The last time we met up with Scurry and Plod, they were in Glacier National Park hiking Mt. Brown. They missed the summit, both banged up their bodies and they vowed to thoroughly evaluate vertical hike adventures before embarking on them in the future.
If you don’t remember them, Eric is Scurry, the marmot that scurries up the trail then waits for Sheri, who is Plod, the mountain goat that plods along behind, eventually catching up. Big Bend does not have the kind of vertical climbs you find in Glacier, but it does have one signature hike to a peak. The five miler Lost Mine hike is the number 1 hiked trail in Big Bend with a little over 1,000 foot elevation change in the high Chisos Mountains. It’s no Mount Brown (thank God) but it is a nice stair-master hike.
We left Rio Grande at dawn for the 30 mile drive to the trailhead, knowing that parking is limited, but figuring we’d be among the first to arrive on a balmy Tuesday morning. Nope. We got the last parking space and Boss had to squeeze. The couple next to us was finishing up a breakfast scramble on the tailgate of their truck. They had arrived at 6:30 a.m. and figured they would brush their teeth, eat breakfast, and change for the hike in the parking lot. We hadn’t seen that kind of hold-my-place-in-line commitment since a 1990’s Black Friday at Walmart, but it got us stoked for the hike.
It was a delightfully nippy 62 on the way up. So this is what cool feels like. We had forgotten. We shed layers as the sun came over the ridge and tried to recall all the high vertical hikes of our past, and of the dozen or so we could think of, the only one we would try again would be the infamous Picacho Peak in New Mexico where we ran out of time just before the summit and had to turn around before dark stranded us. Some day!
Lost Mine is a straightforward, switch back summit where you feel the glute burn going up and the knee/hip strain going down. In between there are stunning views, flowering cacti and more lush landscape cause it’s not 110 in the desert. At the peak, we snacked on almond butter and blueberry jam sandwiches and put our layers back on trying to keep warm in blustery conditions. Eric scaled a steep ledge to capture a perfect blooming cactus that eagle-eye Sheri had picked out from the peak. Summits are satisfying especially you when you hike out of temperate conditions into alpine and snow. The cold conditions on Lost Mine had a similar exotic feel coming from our sun-baked hot box home in the Village.
On the way down we ran into Marissa who had just soaked in the Hot Springs and was stopping by Lost Mine on her way out of Big Bend en route to Terlingua. She was busy completing the same hikes we had done in four days in just 24 hours. Show off! On the other end of the spectrum, we passed a sad abandoned spouse on a bench, left behind by the stronger partner to hopefully be picked up on the descent. And, a teenager off to the side on the steepest section was having a head-in-his-hands moment. Dad tapped out and Mom went in to see if they could get their head back in the climbing game. Following the code of the mountain, we refrained from capturing these moments on camera.
Four hours later we came off the mountain and said goodbye to the high altitude sanctuary. If some future finds us in a small RV, the Chisos Mountain campground will be far and away our first choice for a return visit to Big Bend. As we rolled off the mountain in Boss, each mile saw the outside air temperature climb until we had dropped four thousand feet and gained 30 degrees. But, it was a dry heat.
