The hike into the high Chisos is not easy with just a daypack. Add water, food, shelter, sleep system and additional clothing, even with ultra-light gear 25-35 pounds is not an uncommon weight. I was thinking Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains years ago when I wrote: Ray Jardine (ultra-light backpacking leader) never backpacked in the Texas mountains carrying 15 pounds, unless that was his water weight.
Before we began filtering water from both springs and tinajas (small holes in the rock that hold water), a 3-day trip into the mountains began with about 30 pounds of water, and the rest of the above mentioned gear on top of that.
This sunny Friday afternoon, I carried just an extra 2 liters of water on the trip up Pinnacles Trail--the steeper of the two trails from The Basin into the Chisos--which, combined with the 3 liters in each our hydration packs, should be enough dinner and breakfast water and hiking water to the next camp in Boot Canyon. Since I set our first night at Pinnacles 2 campsite, the opening day shaved a mile+ from the trip to the top entrance into Boot Canyon. And since the day was warmer than we hoped--about 75 in the sun--the lower section of the trail in full sunshine was tougher than we'd hoped.
Two point five miles later, we descended from the Pinnacles Trail into the wooded shade of the 3 Pinnacles campsites--openings in the trees with bear boxes--and dropped the sweaty packs to set up camp.
The next morning we broke camp and hiked up Pinnacles to top out near the Emory Peak Trail, before descending into just this past April was a fire that burned throughout the canyon, scorching trees and grass, but, combined with the rains this year, also the abundant crop of native grasses growing waist high along the trail and throughout this beautiful, verdant canyon. Canyons outside the mountain heights tend to be dry with desert vegetation, but the high mountains are their near opposite.
This trip was new perspectives: our first backpacking trip into Big Bend--November 1996--we camped two nights in Boot Canyon 1, a cozy site near the junction of BC and Colima Trail, next to the horse pen and Boot Cabin, the old ranger station and Boot Spring. (Boot Cabin is being demolished, apparently, by a bear trying to get at the insects under the old shingles and tar paper.) We hiked into the canyon, turned right at the intersection and started up Colima the short distance to our next site.
The grasses are so tall and pervasive, they often hide the downed trees burned by the April fire, and the high country campsites not destroyed by fire remain open for reservations, including Colima's 3 sites. We set up camp and went to the Spring to filter enough water for the rest of the trip (both Camelbaks and two, 2-liter containers), returned the water and went back up Boot Canyon to the South Rim, where the winds only heard overhead in the Canyon raked the slopes coming up from the foothills. We sat just back of the Rim and ate lunch, the sunny but hazy view into the distance toward Mexico a sunlit reverie while we ate sesame bagels with kabanoshi sausage.