Create your own Adventure (i.e., hike)

Remember Create your own Adventures?

 

That’s what we like to do in the desert: create our own hikes. We are not adverse to taking established trails, and frequently enjoy them. But our main enjoyment from hiking is exploring—going places where others have not gone in a long time…..maybe a very long time. Or trying to get to a place, and succeeding or failing.

 

Today was one of those hikes. We had seen a couple of washes in yesterday’s hike, and thought we might be able to take one of them over to the other side of the set of hills to our west. That was our goal--the other side.

 

The yellow brick road on the following photo shows today’s hiking trail. We started at the top and walked south a bit before turning west. The first line that goes to the west shows that we got a ways into the hills and then had to turn back. This usually means that we have run into a very high dry fall (a dry waterfall that is too tall for us to climb) or the boulder scrambling has gotten to be too much. For this canyon it was the boulder scrambling.

 

We did, however, see a lovely bouquet of yellow flowers. (If you look closely, you can see our camper far in the distance).

So, we went back down the wash and tried to climb to the top of the ridge. However, after going about 50 feet we realized the slope was too steep and the rocks too loose, so we headed back. That is the second little trail underneath the first trail at the top. It covers the word "Bend" in Big Bend State Park.

 

Here I am going up this ridge, a few feet before we turned back.

So we went farther south, into another wash, and took it almost a mile and a quarter to the west.

 

 

And we reached the top! At the summit we could see far down into the other side of the hills. What a feeling of accomplishment.

 

The entire time we were out hiking we saw footprints only of animals. There were no footprints of other people. How long it has been since anybody has been here can only be imagined.

 

And we found this way through to the plateau all by ourselves, with no maps to guide us.

 

It is thrilling!

 

 

 

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