GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS National Park is unspoiled, uncrowded, and easily accessible from the highway.

Guadalupe Peak (elev. 8,751) is the highest mountain in Texas, a state of few mountains. Back in 1967, when we were college students, a friend of mine named Tryon Lewis and I climbed Guadalupe Peak in tennis shoes and shorts with just canteens hanging at our sides. We were just inexperienced kids back then with scant knowledge that this was a Real Mountain. We almost stepped on a diamondback rattler at one point on the ascent. There was no National Park then, no trails, just us and the mountain. On top we planted a Texas State Flag and felt like Hillary and Tenzing on the top of Everest. When we tried to go down another side of the mountain, we got trapped by cliffs. So we climbed back up and went back down the way we came up---over some small ledges...and some cactus...in the dark. Boy, were we dumb. Boy, did we learn a lot that day. We could have gotten into some real trouble. But we got the learning experience in West Texas mountain climbing instead.

In the 1970s The area was made into a national park. Now don't get me wrong about the next statement, but sometimes I wonder why. Maybe it's because Texan LBJ had been president along about then and he wanted to get as many national projects in Texas as possible so the G.M. National Park, or GUMO as the rangers call it, was one of them. This may all be pure conjecture on my part, but still I wonder.

I mean, the Guadalupe Mountains are nice, but they aren't as photogenic as the Tetons. They don't have forests, like Yellowstone. They don't have long lines of tourists fighting to get in, as at Yosemite. GUMO is a plain-Jane park compared to them. Maybe it's the "A prophet has no honor in his owen country" thing, but I still wonder...why the NP status?

Well, for one thing, I suppose, the mountains really are beautiful, in their own rugged desert way. El Capitan's brooding, craggy face can be seen for 80 miles away from several directions. At the top of Pine Top Mountain, there is a forest of green pine trees on the protected north side, and a grand little sylvan place called The Bowl where it is fun to camp. McKittrick Canyon has a turning of the leaves every fall that is truly lovely, and Texas' only running trout stream. So yes, one can make a plausible case for the National Park status.

There are several trails that run through the park now. My favorite is the new trail all the way to the top of Guadalupe Peak. The trail ascent is from around 5,000 feet of elevation at the trailhead (easily close to the highway) up to the nearly 9,000 elevation at the top.

Climbing Guad Peak by the hiker's trail takes about 4 hours for the average hiker. You can make the descent back down this well-maintained path in 2-3 hours. Up on top it is sometimes very windy and cold from September through May. This trail is a vastly different way to climb the mountain than we young bushwhackers did back in '67. Take along the usual stuff a climb up to 9,000 feet of elevation would take: windbreaker, parka, or insulated jacket, sunscreen, extra food...and oh, yes...WATER. Lots of it. You don't want to get dehydrated. And there are no drinking fountains, natural or man-made, on the route.

The trail, as I recall, is about 4 miles long. It is kinda fun because it is not hard (just long for beginner climbers) and is divided into 4 sections. The steepest part is at the beginning. Once that's over, there is a long stretch across a mountain ridge. Listen to the birds and enjoy the blesed solitude and enjoy the scenery. Then there is a more scenic area up just below Guad Peak. And the last part is the somewhat steep trail up to Guad Peak proper.

I have climbed the mountain at least 7 times now and I love to go up there. It is a good trsining hike in the spring to see how I'm doing getting ready for the 14,000-foot Colorado mountains in the following summer. At night, if you camp near the top, you can just barely see the lights of El Paso from up there. In the daytime on a clear desert day you can see for a hundred miles or so in all directions. To the west, there are those Franklin Mountains on the horizon overlooking El Paso. To the South, you can see the Davis Mountains and Mount Livermore, Texas' second-highest mountain. To the east there are the flat plains of Texas.

Right up on top of Guad Peak's summit there is an oddity: A shining silver metal pyramid set in hauled-up concrete, placed there to honor the Butterfield stage that used to run on a route below which the highway takes now, as well as airline pilots, the pony express, and whoi knows who else? Anyway, when you see that funky pyramid you know you're at the top.

Larry Henderson, the then-park superintendent, told me that a few years ago the monument underwent some degree of controversy. Seems that a lot of the back-to-nature, environmentalist political types wanted the monument dismantled and removed because it was a man-made object in an otherwise pristine natural and national park. What to do? It was decided that since the pyramid was there for years before there was a park, it was "historical", and therefore it was a part of the natural order of things. So they left it. Personally, even though I have a lot of environmentalism in my veins, I think it is reasonable to leave it there. But maybe I'm prejudiced. I've seen it there for nearly 40 years now, so it has sentimental value to me now, thank you.

Can you climb Guadalupe Peak? Yeah, probably. Most people can do it. Ha!- some people have even climbed the trail in their wheel chairs. Riders on horses go up quite often as there is a hitchin' post near the top.

Another interesting thing about the Guadalupe Mountains. They are actually one of the world's greates fossil reefs. they are basically made of limestone. that has two implications.

First, don't try to rock-climb the cliffs. they are crumbly crumbly crumbly. Now I know, just as sure as Evel Knevel jumped a motorcycle over the Snake River, that somone is gonna say, "I can do it, man. Ain't nuthin' I can't rock climb." Don't. People have lost it trying.

SEcond, if you are interested in fossils, they are literally all over the place. Brachiopods and lots of other things abound here. Give a look around on your rest stops through the mountains.

Oh yeah. One small personal thing you probably don't find very often in an epinion. A friend of mine named Jon lost his gold wedding ring somewhere along the trail up there. We were resting for a moment and he was messing around with his wedding band and after we started hiking again and got to the top he said, "I think I lost my ring!" We looked for it but no ring. So it goes. He did get a replacement, but if you hike the mountain and find it, Jon says there is a reward. Look up my profile, emeil me, and we can work together on it. In other words, "There's gold in them that hills." At least a band of gold.

The old Indian chief Geronimo used to say of the guadalupe Mountains that they had the richest gold mines in the Western hemisphere. That seems kind of doubtful given their largely sedimentary geology. But on the other hand, in a real-life mystery worthy of the X-files, back in the '20s an old guy from Odessa, Texas named Ben Sublett used to go into these mountains and bring back gold which he said he got there. There has been some prospecting but so far no one has found Geronimo's gold (or Geronimo's Cadillac, for that matter---inside joke.)

If you go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, you are only a few minutes' drive away from another great National Park, Carlsdad Caverns, which we take a look at in another epinion.

These are both fun parks in Southern New Mexico and West Texas and you'll enjoy them. If you get really hungry, drive into Carlsbad, New Mexico and chow down.

Have a great trip!

See you!





Recommended: Yes

Best time to go: March-May
Recommended for: Nobody
Review Topic: Campgrounds & Lodging