2,500 miles later, I was ready to walk. Sitting in the car for that long brings its own aches and pains, and I was ready for an ache of a different kind. The ache that comes from climbing, sun, or big miles. Well, it won’t be miles on this trip… it’s hard to get in miles within this National Park, mainly because there is no water.

My friend Cindy and I had planned this trip to follow an eclipse chasing mission, and had successfully crossed the state of Texas once to catch a break in the clouds for totality on April 8 near Dallas, and crossed it again to visit the far reaches of this park.

Boot Spring sat in a nest of short backcountry campsites, and I had worked and reworked potential routes between the camps to get some miles in and hit the water once a day on our trip, doubling back on some trails, but alas, when we arrived we heard the spring was dry, so we decided to hike in, then out (back to the visitors center where we had parked) to fill up water bladders, then back in. The things you do in the desert! We weren’t willing to carry water for three days, so this would be the deal.

Before hiking in we spent the morning playing tourist…the fossils exhibit was quite impressive…many large dinosaurs we had never heard of had been found in the area, and we also drove to the Rio Grande part of the park and took a short hike to the river, tucked in the steep cliffs of the US and Mexico border. The water was shallow, but I’d still float it, and would have to do so on a return trip some time.

The Chisos Mountains were essentially the heart of the park, and their craggy volcanic hulk presided over the rest of the expanse. It was also the most popular, and after our short auto tour to the Mexican border, we had to wait in a line of cars for a parking spot to open up at the visitors center. One out, one in. One out, one in. It wasn’t a small area either. There was a campground, lodge, restaurant, store, visitors center, and backcountry hiking trails, but I expect we weren’t the only ones taking in the desert after the eclipse, or trying to find our slice of National Park before the heat got too much. From May on the park empties out…the sun is just too good at its job in the summer.

We headed up the 1,000′ climb late in the afternoon. We had less than three miles to hike. When I say short hikes, I mean it! Tomorrow, we would hike out and back in for tenish miles total. But despite the short miles, the mountains rewarded us. We would camp beneath pinnicals, and their pillars usher us up the trail.

The trails are nicely shaded and we meet lots of day hikers on their way down from climbing the 7,825′ Emory Peak. Camp is lovely. I plopped down on my tyvek, and Cindy went exploring. I put a big dent in my book…Christina (one of my most excellent trail angels from the Blue Mountains Trail four years ago) had recently recommended The Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs when she heard I would be doing some hiking in the SW this spring (BTW, check out Christina’s new podcast Kinward! I’ll be on it sometime this summer).

Cindy came back from her wanderings with reports of copious amount of TP in the underbrush. I became incensed. Why would a National Park with established backcountry campsites one needed to reserve six months in advance have no latrines? Each campsite had a bear box, each campsite was used heavily during the season, so why did each campsite have a dirth of dirty toilet paper fanning out in all directions? We had a long conversation about Leave No Trace and simple little things that park managers could do to encourage proper waste disposal. We were protecting the wildlife from our food (bear boxes) why weren’t we protecting them from our poop?

The night was quiet, no animals bothered us for our crumbs.

The next morning we inventoried the night: both of us had slept poorly….it was too quiet? But we had a mission, and it involved hiking back down the 1,000′ we had climbed yesterday to get water and climb back up.

Again, we passed throngs of day hikers on their Emeory Peak quest, and we were back at the visitors center linkedy split. Then, onto a different trail to climb back up… this time all the way up to the southern shoulder of Emory.

I took a break up top with a nice man from Salida, CO. Inevitably, we talked about our mountain towns, and when I mentioned Bend, he asked if housing prices were as inflated as they were in Salida. If, by inflated, you mean a cheap fixer upper house is $500,000, I asked? He said, “Yep,” same for his town…the houses that were now half a million were $60,000 when he moved there. ☹️ And that, my friends, is why I’ll never own a home. This world is whack!

The next section of trail was quite lovely with shade trees and dappled sunshine filtering through. The trail wound around and dropped to the dry Boot Spring Canyon before climbing up again into a burn area. I had no idea when it had burned, but there was a permanent sign announcing the trail was closed beyond our campsite destination. Stange, there had been no closed sign on the other end of the trail we had passed earlier. The website had mentioned seasonal closures for nesting raptors. I can respect that! But a permanent sign??? My spidy senses tingle whenever there are inconsistencies in the trail or trail resources….this could be a job for She-ra! The trail fixer! The good thing about my trail consulting company was that I saw opportunity everywhere. An overwhelming amount of opportunity! Maps that are wrong, resources that are missing or confusing, the list goes on and on… I’ve had a wonderful array of projects come in my door over the last year, but I could take on more. I was hoping for a day when my services were so in demand that I had projects lined up for years and could employ a cadre of  subcontractors to help me with the work. One day! So if any of you, dear readers, know of a trail near you that needs some help, send them my way! 😉

When I got up to the East Rim where we had our next camp, the park stretched out before us into Mexico. Amazing. We sat on the edge and soak it in for a good while before I made camp and almost finished the ebook I had started yesterday (Hummingbird Salamander by Jeffery VanderMeer).

Dinner was pizza. No really!

The hike out the next morning was quite pleasant, and a bit of cloud cover made for some dramatic skies.

We had a reservation to stay another night in the park, but Cindy was flying out the next day, and it had been a week since my last shower, so we decided to forgoe that reservation and head to a hotel instead. The next chapter of my road trip and backpacking adventures would continue in New Mexico… more to come!