Early Start
I roused Chris, Bunno and Steve out of bed at 5 a.m. I always find it is better to start early, making lots of accommodation for any unexpected delays that might crop up during the day. Better to finish early and have the rest of the day to relax than be stressed and rushed if we start too late and something does happen.
We drove through the still-dark Texas morning, driving north past active oil-drilling country. The place was buzzing with activity - with oil workers everywhere, lots of truck traffic on the roads, and lots of business at the local McDonald's, Subway, and other fast-food outlets - even though it was 6 a.m. in the morning. We eventually drove through this region - which was now clearly semi-arid but still not that mountainous - and reached much quieter country as we approached the Guadalupe Peak area.
Our Objective
Maybe I'll stop here for a moment and describe our objective in a little more detail. Guadalupe Peak is located within Guadalupe Mountains National Park - one of two National Parks in the state. The Guadalupe Mountains site on the very northern edge of West Texas, just a few miles south of the New Mexico border. It is much less well-known than its sister park - Big Bend National Park - which lies further to the south and borders the Rio Grande River and Mexico. The peak itself is just a hair over 8750 feet (2667m) in height. Not high by the standards of the Rockies, but higher than anything in the eastern half of North America. Definitely a real mountain!
Mist-shrouded Escarpment
A cold front had passed through Texas the night before. It had been quite warm up to this point, but this morning, it was downright chilly - down into the single digits above freezing. There was also a disturbing overcast as we drove west towards the park. The forecast had called for partly cloudy, but I was slightly worried that we might not get any views at all if the clouds were thick enough and/or at the wrong altitude.
Soon the front of the Guadalupe Mountains came into view. Fortunately, we could also see that the solid overcast ended a few miles before the edge of the mountains, and it appeared that the highpoint (which we could now make out) was in the clear. Things were looking up, and I was very much looking forward to climbing a new peak!
Entering the park
We entered the park at around 7:00 am (mountain time), and arrived at the small campground / trailhead in Pine Springs Canyon. Guadalupe Peak National Park is not a grand national park in the mould of Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. It is small, quiet, intimate, with only a few developed facilities and trails - principally centered around this one spot in Pine Springs Canyon, not far from the foot of Guadalupe Peak. The terrain here is decidedly arid, with none of the moister forested terrain that one gets in south central Texas.
Pine Springs Trailhead
After giving everyone the standard hike prep about proper clothing, water, pacing, blah blah etc, we slipped a few $$ into an envelope at the self-serve entrance station, slathered on a bit of sunscreen, and started up the trail to Guadalupe Peak.
The wide, gravelled trail headed off pleasantly enough, angling slightly uphill to the west, through desert shrubbery and a few pine trees. Above us loomed an eastern buttress of Guadalupe Peak tiself. It wasn't obvious where the trail went, but that's half the fun, guessing where the trail you've never been on might go.
The gradual, pleasant trail section ended when we reached the base of the buttress, and the trail quickly became steep. Well-engineered but a bit rocky and rough in spots, the trail began to switchback up the steeper slopes of Guadalupe Peak's eastern buttress. We gained altitude rapidly, and soon the campground and parking lot was a postage-stamp cutout far below us. The edge of the overcast nicely kept its distance off to the east, and we were in full sunlight for this part of the climb. Wasn't long before we were quite sweaty, despite the cool temperatures.
We followed my tried-and-true "Quarter-K" break system, stopping every 250 feet of elevation gain for a short breather and a chance to grab a snack or a drink. Definitely eases the mental effort of long climbs (and we had nearly 3000 feet to do on this hike, so we had a fair bit of climbing ahead of us).
With a final bit of switchbacking across some quite steep terrain (big dropoffs, but the trail is wide and not scary), we turned a corner around the end of the buttress and started climbing on a different slope, this time north-facing. Here a different microclimate had allowed a fairly dense coniferous forest to form, something not uncommon at the middle altitudes of these desert peaks. The trail plunged into this forest, and our views were diminished for the next hour or so.
Our views were also diminished by clouds. The cloud layer we had observed off to the east had gathered and coalesced around the Guadalupe Mountains, and we had climbed up into the heart of them. I was worried but also hopeful - it seemed like there was a good chance that the tops of these clouds were lower than the altitude of Guadalupe Peak (8750 feet), and if that was true, then we were in for that most sublime of mountain conditions - the undercast.
We finished our climb along north-facing slopes and reached a shallow draw - not quite a plateau, but close. We were walking up a gentle grade here, through thin pine forest and over a rocky, soil-poor ground. In this section it did not feel like we were on a mountain.
We crossed over this gentle, flattish bump and reached a narrow neck that connected it to the final, highest summit bump on Guadalupe Peak. Beyond this neck, the trail began to climb more decisively once again, in long well-formed switchbacks. In one spot, these switchbacks pass through an area of dense forest, but for the most part we were now above treeline. Here at about 8200 feet, the mist around us was starting to give signs up petering out, brightening up. That meant we were close to the top of the cloud deck - would there be enough altitude left for us to climb above it?
