk.  We had a hike in mind in another part of the park, so we moved on after reading the interpretive signs.

Near the windmill that still stands at Dugout Wells was the Green Family home
(photo from nearby signage).  The region’s first school was nearby, which led
to Dugout Wells being referred to as a “cultural center of the Big Bend.”

If you drive just beyond the Chisos Mountains Basin Junction instead of turning off Maverick Drive, you come to Grapevine Hills Road, one of the “improved” dirt roads of BBNP … improved being a relative description since some are in much better condition than others.  The road is open to all sorts of vehicles, but I’d hesitate to do this very washboardy and “dippy” road with anything but a high clearance vehicle.  We took it slow and easy in the CR-V, and drove 6 miles (10 km) of the road to the trailhead for Grapevine Hills.

Brown Flowered Cactus [I believe].

The rock formations here are the major attraction.  The granite boulders, piled one upon another in great disarray, resulted from the uplift of a mushroom-shaped upwelling of magma.  There is a scientific name for this upwelling of magma — laccolith.  As it cooled and hardened it turned into granite, and the overlying sedimentary layers wore away over time.  That’s all the geology you’ll get from me … you’ll have to turn to my soil scientist friend Sue (of The Moho and Other Traveling Tales fame) for a more in-depth explanation of how and why these rocks came to be in this otherwise flat landscape.

Looking back towards the trailhead at Grapevine Hills.

What an amazing place!

The flat-and-easy portion of the hike is 2 miles (3.2 km) roundtrip.  The trail meanders through a sandy wash, with a jumble of boulders piled high on either side.  It was very quiet; we were the only ones there.  Only the occasional chirping of birds and the flapping wings of scaled quail that we flushed out of bushes broke the silence.  For the most part, we just walked the trail, stopping to take photographs when it suited me to do so.  At one point, however, we went off the trail to play on the boulders a bit.

Mui insists I climb on top of a boulder to provide perspective for the size of
the rocks that litter the fascinating landscape of Grapevine Hills.

Left: I need a nap after climbing up that boulder.  Look how small I seem in this landscape.

Center: The fascinating texture of the boulder I climb on.

Right: Mui taking a close up of me while I take a photo of him from my boulder perch.

At the end of the trail we found the rusty sign the ranger told us to look out for.  Time to do some rock scrambling!  We found Balanced Rock, but I have to admit that without the signs along the way, we might have easily missed it.  Again, we had the area to ourselves … except for a couple that came by while we were having our “snack with a view.”  They were quite loud, yelling at each other as they took different paths, so we were especially glad they did not stick around long.  Others attempted the first few yards of the trail, but quickly turned back, deeming it difficult.  We didn’t think it was that difficult, but then we seem to have a bit of “goat blood” in us ;-)  This trail is definitely not for everyone, and there is no shame in not attempting it.

Let the rock scramble trail begin!

Can you see the dots on the trail?  that’s the “loud couple” that came and went … fast.

Find the rusty trail marker … it would be easy to miss Balanced Rock if
you don’t pay attention to markers like this one along the way.

One of my favorite photos from the Balanced Rock trail.

Left: Snack with a View!

Right: Surprise!  the phone pings with a signal from the Verizon 3G extended network.
So Mui posts one of our postcards from the hike to Facebook … ain’t technology great!

Balanced Rock
the carrot at the end of the stick, or rather, the reward at the end of the trail.
Please … no smart-alecky comments about the upright rock that resembles a you know what ;-)

These cute signs show the way to Balanced Rock … and double as a photo frame, too.

We played around the boulders in the area of Balanced Rock for quite a while, but eventually we had to head back to the car … there was more on our agenda for the day.  Back we went on the dippy Grapevine Trails Road to Maverick Drive, and from there turned into the Chisos Mountains Basin Road.  We didn’t get far as Mui was ready for more than just a snack.  So, we stopped at the Green Gulch pull-out, hopped on the rock wall, and ate our sandwiches and enjoyed the scenery.

Lunch with a view of Green Gulch, which was once covered with a forest.
Lumbering turned it into grasslands, and over-grazing reduced it to desert scrub.
Protected from human interference, the canyon is now making a comeback.

When we reached the visitor center, we stopped to check it out before going for a walk.  Again, I found it disappointing with very limited informative exhibits, but at least I got to see a mountain lion!

Left: “Lord of the Wind” is a life-sized sculpture of a peregrine falcon.  a completely
natural population that has never been manipulated by humans lives at Big Bend year round.

Right: This is as close as we get to a mountain lion at BBNP!  There’s still hope for the real thing.

