2020 Winter Camping Trip Day32, 2020/12/27
3rd day in the Big Bend!
The first hike we had was Window. The trailhead is in the back of Chisos campground. Usually you can drive into the edge of campground and park in front of the traihead, but it was closed due to COVID. To be honest that didn't make sense at all. Instead everyone was required to park in the overflow parking and walk inside the campground. The overflow parking lot is big. Sometimes National Park Service seems to close the area for no reason, although they claim because of COVID. In fact they close to be lazy: I am sure about that.
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blue jay
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Anyway, we started hiking. The trail is less than 5 miles total. This kind of mid-distance trails are relatively crowded, but still able to do with social distancing. On the way there were few people since we started early. A blue jay was along the trail and one particular bird stayed close. He might have been expecting food, but instead I just took a picture. I don't want wild birds tamed. I looked at zoomed in picture and amazed how furry he is! Also the legs are thin but look sturdy. Impressive body.
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| potholes |
The last portion of the hike is in the wash: this is the way to the window. We saw many potholes. First time I saw potholes was in New Zealand. It is massive power of water to make such holes.
Walking in the wash is usually not straightforward, but it is in National Park. Why?
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steps in wash
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National Park Service (NPS) made steps multiple places as you can see in the right picture. Ha! If this was in the BLM, there would be no stairs for sure.
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| Window |
Then we reached the Window. It is like a window! (left picture) Blue sky is in the window and the big rocks lines made a nice window shape. I liked it. We took pictures at the edge of the window.
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The edge of window
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Below the window is the cliff. So there is no way to go beyond that. Actually it is dangerous to go too close to the edge. As you can see in the left picture, the rock at the edge is extremely smooth. I touched it and it was like silk! I can imagine all the water go into this point and drop into the valley below: the force to smooth rock by that tremendous amount of water should be huge.
After we enjoyed the edge and took pictures, we sat down side of window to make room for other people and had snack. While our picnic, more and more people reached the window and took pictures in turn. Among them one guy was extremely chatty and he talked to every single hiker. He is around 40 years old now and was he was telling people his father and he as 10 years old took a picture at the same spot as he did on that day with his daughter.
After Window we went to the top of the hill to have a nice view that guy was also there again. His name is Dan, and he is from Dallas, Texas and with a wife from Vietnam or Malaysia (I forgot but she is from South Asia) and his 10-year old daughter, and he was talking to every single person again on the hill. One of them was a guy from San Antonio, Texas living in now California. They agreed that California is beautiful but not sure about Californians: they think that people in CA are too progressive. It was interesting to hear what Texans think about. Not many opportunities exist like that.
Another hiker trapped by Dan was an old German female. She is at least 65 years old. She was going down to the valley to another end of trailhead. Her husband would pick her up at the trailhead. After she talked with Dan she proceeded descending. From the top of the hill she was all the way visible. At some point she took a break and stopped for a while. Then Dan got dramatic and said, "She doesn't know what she is doing. I will go back to trailhead and tell a ranger." We were thinking, "She is fine." And she was fine walking after taking a break.
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Amazing view
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Dan was a little too chatty, but other than that, it was great. The view was amazing! Before I came to Big Bend, I had no idea what it looks like, but I loved Big Bend so much. Also December is a great time to visit there. It is not too cold and totally manageable camping there.
Not only this! We had another hike. Lost Mine. Since parking lot was full, we parked in a turnout. We saw at least 10 cars got tickets due to parking along the road (not turnout). There are multiple signs of no parking on road, so they deserved them. FYI be careful.  |
Interesting colors
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Lost Mine is a good medium size hike, 5.3 miles with 1237 feet elevation gain. The view is continuously great. There is an interesting story why it is called lost mine. Spanish settlers came and they found mine having gold. The native Americans these area who were forced to work as labors for mining were told to wear blindfolds not to get an idea where the mine was. This is why it is called now Lost Mine. Is it true? Nobody knows, but according to the sign, most likely the mine didn't exist but just this is known as a storytelling.
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Great view
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On the way back to the Lost Mine summit, we saw deer. We saw really really interesting and very funny male deer's behavior. It was a mating season when we were there, and one male was chasing a female. The female was absolutely no interest at all in the male. She ran away very fast and went far away from him, however, he didn't give up. Then he approached her and stopped 10 meters away from her. She kept ignoring him and continued eating. Then abruptly he started walking toward her by stomping his foot. It was so funny to me. Was he trying to impress her? It seemed like that to me. Sadly to him, the female deer again ran away. She was not impressed at all but annoyed. It was very interesting sighting.
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