2007.02.03 - This was the quintessential Guadalupe Peak day-hike! The adventure began dark & early at 03:30 as I drug my sack-of-potatoes of a body into the Corolla to start driving west. I had woken Carol up just enough to kiss her goodbye, but within a few seconds, she was already fast asleep. I sure hoped that I wouldn't be doing the same thing as I drove along the dim highway toward my destination!

Before I could truly be on my way, I had a few stops to make. The car was virtually coughing through the last fumes in the tank, so a pause at my local service station was most-certainly in order. $1.959! I was happy to see that gas prices were still below the magical $2.00/gal threshold which seems to tick me off so much...

I know what you're thinking... "What is that crazy Texan thinking?!? Here in [insert your high-priced fuel market here], we've been upwards of [insert exorbitant price here] for months! He should try paying what I have to pay each week! I'm barely three paragraphs into this [adjective] trip report and it already seems to be written very [adverb]!" Living closer to the wells and refineries has some economic advantages toward fuel prices, but I'm still convinced that we should be paying around $1.60/gal. I know that Europeans have it much worse, so I really don't have a lot of room to gripe, but I'm still really looking forward to the day when consumer fuel-cell technology takes-off!

This has been a test of the Emergency Daniel Soap-Box System. If this had not been a test, the preceding paragraph would have been followed by several thousand words of heated banter between Daniel & some imaginary ideological opponent. This test has been run to ensure the safety of the visitors to this website. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...

Pulling away from the gas station, I headed a short distance away to a Whataburger for some much-needed coffee and nourishment; grateful to whomever came up with the idea for 24-hour fast food restaurants, I got some breakfast food for then and some lunch food for later. The time was now 04:00. I had planned on being on the road actually driving to West Texas by 03:00, so my plans were already somewhat out the window. Knowing that in order to climb, El Capitan, Shumard Peak & Bartlett Peak in a single day, I would need to get to Pine Springs as quickly as I could, but without getting any "coupons" on the way. I was an hour late, but moving fast.

Fast-forward about 400 miles, and I found myself driving through the mid-morning sunshine just north of Pecos, TX. The day was crisp, beautiful and extraordinarily clear! Well before I reached the metropolis of Orla, where I would turn off toward the Guadalupe Mountains, I could see the outline of the range rising above the trans-pecos scrub some 70 miles away. Like an invory tower, the peaks pulled me ever closer to one of the most beautiful places Texas has to offer.

Wait a minute... Ivory tower?!? Even from such a great distance I could see the tell-tale signs of snow up on the high peaks. From some weather reports I had obtained, I knew that it hadn't rained in Carlsbad, NM for over a week, meaning that the Guadalupes probably hadn't gotten any snow over that same period of time. I wasn't at all concerned since I figured that most of the snow would have melted off by now, leaving quick access up to the high country. Little did I know that deep drifts, which had prevented people from reaching the summit since that snow storm, would be waiting for me.

The land rose & fell among such beautiful scenery, with me peering around like a kid in a candy store. The Guadalupes were ever present and calling me to drive faster in their direction. The final 50 miles seemed to be gone in an instant as I found myself pulling into the Pine Springs Ranger Stattion at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. My natural high was dampened somewhat when I talked with the rangers about trail conditions.

"On the lower part of the Guadalupe Peak Trail, you'll probably need climbing gear... Like the spikes that go on your boots," a young raven-haired female ranger told me. "Up higher, the snow is drifted pretty deep. No one's been up above the campsite in a week."

I really started to doubt my plans at this point; with true winter trail conditions, I probably wouldn't be able to move fast enough to visit El Capitan, Shumard & Bartlett like I intended. Regardless, I had driven barely under 500 miles to get here, and I wasn't going to be discouraged from at least attempting! Snaking up the hill leading to the Pine Springs Trail head, I quickly got my things together and headed up the Guadalupe Peak Trail with as little gear weighing me down as possible. As the day would wear on, I would find that I had done a pretty good job deciding what to bring; the only thing I wouldn't use was my storm shell that I had brought along just in case of an unplanned bivy.

The last time I climbed the peak, it took me 2.5 hours to make it up to the summit from the parking lot. Just as soon as I left on this occasion, though, I found the snow & ice almost immediately. Since I was starting right around noon CST (11:00 in the park), the snow had softened to a perfect corn consistency. I very much liken it to spring skiing in Colorado. It was in the upper 40s F, so some of the snowmelt was turning the trail into an uber-slippery mud track. I tried to tread gingerly, but couldn't help sliding around a bit. The switchbacks along the western slope were all pretty much like this, but with varying degrees of mud based on where the morning shadows had been lying.

Continuing up the familiar route, I quickly found myself at the Notch. For those who haven't been out to the Guadalupe Mountains, the Notch along this trail divides the route into two ecological sections. The first, on the lower slope of the mountain, is a desert-scape characterised by low-lying scrub and lots of various cacti. Above this fin of limestone, the trail takes on a much more forested nature with pine and madrone trees making the hiker feel like he or she definitely isn't in West Texas anymore. It was just above this notch, and as the snow transitioned from thin and crunchy to soft & deep, that I encountered the first other hiker of the day.