Our plan for the Chisos Mountains Basin today was to possibly meet up with the Z’s for lunch and later hike the Windows Trail (5.6 miles roundtrip).  We dallied so long at Grapevine Hills that neither happened … in fact, we saw the Z’s driving out of the basin as we were driving in.  Instead, we walked the paved .3-mile Window View Trail.  The Window is supposed to be a fantastic spot for sunset as the sun goes down in the “V” … but that doesn’t happen this time of the year.  Nonetheless, we enjoyed the view, and then stopped to have dessert at the Chisos Mountain Lodge … a good wrap up to our day.  Or so we thought at the time.

Mui enjoying the view at The Window … Left to Right: the flanks of Ward Mountain;
Carter Peak (triangular peak); the Window; and Vernon Bailey Mountain.

At 7,325 feet (2,233 m) Casa Grande (Big House in Spanish) is not the tallest
peak in the Chisos Mountains, but I think it is the most impressive.

Two things later in the afternoon/evening made this a perfect day at BBNP … the first was a hawk that posed for me for quite a while before flying off; the other was the sunset that turned the Sierra del Carmens lovely shades of pink and mauve … making it all the more reminiscent of a slab of bacon ;-)

The volunteer couple at the Rio Grande Village VC helps me to identify this bird,
which we encounter roadside at Panther Junction, as a red-tailed hawk.

The Sierra del Carmens at sunset.

What a grand day we had today … another in a series of grand days at BBNP.

12 February — Lost Mine Trail in the Chisos Mountains Basin

Readers who are paying attention to the dates in the subsections of this post will notice I skipped a day.  Not because we didn’t do anything fun on the 11th, but because our return to the Chisos Mountains Basin on the 12th fits better with the overall theme of this blog entry.

I’ll write about the skipped day in the next post … just a teaser for now.

Rio Grande Overlook … on the Hot Springs Canyon Trail.

With plans to have dinner at Chisos Mountain Lodge with the Z’s, we switched our plans to hike the Lost Mine Trail from morning to afternoon.  That turned out to be a mistake.  Not just because harsh light conditions bathed the scenery, but also because the temps were higher than I would have liked for the 4.8-mile (8 km) in-and-out hike — and this in the Chisos, where the temps are normally 5-10 degrees cooler than elsewhere in BBNP.

Everything we read told us that trail guides are available at the trailhead … not so apparently!

An aside here … something that I have noticed at BBNP is that there seems to be no correlation betwen the temperature gauge reading and the actual “feels like” temperature.  My guess is that all the sunlight reflecting off the rocks and the ground add to the oven-like feel … so glad we’re here in February and not later in the year … even if I am having to miss all the desert blooms that will start adding color to the landscape in a few weeks from now.  Hot is hot … even if it is a dry heat.

View from the start of the Lost Mine Trail.

The trail is rated moderate.  I would agree with that, with the stipulation that it is up, up, and up at a steady pace from the get go.  In fact, this trail starts at the highest point of the Chisos Mountains Basin Road — Panther Pass at 5,679 feet (1,730 m) — and gains another 1,000 feet (305 m) before you reach the rim.  Unfortunately we didn’t make it to the rim.  The heat slowed our pace, and we ran out of time before we had to turn back or miss our dinner date with the Z’s.  Fellow hikers consoled us by saying that the scenery along the trail was the same as what we would have seen from the top, so perhaps the only thing we missed was the bragging rights for completing the most difficult, straight up portion of the trail.  I guess we’ll have to try again another time and see if that’s true.  Oh, and by the way, there is no mine to explore when you reach the end of the trail … it really is “lost” … or perhaps better described as hidden in the landscape.

Scenery along the Lost Mine Trail.

Keep going Mui, we still have half an hour before we have to turn back.

Casa Grande and The Window are our constant companions on the trail.

Alas, we run out time before we reach the ridge … these are the views from our turnaround point.

I love the way the sun lights up this patch of grasses and stop to photograph it on the way down.

Dinner at the Chisos Mountains was good.  They don’t take reservations, and since it was Valentine’s weekend and the lodge was booked solid, we opted to dine when the restaurant opened at 5:00p.  The food was very tasty — I really enjoyed my soft shell tacos; Mui said his flat iron steak was cooked to perfection.  But the crowning touch was the carrot cake we split for dessert.

The Z’s headed to the Window View Trail after dinner; we skipped the walk and opted to drive back to the campground.  Our reward for leaving when we did was a coyote sprinting across the road … could it have been Wile E. Coyote going after the Road Runner?  (For those of you who are too young to get the reference, here’s a link that will explain it.)

The next post will wrap up our 7-day stay on the east side of Big Bend National Park.

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