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No, there wasn’t the annual backpacking trip this spring break. Big Bend took care of that. Instead, I traveled the equivalent of the distance across the United States. Here’s the proof.

Last week Kevin, James, Doug, and I travelled to the Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns for Spring Break. Kevin wrote a complete recap of the trip, and I posted an interactive map. Enjoy.

Today we hiked 8.3 miles up Bear Canyon, across the Bowl Trail, and back down Tejas to Pine Springs. We reached Hunter’s Peak and enjoyed the stunning view back toward Guadalupe and the Bowl. Later, we hiked to a point where we could see Hunter’s Peak on far left and Guadalupe on our far right. It was such a nice spot that we decided to eat lunch there and I took a quick nap.

We never thought we’d make it up Bear Canyon with the way things started out in the morning. Doug had to go back to camp after 3/4 of a mile because of blisters. Then the 1.8 miles of Bear Canyon were extremely tough on us. It was almost straight up the entire way, but thankfully the wind was minimal. We thought we had reached the top when we noticed we still about another 500 feet to climb. Ugh. But it was worth it. The rest of the trip was a breeze.

We saw the same group from Denison again, and they were hiking all the way to Mescarmel(?) for the night, about 10 miles with packs and 2 days of water. Wow! Never really saw Charles or Wendy except in the morning. After we got back, we headed over to the Visitor’s Center for some R&R. We watched the slideshow of the Park. What amazes me is how many different species of animals there are. Can you imagine Adam’s job naming all those species… still without a wife. What a task.

Today we hiked 8.4 miles to the Top of Texas. We stared at 9am and returned by 2:30pm, a 5.5 hour roundtrip. Not too bad. We saw a a lot of people today, more than we cared for. There are many college students out here for Spring Break. A group from Denison drove 25 hours! Other than that we have seen more Tech and t-sips than I have cared for. Not a single Aggie outside of our ranks.

The hike was much easier than I expected, and I can hardly believe we gained 3000 feet today. I never really felt winded even at the peak. What is sore are my knees from the descent. The most difficult part has been dealing with the wind. I can’t remember the last time I’ve faced so much wind. The peak was very treacherous, but so rewarding. My favorite parts were looking down on El Capitan or looking back at the Bowl and the peaks near camp. We just found out that A&M beat Texas again in basketball. Also, the campgrounds are completely full. Thank goodness we arrived Friday night.

The views out here have been incredible, even with the haze from the Mexican pollution. Currently, there is a little dust storm contributing to the haze. I’ll be so glad to say goodbye to all that dust. Still, it’s very majestic.

So I later found out that the the Aggies lost to Texas. We found out from another Longhorn who was now at medical school in San Antonio named Charles. He and his wife (Wendy?) were looking for a site and were not having any luck. I mentioned that the wind had ripped the tent of another camp full of Texas grad students from India. Oh, the Wal-Mart tents! Two others fell over yesterday in the ‘moderate’ 50+ mph winds. Later, we volunteered our site to Charles and talked with the Indian grad students. In some small way we were able to live out the Sermon on the Mount (our topic of study for the trip).

Dinner was delicious. Salmon and noodles. Mmmm. It really hit the spot. The wind at night was so bad that it broke part of Charles’ tent (not Wal-Mart).

Today we hiked 11.3 miles around the base of El Capitan and took the Salt Basin Overlook trail back to Pine Springs. We left at 8:35am and we were back at 3:05pm - 6.5 hours. Not bad since Kevin took about 50 pictures. El Capitan is the most prominent mountain in the entire park - not the biggest, but certainly the most regal and majestic. Every 1/2 mile we would catch a completely different view of the 8,000 foot king, and each time it was mesmerizing. The sun almost seemed to shine just for it.

We had a giant wind coming from the west. On the way back, it was so strong that it knocked me over twice (I was facing it to see how strong it was). We think the sustained winds were well over 50mph with gusts about 60. But this was only for several sections which were exposed to the west wind. So for lunch we chose a nice spot along one of the ridges looking down on the lowlands south of Pine Springs. Again, beautiful, truly beautiful. A cactus pricked James in the leg, and I didn’t show any signs of altitude sickness. We also saw several deer. Yesterday it was 20 rabbits. Hopefully Kevin’s pictures will turn out.