He looked to be a few years younger than me, but the expression on his face seemed as if he had seen a ghost! We exchanged polite hellos and the had a brief conversation about the mountain. He had followed the trail up to the Guadalupe Peak campsite, but, in the deepening snow, lost the main track. He and another hiker, whom I would meet around 15 minutes later, had wandered around the area making it to a summit with a nice view before getting cold toes & turning around.

At this point, I glanced down to note that he was wearing double-plastic mountaineering boots. If his toes were getting cold, I worried about how the light hiking shoes I was wearing might favor my own feet. Seeming quite anxious to get back down, he and I bid each other farewell, but not before I tol him that he had probably made Guadalupe's East Summit at ~8,200'.

"With conditions the way they are up there, making 8,000' is pretty god for today," he said.

Goodbyes behind us, we each set off on out respective ways. A minute or so further up the trail, the snow got much deeper quite quickly. There were several boot tracks heading up the trail that I was ever so happy to follow; whenever I tried to venture outside of the packed path, I would sink 12-18" in the snow. After starting out too fast and working myself to a sweat, I had gotten into a great rhythmic pace that led me upward at a respectable rate.

Rounding a bend, I came upon the other hiker the first one had mentioned. Here, there was only one track of prints, so I stepped a few feet upslope to let him pass. He seemed to be in much better spirits that the first hiker. I learned that he had recently moved to Wichita Falls from California. Commenting that his former mountain playground was the Sierra Nevada, he was thouroughly amazed that Texas had such great hiking to offer and such uncharacteristic conditions! I talked to him for awhile about the Wichita Mountains, close to his new home, and even pointed him to SummitPost in order to find the best hiking relatively close to his neck of the woods. We exchanged a few more kind words before I began to again move up the hill.

Stopping for the conversation had given my toes just enough time to get a good chill; my shoes were utterly drenched from all of the snow, but thankfully I was wearing two layers of wool socks, keeping my feet as toasty as could be. I supposed that the first hiker might have only been wearing one layer of sock and possibly cotton ones at that. There was no way to know for sure, but he had definitely clued me in to the fact that I would need to pay close attention to the condition of my feet & toes.

I have a walking technique which has worked pretty well in the past and which saved the day this time around. Every 25 steps or so, I hit my shoes with one of my trekking poles to knock off as much of the snow as possible. This helps to limit the amount of water that can get into my shoes from melting snow, staving off quite a bit of the chill from the get-go. Also, whenever I pick up my foot to take another step, I curl my toes under a few times to create friction & warmth. I learned this trick on a very cold day on Mt. Hood and it has proved invaluable ever since.

Though my toes were still somewhat warm, I was quite happy to get moving again. Sticking to my rhythm, I moved like clockwork up and across the snowy, switchbacking trail. It was such a great day of hiking! The trees grew thinner and the snow much deeper as the route climbed up to a flat area beside the Guadalupe Peak campground. My shoes were now sinking up to 2 feet below the surface of the snow. As I passed the turnoff for the camp, several tracks of bootprints began to criss-cross each other in a deep, snowy waltz. Having climbed the route before, I knew that the trail took a slight downhill detour toward the bridge.

Experience definitely paid off as I blazed a new trail through the thick, fluffy snow. The sun was intensely beating down, and if it were not for the strong breeze, I would definitely have started to overheat. In just a short while, I had re-joined a pair of tracks leading toward the bridge; walking over a small hump in the trail, I found myself face-to-faces with their owners. Here I was, 500 mi from home & I met two people who lived a mile or two away from me!

Both guys were from Haslet, TX, which lies just across the freeway from our house in north Fort Worth. They had driven out the day before and hiked up to where the trail crossed the southeast slope of the mountain. They said that they had broken through the snow to their chests soon after crossing onto the lee-side, forcing them to turn around. I asked if they had been able to scope out the ridgeline to El Capitan, but they said they hadn't really paid attention. We exchanged a few other pleasantries before heading our separate ways.

If I said I wasn't freaked out by this point, I'd be lying; 4 different people had reported bad conditions up above and I was seriously questioning if I'd make it up to any summit at all. I had definitely given up hope on climbing Shumard & Bartlett, but was still holding out a bit for a chance at El Capitan. At the least, I wanted to make it up to the summit of Guadalupe. I suppose it would be some type of foreshadowing to point out that this is a Guadalupe Peak trip report...

I continued crossing the bridge and traversed over the saddle to put me onto Guadalupe proper. Once I had made it onto the other side of the ridge, the snow cover was much more thin. Similar to the beginning section of the trail, there were only ~6", however, at this altitude it hadn't melted hardly at all. In most sections, the snow was consolidated into hardpack, making the climb a very slippery endeavor in my hiking shoes. Nevertheless, I made rapid progress up the switchbacks, getting my first view of El Cap along the way.

