First solo trip west; Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Lubbock

• 4/18/85-4/21/85 Big Bend NP
• 4/18 Depart Austin 12: 25 a.m.
• 4/18 Arrive BBNP ca. noon.
  • 4/18 Lost Mine Peak trail
  • 4/19-Chimneys trail
  • 4/20-Emory Peak summit
  • 4/21-Window trail, Hot Springs
• 4/21-4/24 Guadalupe Mountains NP (separate post)

A note about some of the photos here–I scanned many of these slides thirty years ago when I had to squeeze them onto floppy disks, so their resolution is poor.

Gear, Lessons learned

Trip Report

Planning

Some of this is duplicated in the following post (Guadalupe Mountains)

I was twenty-six years old, still in the middle of my offshore oilfield career. I had read the old “Trails of the Guadalupes” guide, published by the Carlsbad Caverns Natural History Association, backwards and forwards while working on out in the Gulf of Mexico and had decided I needed to go see Guadalupe Mountains National Park (GUMO) and climb the highest mountain in Texas. But I also wanted to go back to the place I first fell in love with the desert mountains, Big Bend National Park. My last trip there had been when I was still a teenager with my friend Kelly, in 1977. I had also been reading, repeatedly, the Hikers Guide to Trails of Big Bend National Park. I was working offshore at this time, but had a week off and that may explain my odd departure times.

Continue reading TR-Big Bend NP-April 1985 →