A Day in the Field

The Park Service at Big Bend has given us a work schedule that puts us in the Chisos Basin Visitor Center three days a week and out in the field one day.  Our day in the field can be an endless variety of things to do.  We can spend the whole day in the Big Bend Natural History Association's library reading up on things that will help us out when working in the VC, working with another group on a project they have going or be somewhere in the park making contact with visitors.  Making visitor contact can include hiking trails and on this day we decided to take one of the more popular hikes in the basin, The Window Trail.  The Window is a big notch in the bowl of the basin, it is the drainage for the entire basin, not that there is that much to drain now days but I guess after a few million years in a formerly much wetter climate you can cut a pretty deep gouge through some pretty serious rock.

It is a 5.6 mile round trip that takes 4 hours on average to complete and with the great weather today we should have no problem getting down to the slick rock pour-off and back in time for a late lunch.

Along the way we came across a century plant.  Contrary to their name, they do not bloom once every hundred years.  Depending on conditions, this yucca may go for five to thirty years before sending out its stalk, bloom and then die.  Up until arriving in Big Bend I had only seen these yucca in books or nature shows on TV.  Like the ocotillo I wrote about in a previous post, I have been surprised about just how big these plants are.  This one along the trail was days, maybe hours away from falling over and becoming nourishment for future generations of basin vegetation.

The bottom of the stalk was as big around as my thigh and the top bloom was about 15 feet up.

Ahead lies the Window.  The view of the Window appears to be unchanged for a good part of the hike.  You have to get well down into the trail before it starts looking different.

Cyndee takes the lead as we start the 980 foot drop to the bottom of The Window.  Clouds have moved in but the temperature is still rising.

As we got to within the last quarter mile of the trail a spring was bubbling with ample water from all the recent weeks of wet weather.  This water was winding its way through the now narrow solid rock flow channel.  The trail and the water cross each other frequently and sometimes are one and the same. 



The trail crews did some impressive, and creative trail building.  Some of the steps are chiseled right out of the solid rock-bed, coupled with masonry out of native stones.

Cyndee admires the trail construction and spring-fed ribbon of water.

Some of this work would have taken some serious tools to get the job done.  There is no way to get down in here with power equipment, everything used to construct this trail would have had to been carried in on someone's back somewhere back in the 1930's.

It was only a couple hundred yards downstream of the spring and the water returned to an underground flow.  If we are going to see water going over the pour-off we are going to have to get down here during or just after a significant rain.

But that is okay, we are discovering that all the rock beneath our feet have been polished to a fine finish.  These rocks are the epitome of the name 'slick-rock'.

It was interesting to start out several miles away and watch the gigantic V-shaped notch gradually choke down to a gap no wider than your reach.

Those rocks I am standing on are not wet, just extremely polished, and slick.
Just over the edge behind me it is a couple hundred feet down.

Cyndee would only go so close to the edge.  She used the zoom lens to take the portrait of me standing in the notch.

Coming out, climbing back up that 980 feet we gave up on the way out, we got some new perspective on a familiar sight.  Casa Grande is right outside the window wall of the Basin VC.  We are used to having to look almost straight up to take in this massive column of ancient, frozen magma.  Today we see it sitting regally atop our destination.

We arrived back at the basin shortly before 2pm, plenty in time to enjoy the salad bar at the lodge dining room.  But first we enjoyed a fairly routine visit by some park residents.  This is home to Carmen Mountain White Tail Deer.  They only live here and it would seem that they are a creature of habit.  For awhile now we have observed them trotting across the basin parking lot, crossing in front of the wall of windows then going behind the VC and browsing at the base of Appetite Hill, just about lunch time.

Did I mention in earlier posts that the weather changes a lot around here?  And quickly?  Well, it does.  We have been whipsawing back and forth between glorious and 'are you kidding me?' And this week was no different.  Short sleeves and hike one day, layers of clothing and wishing for a fireplace the next.  But this cold snap was a little different than usual, it was an inversion so up in the basin it was a cold but sunny and dry day.  Clouds were heavy but they were all below us.

Island in the sky.

 As we drove down from the basin there was an incredibly dense layer of clouds that was a couple hundred feet thick.  Then, as we got under the cloud cover we were treated to a scene ice-flocked junipers, sage brush, juniper and cedar.

This flocking of vegetation was also a layer of about two or three hundred feet.  As we continued down the basin road on our trek home to Panther Junction the ice was prominent across a very well defined range of elevation.

This inversion made for a picturesque drive home but it is also stirring up the atmosphere at the lower elevations.  Wind is the name of the game at the lower elevations.  Sustained winds of 40mph with gusts to 55mph.  Living in a sticks and bricks I would not have given this kind of wind much thought, but living in an RV those gusts feel like they are scooting you across your sight.  You get up the next morning half expecting to be moved into your neighbors spot.