The tracks I had been following rounded a corner and suddenly petered out. In 3 ft of deep snow, it was evident that whomever had left the tracks had done a bit of swimming. Resolving to make my own path up the mountain, I took my first step and sunk in up to my waist. Backing up to the closest clear patch of trail, I resolved to try heading straight up the slope to the next switchback. Each attempted step forced me to slide right back down to where I started. Feeling a bit like a hamster running in my wheel, I was almost ready to turn around when I started to think about the route; since the trail was hewn directly out of the slope, it was very likely that snow would drift deepest on the uphill side of the trail, where the other 2 hikers and I had been trying to walk. As a last ditch, I plunged over to what seemed to be the downhill edge of the trail and tried to again move up the trail...

Lo and behold, it worked! I was still sinking in up to mid-calf, but I could at least move upward with some measure of success. The going seemed to be excruciatingly slow; I picked a few landmarks along the trail and would successively move up to each one without stopping. In between the "mileposts", I would stop for water. As per usual, I hadn't been drinking as much or as quickly as I should have, and the odd movements of climbing up the deep snow had me battling leg cramps.

Moving at an elevation of just over 8600', altitude wasn't a factor. Despite growing somewhat overheated, I made it up to the next bend in the trail at a steady pace. As I looked back to the south, the snow looked to be much deeper up toward the ridge, and in fact it was! As I struggled ever upward, this most difficult part of the day had me sinking into 3.5' drifts just below that ridge. "Toto, I don't think we're in Texas anymore!"

...But in Texas we were. My trekking poles really saved the day! Four points of contact helped me distribute the combined weight of myself and my pack more evenly to keep me from foundering in such deep drifts. Still battling the ever-present leg cramps, I was more than elated to step onto the hardpack and into the sun on the ridge. With a warm light bathing me and looking up to the last set of switchbacks, I knew that I would make it up to the top!

Minorly disappointing was the view across the ridge of the Western Escarpment south to El Capitan; it held snow even deeper than what I had just ascended, which effectively ruled out my chances for climbing a "new" 8000er on this trip. I couldn't really be sad, though. Ahead of me, on the wind-swept slopes was a blanket of pristine white snow that had obviously not seen a human footfall in quite some time. I would definitely have the summit to myself on this day! I polluted the perfect slopes with the tracks of my own feet, but an overwhelming desire to see all of Texas spread below was captivating. I had to contain myself from running up toward the summit!

The remaining minutes of the ascent were a blur. I paused frequently to give my shutter-finger a workout, but before I even noticed, the shimmering glint of the American Airlines summit marker came into view. I carefully picked my way up the final icy steps to the summit of the Lone Star.

Time almost ceased to exist. I walked all over the summit peering toward the sand dunes to the west and the foothills to the east. To the north, Bush Mountain, Hunter Peak & Mt. Pratt all looked toward me, seeming to congratulate me on this successful snowy ascent like old friends. Shumard Peak & El Capitan also looked on, with an air of pride; I really was cavalier in thinking that I could have visited both of them, and additionally shy Bartlett on a day such as this. Guadalupe, however, reigned supreme among these high Texas peaks. I considered myself truly lucky and blessed to witness such beauty created by God in a remote corner of the planet. Wilderness & I were such good friends on this day, drawing me ever-closer into the love of my Creator.

I took so many pictures that my camera, growing frustrated, asked for a coffee break via its low-battery light. Happy to oblige, I took off my pack and settled in by the pyramid for a rather late lunch of a Sonic Burger, Cheeze-Its & iced tea. I guarantee it was the best meal had by anyone in the state that day! While eating, I began to peruse the pages of the register, doing my best to keep the wind from tearing any of them. Confirming my belief, the last entry had been almost a week earlier before the storm had moved through the range. I was not only the first person to visit that day, but that month as well!

After this realization, I started to have prideful feelings that I quickly had to check. To be truly honest with myself, if those 4 other hikers hadn't set out earlier than me, I never would have come close to making the summit. Totally unaware, they had provided me the support of a strong team, to whom I was truly indebted. I've spent enough time in the mountains to know that nothing in creation happens by pure chance, so I paused to thank God for allowing me the priveledge of this day and also to thank him for providing the other hikers to make it all possible. I really hope that one or more of them comes upon this trip report someday so that they know how much their trail-breaking meant to me!

After a wonderfully peaceful 45 minutes on the summit, I knew that I had better start back down so as to beat the soon-to-be setting Sun. To make a long descent short, I happily scampered down the trail back to Pine Springs arriving just at the point where I should have gotten out my headlamp. A few other things worthy of note: 1) My tracks on the deep lee-side had already filled completely in by the time I got back to them, giving testimony to how this portion of trail had become buried under such deep snow. 2) The rangers were very correct in the need for crampons as I descended the lower trail; the thaw-freeze cycle had created a veritable skating rink, though nowhere near as smooth, that was quite treacherous to negotiate in my hiking shoes. 3) My round-trip time was 6 hours of hiking (4 up & 2 down) over 8.4 mi and slightly more than 3000 vertical feet.

As I packed up my things for the 491-mile journey home, I reflected on the day's events with complete content. Best of all, my legs felt good enough to go for another "lap"! Calling home, my better judgement prevailed as I rushed home to see my beautiful wife, Carol. What an absolutely magnificent trip!