The "Easy" Trail

Bigtooth Maple on
the Devil's Hall Trail

The Pine Spring Visitor Center at the main entrance to Guadalupe Mountains National Park was small but inviting on the inside. There were the expected displays of literature along with a small exhibit of fossils and wildlife. The Rangers were friendly and there were a surprising number of visitors. Judging from their conversation, the visitors were mostly experienced hikers from the surrounding area. This is what we expected given the remoteness and relative inaccessibility of this Park. Guadalupe Park is one of the least visited of the National Parks with 163,000 visitors in 2008. When compared to the three most visited National Parks (the Great Smoky Mountains at 9 million, the Grand Canyon at 4.4 million, and Yosemite at 3.5 million), one should not be surprised to find that Guadalupe Park has a low budget.

We bought a one-year National Parks Pass, which seemed to be an unusual event, because the staff had to call in a special Ranger, who was the only one who could dispense these passes—further evidence that Guadalupe Mountains National Park is not one of the more frequently visited Parks. Finally, we got our National Park Passport stamped for the first time, and we applied stickers for both Parks (Guadalupe and the Carlsbad Caverns) in their allotted spaces. After watching their introductory film on the area and looking at the exhibits of various fossils and specimens of local wildlife, we decided to take an easy trail on the first day, so that we could break ourselves in for the big hike through McKittrick Canyon tomorrow. I asked the Ranger for a recommendation for an easy trail. He suggested the Devil’s Hall trail up Pine Spring Canyon, since it would not pose significant elevation changes like most of the other trails. I guess the Ranger had sized us up as being fit enough to handle the level of difficulty of this trail, but “easy” turned out to be a relative term. Mary Ann and I had been toughening up over the past few months by walking the manicured Katy Trail in Dallas 4 miles a day on its level paved surface. The Katy trail and our recent hikes up North Mountain in Hot Springs National Park or even more demanding treks, like our partial descent into the Grand Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail, bore no resemblance to what we were about to encounter on the “easy” Devil’s Hall Trail in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Fortunately, we had packed our lunch and four bottles of water in addition to a good sense of adventure and a strong will.

Deer under Texas Madrone,
Devil's Hall trailhead

In the trailhead parking lot, we saw another beautiful madrone standing straight up and spreading a large canopy of green leaves and red berries. I was also hoping to see some wildlife in the Park, but the parking lot was the last place that I expected such an encounter. After we gathered our gear and locked the car, we turned and saw three deer grazing under that madrone. I approached them slowly to get a good picture, but I got a little too close and scared them off. Strangely, these turned out to be the only deer that we were to see in the Park, except for two others in nearby Lincoln National Forest that we would see grazing alongside the highway on a return trip from Dog Canyon.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER              TOP             NEXT CHAPTER