Big Bend Ranch State Park

I went to Big Bend NP again in February 2007, and spent two days day-hiking in the State Park near it. While way up in the canyon country I came across a herd of aoudads. I've never seen them in the wild and thought this was pretty neat.


Here is the overview picture. I heard them at the top of the talus at the base of the cliff in the first red box on the left; after they realized I had heard them, they began to make their way along the talus to the right and then displayed their mad aoudad skillz and climbed straight up the cliff. (see below) bighorn pics

I think there were eight of them

Here they are climbing straight up.

Their fearless leader paused every once in a while to find a good hold, then scampered straight up again. The rest soon followed, sometimes balancing on finger-wide ledges while the others caught up.


The next three pictures are all the same; I put the first one in for a sense of scale. The top one includes the bighorns, but you can barely seem them in the center. The bottome two are zoomed.

 

 



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