Hikes from our backcountry camping sites at Big Bend National Park

 

This blog entry might be of interest to some hikers, but it is mainly done for us so we can have a record of these hikes. If you are reading this to be polite, thanks, but you have permission to just skip to the photos. Or ignore it all together.

Our first hike was to an old army settlement, which we had been told was in the area. It was established in the 1920s when the border area was pretty wild because of Pancho Villa. All that is left of the settlement is foundations, bricks, and the usual rusty tin cans. After poking around there, we walked a couple of miles up a huge wash, and then back down again. Kind of ordinary hike, but still fun to come across this part of our history.

Our second hike was as out of the ordinary as the first was ordinary. We crossed the desert to a canyon we had spotted, only to realize that the canyon was a popular hiking destination—Ernst Tinaja.

The highlighted area in the next photo shows where the Ernst Tinaja is in the above photo, as well as the old road that goes up the mountain to the right of it.

It was other worldly. Tinaja is Spanish for a large earthen bowl. Ernst is English for somebody named Ernst. You only have to go about a mile up the canyon to get to it. Along the way are these fascinating rock formations, as level and square as could possibly be--but all created by nature. We will show you these from another angle later.

From our campsite, we could see what appeared to be an old road winding high above this canyon, so we thought we would try to find it and take it to the top.

After we left the Ernst Tinaja, we crossed the desert until we got to the road, and found that the remnants of it actually can be seen across the desert. From the top we could see, two miles in the distance, our camper. It is in this photo, although it’s not easy to see. I have highlighted it in the second photo.

 

We were able to walk to the rim of the canyon overlooking the Ernst Tinaja. We peered over VERY carefully.

This day illustrates the fun of hiking in the desert—you can identify spots to go to and get there, usually. You don’t get lost getting off trail as you can easily do in the mountains and forests, which is why we never go off trail in those areas.

The next day we decided we would try for the top of the hills south of the Ernst Tinaja. We have done this kind of thing before, never knowing what to expect. Sometimes the ascent is too steep for us, or the rocks slide too easily. And sometimes we make it to the top.

We were heading toward the saddle above my right shoulder:

Today we made it to the top, finding our own way. It’s so much fun.

 

Vicky at the top, showing the enormous valley on the other side of the hills.

 

After we got to the top, we decided to descend a different way, and found ourselves walking along the north rim of the Ernst Tinaja canyon. We wound our way down the hill, sometimes running into draws that were choked with mesquite and so had to climb other shorter hills to find a different path.

In this photo Vicky is standing above the rock formation that we showed a little bit earlier, the one of the rocks that were almost totally square, like a mason had created it.

We left this campsite after four quiet and beautiful days there, and went to another backcountry site for three more days. Our first hike at the second site was just wandering around in the desert like Moses--we went up hills, through little saddles, down draws, etc. Just explored the area.

The next day we went through Dog Canyon, pretty interesting. The canyon itself is short (.4 mile), and one can walk all of the way through it quite easily (a rarity). On the way we found an old bridge to nowhere. Couldn’t see where the road might have been on either side. The bridge fell because one of the two supports apparently just sunk into the small draw. We would be surprised if it was a CCC structure—didn’t look like it, and their work seemed to be of higher quality.

A hundred yards or so from the bridge we found where old rusty nails go to die. There were some remnants of old planks as well. Love to know the story of those nails—how hundreds of them came to just be left out in the desert. Some were bent, some were straight. The bent ones obviously had been removed from…..something. Maybe they were supposed to have been for the bridge support, but some contractor took a short cut.

Dog Canyon:

 

Our final hike in Big Bend was on Christmas Day, to, of all places, Devil’s Den--a long canyon that cut through the hills above our campsite.

One of the cool aspects of this hike is that I used our GPS to follow our previous route through the desert, and so knew where to cut off of this previous trail to find the draw that went through the canyon. I hope we are never so unwise as to get ourselves into a situation where the GPS is needed for safety reasons, but we did obtain a large measure of confidence in it from this excursion.

While one could walk through Dog Canyon, that would be impossible through the Devil’s Den canyon—it is strewn with large boulders that would require climbing gear. If that weren’t bad enough, it is also choked with mesquite. There was, unexpectedly, a well marked trail along the south rim.

Our rule that needs no explanation when walking along canyon rims: Either look at the canyon or look at where you are walking, but don’t do both at the same time.

We leave Big Bend National Park early tomorrow morning, with having merely whetted our appetites about what this park offers for us. Next year we will return in December and spend a month here.

 

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