Preparing to camp in the Mountains of Texas

My 5th wheel is finally back from an extended visit at a shop, it took a long time to get parts. With it gone for such an extended period, I decided to reminisce on one of the more remote and adventurous tent camping trips I’ve taken.

Still pretty green to camping, I was looking to take my first trip to Big Bend National Park. Yet in the height of COVID with interest in camping booming there was nothing available to reserve anywhere in the time frame I was looking for. My roommate at the time mentioned he and some others had years prior gone out to the Guadalupe Mountains in far West Texas, but abandoned camping in short order due to cold and snow. I was looking at trip right after Thanksgiving where we really weren’t deep into Winter weather, and found that the more remote campground “Dog Canyon” had availability. I booked roughly a week and then started trying to figure out what I got into.

While it wasn’t going to be extremely cold, it was going to get below freezing. Living in warm climate for over 2 decades, I had almost nothing in terms of winter clothing and just mostly beginning tent camping gear. I also started to get worried starting to check out the weather at the Guadalupe National Park via internet sites. I was seeing wind gusts regularly exceed 60 mph and decided I needed to up my gear game if I was going to camp there for a week straight.

I purchased a 6 man, 4 season REI Dome tent as though I’d upgraded from my very first cheap Amazon pop up tent, the 2 man REI tent I had was not rated for anywhere near the wind speed I was seeing reported. I figured the extra space would be useful as sitting outside at night in below freezing temperatures with high wind. After getting some brief internet primers on layering and whatnot I also purchased all manner of winter clothing from REI. REI offers the smaller two basket variety of shopping carts you see at high end grocery stores like Whole Foods. They don’t hold nearly as much as a shopping cart you’d use at Target or HEB. I’m not a shopper, and as I selected my clothing and winter gear didn’t really pay attention to the price tags, intent on proper preparation for this winter camping scenario. I was glad for the limited space on my baskets as though I easily carried all my items to the car without a cart, the bill at the register shocked me. Oh well, I was committed at that point.

I also purchased a Mr. Heater single propane bottle heater for use outdoors. While I felt like I was well prepared I got increasingly worried looking at the wind speeds for the park leading up to my trip out there. Several days the gusts would get into Category one Hurricane level. While my new REI tent was declared 4 season, it was no high end mountaineering tent that’s really built for that level of wind speed. I was already a little out of my depth camping in the winter for the first time and thought maybe I’d gotten in over my head. I figured I might have to abort, just as my roommate related his group did.

Getting there

I set off in late November of 2021. The road trip itself taught me two things. The first is that even on Interstate 10, cellular service was not reliable. Getting to the Guadalupe mountains was going to take me off the interstate and into the true boonies. After losing signal a couple times on the interstate, at a gas stop I decided to write down the step by step directions, which proved a good idea. Once my google maps route veered me Northwest of the interstate into state highways, cellular service got even more spotty. GPS still works with downloaded maps, but I felt better having understanding the general route and having it on paper. I ended up going through a portion of the Permian Basin, oil country, on a number of state highways in the middle of nowhere. I passed by several “man camps” of very rickety looking shelters nowhere near anything of interest. I imagined what went on at these encampments to pass the time and that life would be a living hell for me.

The second thing I learned, and has been re-enforced on trips after this one, is that google maps is very aggressive routing you through back-country roads without tweaking it’s settings. On a state highway with no civilization around, it’ll route onto some truly remote backwoods drives that are rarely traveled. Given that, the accuracy of the maps is spotty in these areas and it’s not well updated with road closures or the like that block it’s suggested route. While I did not get terribly lost, at times I was picking my route on intuition through giant open fields with cattle guards as the route google had planned through the back country either did not exist in the same form anymore or was blocked by closure’s and construction it google maps wasn’t aware of.

Closing in on my campground and gaining elevation I noticed a very distinct change in the atmosphere and the smell. The combination gave me a very distinct feeling I was definitely going somewhere remote. While the Guadalupe Mountains aren’t that high in elevation as far as Mountains gone, on other trips I’ve identified this as “Mountain Smell”.

