Big Bend - South Rim hike

Pictures from our 15 mile hike to the South Rim of the Chisos. That included a side trip along the way to the top of Emory Peak, the second highest peak in Texas. It was a very awesome day!

Big Bend - South rim

Dave's Pictures from Big Bend

Here are Dave's pictures from Big Bend. I am really behind on all of this stuff!!

Big Bend (Dave)

Big Bend - Ernst Tinaja

After the Lost Mine hike, we drove across the park and out a bumpy road to get to the Ernst Tinaja hike. It was hot and thankfully short, low in the desert, and toured some really cool old layered rock formations. As we walked back into the gully, we were walking backward in time, geologically.

Big Bend - Ernst Tinaja

Big Bend - Lost Mine hike

This was a nice hike up the Lost Mine trail. It wasn't too long, but we gained some elevation and got to look around. It was windy at the top!

Big Bend - Lost Mines Hike

Big Bend - The Window hike

Our first night at Big Bend, the four of us did the short hike from next to our camp site to the Window. The Window is the break in the rock of the Chisos Basin through which all of the water in the basin exits to lower land below. The hike goes through a lot of different landscapes along the way and the rock right at the end is very polished. There were a few hikers there when we arrived, but they quickly left and we had the area to ourselves for sunset (the following day, everyone was there, so we were really lucky!). 

Big Bend - The Window

On our way to Big Bend

After getting picked up from the side of the highway by the tow truck and another truck for us extra passengers, we dropped off the truck at a mechanic's place in the middle of the night, and found a hotel that had some space. Fort Stockton is the biggest city in the area and has an oddly high number of hotels, used for housing workers that head out to the west Texas oil fields. We eventually got to sleep around 2:30am. Dave got up early to try to see about getting the truck fixed. The Ford dealership was booked solid, but another mechanic was able to help right away and we were on the road by late morning. We had a few hours between Fort Stockton and Big Bend through beautiful country on a beautiful day. A nice thing about arriving half a day later to Big Bend than we had originally intended (we were going to arrive in the middle of the night before) was that we arrived in day light and everything was fun to see. We talked with the rangers at Panther Junction to figure out what we should do. It turned out that there wasn't much/any water available on the Outer Loop, a backpacking trip, that we were hoping to do, so we instead were able to find a walk-up camp site at Chisos Basin to car camp at and do day trips from. We had come as early as we could so that we could get a walk up site before all of the spring break could arrive. It worked out! Pictures from this part of the journey are below.

Big Bend - To Big Bend, Fort Stockton, and campsite

Video with tow truck

Hopefully this works to post a video. Just wanted to share our excitement last night about the tow truck's arrival.