Windy windy windy

2/26/2019 Elevation 5827

We made our way back north spending the night again at Marfa, it’s just a convent stopping spot. Now we’re in The Guadalupe Mountains but to get here we had to go up this STEEP hill.

We come over this little rise, got a view of the climb we were about to make, I hit the brakes and pulled over. I knew at a glance I didn’t want to try pulling the jeep up that.

We disconnected the Jeep, I knew if we tried to pull the jeep up that hill it would be slow going at best, that is if nothing broke. We have towed the jeep up a few steep and long hills, but this hill was in a different ballpark, not only was it steep but I could, tell how long it was.

While we unhooked the Jeep a couple of Semis passed us with Mary following in the jeep it wasn’t long before the semi’s were left behind.

Sorry we were to distracted to think about getting any pictures. The pass is also really windy. It must stay windy here because they have several wind socks, along the way, the kind you see at airports, so you can gauge how hard the wind is blowing, and boy different places it was blowing, including here in the campground, I’m typing this about 7:00 am and the wind hasn’t stopped all night.

2/27/2019

I tried out my boots again, with 2 pair of socks this time, we hiked almost 3 miles, up to Smith Spring, the map said the loop trail and had a 400 ft gain, I guess that was about right. Going up you sure could tell we were up in altitude at around 5300 feet, add 400 more feet and it doesn’t take much to have you breathing hard.

The trail, mostly loose rock, lead us to a good sized spring, the small stream spilling over the rocks looked to be about 2 inches around. At the trail head was a nice sized pool that was probably 10 ft across and with the crystal clear water it’s hard to tell how deep but I’m guessing about 3 ft deep. It’s one of the prettiest springs I think I have seen, it was cool when we were there but I’m sure that more than one person thought about soaking their feet in the clear cool water, it looked very inviting.

As we hiked the landscape changed from brown dried grass, looked to me a lot like broom sage, mixed with pine trees and scrub oaks both about as tall as me. Once we got near the spring the trees change to larger pine trees, with no grass. At some point down stream the water goes underground because the wash we were following was bone dry.

By the time we made it back to the jeep the wind, that settled down after sunrise picked back up, by the time we made it to the parking lot, I could not keep my hat on my head.

When we got back Mary’s app thing  said 1000 kilo calories burned. 1000 my AXX, I burned that many just putting on my boots.

NOTE to self: Next time take the jeep to the visitors center, It’s probably a little over 1/4 mile one way, boy walking back at this altitude with a slight up hill bucking a strong wind sure gets the ole heart rate up……… My Dr, should be happy, I’m supposed to get my heart rate up while walking. We both felt this walk was more tiring than the long one we took earlier in the morning. UGH!!!

2/28/2019

Enough of the wind already!  About 2:00am last night we decided we should bring in the slide, the wind was rocking the coach and the slide topper was flapping and carrying on something fierce. I kinda thought we might end up in OZ.

Speaking of wind, this is interesting or scary depending on how you look at it. On our walk to the visitors Center they have a spot for a camp host, they don’t really need one here so the spot is empty.

Where the host would park his camper they have the shackles to anchor his camper to the ground……… did I mention that it’s windy here?

This morning we hiked to Devils Hall, it was around 5 miles total. The first part of the trail was typical gravel of different sizes, that’s common in this area. the second part of the trail followed a wash up stream, now this wan’t the kind of wash that we’re accustomed to, with fine loose gravel, no, the base was large gravel most about 2 inches around, but the wash was also littered with boulders anything from basketball sized up to a few the size of rooms but most were about the size of a car. Where they were closer together required us to climb up, over or around them. At the end where the Devils hall is the boulders were gone . There looked to be rock steps leading up to a flat hall way. I didn’t climb the steps, they were small and slick and about 7-8 feet tall. Going up would have been difficult coming back down— to dangerous for me in my book. I will say that we were both glad to get our boots off after we got back home.