There are two campgrounds for the Guadalupe Mountain National Park, but booking my trip only one had availability, Dog Canyon Campground. It is very remote. The closest real civilization to it is 60 miles away through well maintained, but very windy mountain roads. While you can get up to highway speed on portions, driving in I approached a car that had slowed down to a crawl on the 2 lane road. I discovered why when a giant buck jumped a 6-8′ foot tall fence in front of the car and bounded across the road. I took it easy going in and out of there after that. There is a very tiny little town called Queen on the road just before the park with a handful of houses and a restaurant. With only boil in a bag camp food packed, I checked it out and whatever I ordered had not been fully cooked from it’s previously obviously frozen state. The restaurant did offer a small “shop” area with a limited selection of supplies similar to a hotel which I kept in mind in case I realized I forgotten any basic essentials.

Arrival at the campsite, between two Mountain Lion dens

Stopping in at the Ranger Station on arrival I was greeted by the Camp host and given a rundown of the area. I knew the area was bear country, which was also a new experience for me, but the camp host related the bears stayed on the other side of the park where the ecosystem and water supply was far more favorable. He did relate there was a Mountain Lion active in the area that had two dens on opposing sides of the campground. The camp host had recently hiked out to one of the dens and noticed a fresh deer kill. Until that moment I had no idea Mountain Lions were in the park. I am a huge fan of felines, but it made me somewhat uneasy that a wild, big cat built it’s two homes on either side of where I was staying for a week.

The campground at Dog Canyon is small. There are only roughly 10 spots for tents, packed close in, with a handful more RV spots on a paved lot right next to the general parking lot. The first night I stayed there there were 3-4 other tents, the camp host the only “official” around. I was relieved to find no real wind. I realized after the fact the wind speeds I was looking at on weather sites were for the Guadalupe Peak area, the highest Mountain in Texas. This campground sat surrounded by mountains on all sides and wind was never an issue.

There was a single building in the campsite for bathrooms and an outdoor dish washing station. I was happily surprised the bathrooms were heated, and not surprised there were no showers as I’d read up beforehand. In the bathrooms there was also a prominent sign to warn visitors about the Mountain Lions. While the signage indicated not to be afraid, the instructions had me on guard, and I was hiking solo. I had a can of bear spray and made sure I had it accessible at all times.

Dog Canyon Hiking

Hiking on this side of the Guadalupe Mountain park is fantastic. Besides the low population campground, in the time I was there I think I only saw a couple cars with hikers drive all the way out just to hike for the day. I think I only saw one other person on the trails over the course of several days, a fellow camper. Besides still being green to camping, I also had no experience hiking mountains in the middle of nowhere. I had the presence of mind to purchase a Garmin Satellite device with maps and an SOS button. I lost cell service somewhere driving in, though the ranger station did have internet available in it’s parking lot. While the trails were fairly well marked with Cairns, the Garmin caught me a couple times going off trail and corrected. I have since come to appreciate hiking in really remote areas like this with sparsely populated trails the greatest danger you have is getting lost. The trail head has a log book for hikers to write down their name and departure time, but without any Satellite communicator, if you didn’t return from a hike your only hope would be the camp host or rangers on patrol noticing your name on that list or an empty tent and begin a search.

I have loads of photos that really don’t do justice to the scenery. I had a fantastic time out there and found it exhilarating. As a green hiker and not in particularly good shape, I was mostly conservative on my hikes. This trip taught me what elevation gain on a hike really means and just how much difference that makes when going long distances. One day I got more ambitious and hiked back in the dark misjudging the time my return would take. At that time of year sunset was about 5 PM. While I’d thrown a headlamp in my backpack just in case, I was jumpy at the times I heard creatures in the vicinity passing through the grass and brush. I had read up at that point some on Mountains Lions with internet at the ranger station and knew they were active at dusk, mostly hunting at night.

Bear spray equipped, ready for anything

I had arrived on a weekend. The following week the already sparsely populated campground thinned out even more. With the close quarters I ended up speaking with some of my fellow campers some, most of all with Rick. He was a solo retiree and chatty. My headlamp died during my stay, and he gave me a spare he had. I admired the fellow in his late 60’s or early 70’s tent camping solo in his retirement. I plan to pay forward the spare headlamp someday as I now have at least 3 or 4 others. Even though I developed a camping packing list, something always seems to get missed and you really need a headlamp tent camping.

