Guadeloupe Mountains

"The Steps" at Devil's Hall Trail

Looking up inside of Devil's Hall

Devil's Hall Trail

Guadeloupe Mountains 

Guadeloupe Mountains 

Beginning of Devil's Hall Trail

Texas Mandrone

Cave Woman

Devil's Hall

Sandy Gets Dow Jones from Communing with rock

Devil's Hall Trail

Sotol Cactus

            We stayed in an RV park with a cactus theme. Everywhere you looked they had planted all kinds of cactus. Huge islands between the sites fill with the prickly plants.

            Riding down the desert, listening to a Louie Lamore book. Sandy had mentioned that we were near Bald Mountain that Louie had talked about an hour ago. Then suddenly, in the book, Louie said, “We crossed Cherry Creek…,” just then I looked to the side of the road and read the sign over a dry gulch, “Cherry Creek”.

            In Pecos we found a miracle. Marco at the Pecos Tire and Alignment. My brakes had been smoking on the way down from the Chisos Basin and Marco pulled the wheels off, told me there was nothing wrong with my brakes and that I should not press so hard on the brakes. “No charge, I didn’t do anything!” Finally an honest mechanic.

            The Guadalupe’s are magnificent. From our sleeping spot we look up on a peak towering over us to the left and a long ridge of rock that slides back out of sight, both 3000 feet above. Today we walked between the two, following the Devil’s Hall Trail. It was only 4.2 miles, but seemed like 15. It climbed and climbed on a thin line of dirt with cactus of many kinds everywhere. Alligator Juniper and a strange gumbo limbo like tree with smooth reddish bark. The trail kept going way into the valley and finally we could see the end. Nope. It turned and cut back right, up and up, rockier and rockier. If the guy thing hadn’t have kicked in I would have turned around. Keep in mind that the wind is blowing at least 45 mph off and on. Beautiful trail all the way up, towering cliffs above us, smaller rock peaks jutting up on the side away from the cliff, but in the last ¼ mile was the payoff. We turned a corner and there was what looked like human civilization. The layers of rock were 8” tall and stacked 30 feet high. It looked like a well made wall, except that there was a giant peak of rock sitting on the wall and a canyon swirled around cutting the middle of the wall leaving a set of steps, perfect and stepable about 8 feet high. Stepping up through the canyon, it curved left and a 200 foot cliff was touchable and shared the path for two hundred yards when its buddy on the right joined it to form the Devil’s Hall. 10 foot wide and straight sided, the corridor went on for 50 yards. It was 1 in the afternoon, but the sun was just cresting the east side and as I looked up it made a bare brush branch shine white with sunlight.

            On the walk back we met a couple and we exchanged stories. They told us a curious tale that needs to be added as an addendum to a previous post. I have to tell you first that as we smoked our way down from the Chisos Basin, way back- remember the climb up and very poor judgment in Big Bend? Well, I never told you that Sandy and I laughed as we were finally on fairly flat ground as we watched a huge RV, a 40-footer, making the climb up the road we barely escaped with our RV. I remember looking at Sandy and we both shook our heads, “They’ll never make it!” Our new friends on the trail told us that the ranger at the Rio Grande Campground told them a story of a 40-foot RV that had tried to drive to the Chisos Basin a few days ago. They had bottomed the rig on one curve, ripping everything off underneath and on another curve torn the side of the rig off, basically destroying the rig. We looked at each other and knew it was the one we had seen going up on our faithful day of harrowing ride.

            Once again we are moved on by the weather. We would have stayed here another day or two, but the wind is brutal. For 3 nights it blew incessantly. Sleep is not the best. Last night was the worst. It was gusting 50 to 65. We are off to Carlsbad.