| Tex-Mex Highpointing Trip Report |
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| Tex-Mex Highpointing   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Date Climbed/Hiked: Sep 25, 2006 Activities: Hiking Season: Fall | Page By: Puma concolor Created/Edited: Sep 28, 2006 / Oct 1, 2006 Object ID: 230234 Hits: 1397 Loading... Page Score: 88.09% - 8 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
September 22 - Guadalupe Peak, TexasI had definitely been looking forward to this trip. For the last couple of years, highpointing had basically been a diversion for me as well as a fun way of seeing the country. Britton Hill, Florida; Ebright Azimuth, Delaware; Mount Sunflower, Kansas. You get the point. Enjoyable travel, but not any kind of legitimate mountaineering or even any serious hiking objectives. This trip would get me back into the swing of things ... harken back to mountains such as Mount Marcy (NY), Katahdin (ME) and Mount Washington (NH). These cool Northeastern peaks and the thought of eventually exploring out west is what had gotten me hooked on the idea of highpointing in the first place. It has proven to be a hobby that can be both silly and serious, but always fun.
So here I was with my 67-year-old father in El Paso, Texas, crawling into the rental car bound for the Guadalupe Mountains National Park some 100 miles away. We had flown in from Albany, NY (elevation zero) the night before and I was a little concerned that we might feel a few effects of altitude even at the fairly moderate 8,749-foot summit of Guadalupe Peak. As we headed east on Routes 62/180 and the Guadalupe massif came into sight, it was hard not to get excited about the day's objective. More than half-a-dozen 8,000-foot peaks shot up several thousand vertical feet above the West Texas plains and the impressive El Capitan was quite a sight to savor.
The Guadalupe Massif |
The day was sunny and cool by Texas standards and a gray mass of clouds loomed over the Guadalupe massif ... a sign not necessarily of stormy weather but a warning of the winds that I would later encounter up high. My Dad and I signed through the trail register around 8:30 AM and started up the rocky exposed trail. Up until now, my father's most difficult hike in terms of total elevation gain had been on Harney Peak, South Dakota (although he swears Eagle Mountain, MN was more difficult). The rough terrain of this West Texas landscape soon proved a little too rugged for him and after having gained several hundred feet elevation, he urged me to go on ahead as he didn't feel up to the summit. Much to his credit, he plodded along at his own pace as I continued to zig-zag up the series of switchbacks leading to the top of the first ridge.
Only one other party had signed through the trail register on this Friday morning and after meeting and exchanging pleasantries with this couple, I knew I had the mountain to myself. They warned of the wind up high, but I had deduced as much by this point. I was really enjoying myself and moving well in spite of the fairly rapid gain in elevation over the last 16 hours. It wasn't until after crossing the well-known bridge that I started to notice my breathing was a little labored. Nothing to be concerned about at the moment as the summit loomed just a few hundred feet above, but a big red flag regarding my plans to not only summit Wheeler Peak, NM the following day but to also attempt a traverse of the ridge from Wheeler over to Simpson, Point 12,728, Lake Fork Peak and Kachina.
Approaching the summit |
The summit of Guadalupe proved impressive as advertised and the views down at the vegetated backside of El Capitan were breathtaking indeed. The wind whipped in gusts at what I would estimate to be speeds of about 40-50 MPH although I later heard that by late afternoon, they were blowing as fast as 80 MPH. I guess this is fairly normal for Guadalupe and when coupled with summit temperatures in the mid-50s, it proved a fairly chilly summit experience.
A spectacular day on a fine peak. September 23 - Thwarted on Wheeler Peak, New MexicoThe drive from the Guadalupe Mountains National Park to Taos, New Mexico wasn't exactly long by highpointing standards but it did take the better part of 7 to 8 hours. By the time we arrived in Taos and settled some unexpected hotel issues, it was pushing 10 PM. We had heard that the higher elevations of Colorado were getting hammered by snow, but there was no indication the snows had reached this far south. We went to bed expecting a challenging day starting with a 6 AM rendevous with SP member shknbke and his wife, but we really had no idea that we were in for an ass-kicking ... courtesy of high altitude and deep snow.