Even though the campsite was sparsely populated, the area was completely silent at night. During the winter there were no bugs buzzing or anything at all. The wind I feared didn’t appear, which meant you could easily hear the slightest noise from your fellow campers throughout the night. I brought battery powered camp fans to battle my tinnitus when sleeping and I was especially glad to have them on this trip.

One night I found myself solo in the camp, everyone had cleared out other than the camp host who was a couple hundred feet away in his accommodations near the ranger station. Glad to be free of the somewhat uncomfortably close quarters of other campers, I broke out a little radio I’d brought along and was enjoying having the place to myself outside my tent. I was sitting in my camp chair with my headlamp on red light night mode and caught a flash out of the corner of my eye. It was near an elevated area where my car was parked, and I figured it was a reflection of one of the car reflectors or the like.

I keep looking in the general direction and then noticed some more red reflection which I then made out to be two red glowing orbs. It took a moment for me to realize these were eyes, looking right at me. They were big enough I was concerned in a worst case scenario I was looking at eyes of a mountain lion. I knocked over my water bottle grabbing my bear spray bottle, pulled the safe off, and stood up. The eyes moved, and I turned on the regular white light of the headlamp. Whatever it was, it was blocking the path to get to my car. I was on the opposite side of the campground from the only building with the bathrooms. The camp host was far enough away that he couldn’t hear anything if I shouted. I very slowly moved and while I never got a great look, realized the animal was not all that big. Definitely not a mountain lion. As I tried to approach it ran off, and though I attempted to follow it to try and figure out what it was I never really got close enough or managed to get a good picture. Describing to the camp host and others it was most likely a ringtail cat.

While I somewhat laughed this off as a ridiculous overreaction of a green camper, it definitely woke me up and put me on edge. Trying to go to sleep after that experience, a loud “wildlife noise” happened within a few hundred feet of my tent. I have no idea what it was, but from the volume it was not a small animal. I immediately got in my car and pointed the headlights in the general direction and waited awhile, but saw nothing. I then drove and parked next to the ranger station to get on the internet and listen to what Mountain Lions sound like. They have a very interesting screech/cry noise they make, which fortunately didn’t sound anything like what I had just heard. Tired, I briefly contemplated sleeping in the car but decided that was stupid and drove back to the parking area, got in my tent, and survived the night.

Caves are cool, both figuratively and literally

An oddity about the Guadalupe Mountain National Park is that though it’s not very big, getting from one side to the other by road is 100+ miles and over 2 hours on the road. On that path lies Carlsbad National Caverns. During my week long stay, I took a trip out to see the caves and also give my body a rest from the mountain hiking. Upon arrival with sore legs I was first concerned about the warning signs about the strenuous stairway down, but quickly realized I had discovered a completely new definition of that word hiking in the mountains.

This is another case where photos don’t do justice to how awe inspiring and cool this cave system is. I’ll only post a couple. If you’re ever nearby, you should definitely pay a visit. I was very lucky that there was almost no one there when I visited. From all the accommodations, it’s clear this place is teeming with people whenever it is peak season. The various rooms of the caves, named long ago, seemed perfect for a metal band to co-opt for the songs on a album.

Heading up the tallest Mountain in Texas

Pine Springs campground is on the opposite side of the park from Dog Canyon, but features the tallest Mountain in Texas, Guadalupe Peak. I thought it might be too much for me, but talking to a couple other campers who’d done it, I figured I’d give it a shot. While I was still green, I figured the hiking I’d done on the other side of the park had at least given me some taste of what I was in for. That was really only partially true, as the trails I went on near Dog Canyon did go up some mountains, but not strictly up a particular mountain, and not with near the elevation gain.

The hike is just under 9 miles with 3000 feet of elevation gain. I got up very early to drive the two hour journey to Pine Springs where the trail head begins. I wanted to start as close to daylight as possible since I had no idea what I was in for in terms of difficulty.

