Big Bend Texas Pictures

During the first week in march (2005), Ken went backpacking in the beautiful national park of Big Bend. These are the pictures from that trip.

The First night I stayed in my car at a campground. In the morning I packed up my camp and drove to the visitor parking center and would not see my car again until four days later.

The previous day I had cached water at the Homer Wilson Ranch (an old ranch structure which is shown in some of the first photos below). Since Big Bend is mostly a desert, water is very limited. The cache consisted of 2 gallons of water and a small fuel bottle, which I did not use as my 22 oz. fuel bottle was more than enough for this trip.

I really needed a 2nd cache, but I failed to learn this during my research. Thankfully FRESNO CREEK was not dry. This creek was an extremely thin trickle of life blood that I really needed on my 2nd day into the trip. I used water tablets and filtration to make the water usable. It was actually very good tasting water.

I made a total of three camps during my 30 mile hike around Big Bend. There are pictures of each campsite shown below. The last camp was chosen out of expediency and was probably not used by a camper before. It was basically the only level surface I could find, and it was a gravel dry creek bed. It was the most comfortable of all sites, as the gravel was very soft to sleep on. THe only draw back was the lack of logs/rocks for sitting on or setting up camp.

I didn't see much wildlife. The first day I saw some deer on the hike (a picture is included below). But I was hoping to see some dessert wild life like: Tarantula's, Scorpions, Snakes, etc... Except for the occasional fly, there were very few flying insects on the trip, and I never had to dig out my insect repellent. The desert seems to support a lot of spiders though.

The elevation changes were tough on the first day (tuesday 3/1/2005) and the last day (friday 3/4/2005). I had to climb over 1,000 on those days. Even on wednesday and thursday, there was a fair amount of climbing, but it was more up - down - up - down, rather than a single giant elevation gain.

The weather was great! This trip could not be accomplished in the heat of summer. Daytime heat was around 75 degrees. Night time lows were 40-50 degrees (very comfortable after a long hot day). Only one day was the sky signifigantly overcast, but there was no humidity at all, and you felt very dehydrated unless you drank a lot of water. I drank about 1.5 gallons per day (including cooking. I was able to gorge myself on water when I reached fresno creek.

The park ranger told me that four other people were doing the same "dodson outer loop" trail. That's not a lot of people in a 30 mile hike. It was nice to be removed from people, and the sounds of cars. I didn't even hear planes overhead! I encountered a very nice father daughter pair doing the same hike. We leap froged throughout the four day trip and had a nice lunch on the summit on the last day.

With 8 liters of water (just over 2 gallons), my pack weighed 45 lbs. That's a lot of weight to carry 30 miles, but you got used to it.

(click on image to enlarge, duh!)