A fresh blanket of snow greets us |
For a full account of my hapless misadventures of the day, see shknbke's Trip Report. I had hiked with Kevin (his real name) at the 2005 Highpointers Konvention in New Hampshire and we'd completed a very difficult Presidential Traverse together. I really appreciate his efforts to try to make me look good in his trip report, but the bottom line is that on this day, I just got whooped. September 25 - RedemptionI'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed about not reaching the summit of Wheeler on Saturday the 23rd. It kind of threw me for for a loop for several hours as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. A big part of me wanted to go right back at it on Sunday morning. I'd scheduled a rest day into my agenda and had originally planned to head for Mount Elbert on Monday. But the heavy snow that Colorado had received - up to 3 feet in the higher elevations coupled with a whole bunch of closed roads - made me realize that I wouldn't have much chance of bagging Elbert on what would also turn out to be my fourth consecutive day of hiking. I definitely did not want to go home with two failures. So then I also thought about heading to Humphrey's Peak, Arizona for an attempt on Monday. I was almost sold on leaving town for Flagstaff but finally took a deep breath and decided the best course of action would be to just hang out in Taos, get completely acclimatized and try for Wheeler again on Monday the 25th. This turned out to be the right decision.
My Dad and I scouted out the first portion of the Williams Lake approach Sunday morning and the trail to the lake was a hard pack of snow and ice. This raised my concern about the possibility of ice on the slope to the peak particularly for the early morning ascent we planned. Warm temperatures were melting the snow during the day, but cold overnight temperatures were certainly having a freezing effect. I hadn't brought crampons so we headed into Taos to buy a pair, but were quite surprised that neither outfitting shop in town currently had strap-on crampons in stock. One of the stores was a little more helpful in trying to scare up a pair but in the end, the clerk conceded that early season snow had simply caught them off-guard. I didn't know if I'd actually need the crampons, but it would have been nice to have them in my pack ... just in case.
A lone climber approaches the Walter/Wheeler saddle |
As it turned out, crampons weren't truly needed on this route. As we started out along the Williams Lake Trail a little before 8 AM, we soon realized that the last 1.2 miles of trail to the lake was a solid sheet of ice, largely as a result of the heavy foot traffic that had been through over the weekend. The grades, however, were gentle enough that it really wasn't a big deal. And as I scouted out the route from the lake to the summit, which ascends 2,000 feet in .9 miles, I knew that in spite of a good deal of snow and ice on the slope, there was certainly enough solid ground with which to work.
As I left my Dad at Williams Lake and ascended the early part of the slope, the conditions actually reminded me of early spring hiking in the Adirondacks. A mix of snow and ice ... some of it firm, some of it soft. The weather could not have been better on this day. Bright sunshine dominated the scene contributing all the more to the outstanding mountain scenery on all sides of the lake. As I worked my way out of the last section of woods onto the scree slope, the sunshine was quick to warm although the temperatures were still in the low 30s. I gained elevation quickly and soon noted a lone climber several hundred feet ahead of me. He seemed to be moving well and upon attaining the ridge, I stopped to talk to him for a few minutes as he was now on his way down. As far as I could tell, we were the only two people on the mountain on this Monday morning ... a huge contrast to the crowds my Dad and I had encountered two days earlier along the Bull-of-the-Woods Route. I finally topped out somewhere between 10:30 AM and 11:00 AM and was very satisfied with the way it had all turned out. I knew that if I had gone home with a failure on my first big western highpoint that it would eat at me until I got another crack at it, which would be at least a year away. I could see down at Williams Lake and thought my Dad might be watching so I waved my hiking pole to let him know I'd made it, but as it turned out, he had decided to see how far up the slope he could make it. On my way down, I ran across him at 12,200 feet or about halfway up the slope. Pretty damn good if you ask me. I would have gone back up to the summit, but he had gone as far as he wanted so we headed back out and started working our way toward Denver and our flight back home the following morning.
Success |
A great trip with two more fun highpoints. 38 down, 12 tough western highpoints to go. At this point, I'm hoping to do 2-3 highpoints per year over the next handful of years. For 2007, it's looking like Humphrey's and Elbert.
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Guadalupe Peak > Tex-Mex Highpointing