To my memory the hike really can be broken up into 3 sections. The beginning starts out hard, constantly going up with big steps up natural rocks. The middle of the hike evens out some and is a bit of breather, but somewhere in there I started to experience the high speed mountain wind. I had to take my hat off to prevent losing it. I would guess the winds were at least 40 mph on average gusting over 60 mph. This is what I was seeing when I was looking at the weather and wind speeds at the park on internet sites leading up to my trip. It was fairly intense the day I hiked up and definitely gave me the feeling I was on a mountain. I’ve never considered myself to have a fear of heights, but the last section of the hike gets a little dicey. You are going up ridgeline trails which aren’t very wide with sections that have a cliff drop off that would be fatal or serious injury on a fall. With the strain of hike and high wind, I found self stopping a few times to keep my bearings and steady rather than fixating on just how steep and far down it was looking off to my left. Particularly as you get to the summit, it becomes much more like very beginner mountain climbing in sections, some rock scrambling with “exposure” (a mountain climbing term equating to proximity to deadly falls). A middle aged woman passing me on the way down from the summit related she felt it was sketchy and I later saw why. While to any seasoned mountain hiker, or real climber, this trail is no big deal, particularly near the top it’s not much of a trail. The highlight for me was right before the summit. A large half-boulder protrudes into the trail, and your forced to hug it with your back to cliff to get around it. As far as I’d gone at that point, despite being fairly exhausted and with super high wind buffeting me at all times I made it to the top.

It felt like a great accomplishment. Though the highest mountain in Texas is only 8750 feet in elevation, you are still 3000 feet from the base and surrounding area. The views are amazing, on clear days you can see into Mexico. Holding my phone tightly with both hands to keep it from blowing off the mountain I got some good photos.

I learned a couple other things on this hike, one of them was at the peak. It took me roughly 4-5 hours to make it to the summit. I was tired. As I took in the moment, another hiker summitted who was obviously extremely fit. The fellow didn’t have a backpack for snacks or anything other than a water bottle. He broke out his phone and was taking a video of himself but with the wind I couldn’t hear anything he was saying into the camera. One way or another we ended up chatting, and he related he was just making the video to show his friends how awesome this was as he’d been chided about hiking the tallest mountain in Texas, they figured it was nothing. He then told me he was stoked he’d made it up in 90 minutes. I didn’t doubt him, and after the fact have learned the fastest times ever are around 80 minutes. With some other small talk aside I watched as he began his decent, jogging down the mountain. To me this was an all day ass kicking adventure. To this guy it was a few hours for the hey of it, to knock another of the list and make a quick video for proof. This is when I realized any times I saw for optimistic speed on hikes, I was no where near that pace. I was absolutely under no illusion I was in good shape, but had no frame of reference. Someone in really good shape can do 20 to 25 minute miles even with this level of elevation gain.

The second thing I learned on my descent was on a similar note. I wasn’t seeing some of the people I’d passed on the way up. I also did not see their broken, battered corpses anywhere off the cliffs next to the trail. I realized I was somewhat lulled into the do-ability of the hike by seeing people of average (or less) appearing fitness on the way up. Early in the hike I spoke with a couple I’d guess were around 70.. I figured if these people can do this, surely I can. However they and many others I passed on this popular trail didn’t go the whole way. I realized then just because I saw people of similar or humbler fitness levels than myself didn’t mean success because a lot of them weren’t going to make it.

I’ll be back

There’s a lot of other trails in this park I didn’t get to do. I certainly hope to go back someday and see more of them. I’m in better shape and I am far more aware of my abilities and limitations than I was when I made this trip. There are some very cool back country camping available in that park, the main challenge being you need to carry all the water you need as there’s nothing available to filter on the go. With so much to do around there and elsewhere, one day I would like to hike the peak again. There’s a back country campsite a mile from the peak that would be great to hit and a great opportunity to see a sunrise at the summit. I also know that campsite only around a mile from the peak is very windy and a tent would need to be very securely staked down. I’m also curious to the see the boulder sticking out of the trail I related, and how concerning it would be to me today after all I’ve experienced since. I wish I had taken picture of it.

With the 5th wheel I doubt I’ll be doing any week long car camping tips again anytime soon. I returned the Dome tent as soon as I returned from this trip, it’s poles were incredibly flimsy and bent on the 2nd time I assembled it. It would have been no match for high winds. The small propane heater I purchased worked well sitting right next to it and using it to warm my hands while eating with thick gloves off. The best tip I’d picked up was using Nalgene bottles as sleeping bag warmers. They’re sturdy enough to handle boiling water. Filling up two bottles before bed gave hours of warmth into the evening. While my wallet was much lighter from all the winter clothing I purchased, it all worked great. It was dipping a few degrees below freezing at night but I generally was always comfortable. I enjoyed the ruggedness, something I won’t quite get in a trailer.