This column is part two of a series on public lands in Texas.
I was in desperate need of a new adventure to pull me out of a deep funk that had set in after my Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike. I needed something to get me out of bed and move me forward, literally. Enter the poet, wildland firefighter, and long-distance hiker known on the trail as Haiku.
It’s fitting that I met Haiku on the literal and figurative high point of my Pacific Crest Trail hike, Mount Whitney, highest point in the lower 48 states. We unexpectedly bumped into each other at 14,505’ above sea level on another planet, where our home state of Texas felt a million miles away. But that meeting would foreshadow future mountain-top experiences that we’d share back in Texas.
After catching a mindblowing sunset from that otherworldly peak, Haiku’s pace would leave me in the dust, and he’d press on to reach the Canadian border several days ahead of me. But as we would both reunite at the Trans-Pecos Festival in Marfa after our PCT hikes, our friendship and adventures would continue.
As PCT thru-hikers from Texas, we bonded over our shared cynicism for a variety of sacred Texan cows, Haiku’s jaded perspectives cutting much deeper than mine, and generally proving more accurate in time. With a shared hunger for more hiking, we began discussing future adventures. And in what would be a welcome twist, Haiku invited me on a journey through my own region that would, in short, help pull me out of that post-trail depression and deeply renew my love for Far West Texas.
If the national park system is America’s “best idea we ever had,” as novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner once put it, I’d argue that Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park are, together, Texas’ best idea. These two incredible parks combine to create a million-plus-acre desert, river and mountain playground across the most scenic and epic landscape Texas has to offer. And there’s an unofficial 100+ mile route that connects these two rugged parks, envisioned and created by one of my best friends and former state parks leader Ky Harkey.
This amazing multi-day backpacking route begins in the northwest corner of Big Bend Ranch, traverses the state park, crosses FM 170 in Lajitas, enters the national park and climbs up and over the Mesa de Anguila and finishes with a victory lap around the South Rim before descending to the Chisos Basin.
While I’d helped shuttle a vehicle for Ky’s initial 100-mile hike in 2018 and had a general sense of the route, up until then I had only hiked the 50+ mile section that traversed the state park. I was well overdue to hike the full route. That’s when I got a text from Haiku in early November of ‘21. I rearranged some plans and soon I was all in. The excitement of a new adventure was back.
Suffice it to say, neither the state nor the national park recognize or encourage this route for various reasons, some of which involve concerns of limited search and rescue resources becoming tied up by those inexperienced with long-distance desert hiking. So I won’t explicitly mention the name of this unofficial route or provide any juicy details other than to say it’s named after the region (the Big Bend) and a round number of the miles it covers (100).
On a cool day in mid-November after securing our backcountry permits, Haiku, his hiking partner, Cowpatty, and Gamechanger (that’s my trail name) made it to the remote starting point in the northwest corner of the state park and began walking southeast toward our finish line, the distant Chisos Mountains. We moved across a wild and seemingly inhospitable expanse of the Chihuahuan Desert with the ease that comes with thousands of miles of desert travel experience.
In four days’ time we traversed 107 miles through lovely cottonwood-lined arroyos with gurgling streams, we hiked above the second and third highest waterfalls in Texas, caught some beautiful golden hours, sunsets and sunrises, ventured across the beautifully remote and harsh Mesa de Anguila, night hiked into a full moon rise and witnessed the red moon of the lunar eclipse at 3 a.m., howled with coyotes, drank chip tequila from plastic flasks, crossed lunar landscapes and badlands, laughed our faces off at Haiku’s dry wit and silly antics, climbed up into the Chisos Mountains for what felt like a victory lap around the South Rim, and had the smoothest 107-mile trail experience possible across such seemingly harsh terrain, covering a marathon distance per day.
We were in the best shape of our lives hiking across the very best landscapes that Texas has to offer. It was, in short, a magical trek through the very best wilderness Texas offers.
After hiking through 700 miles of Southern California desert on my Pacific Crest Trail journey some six months prior, I realized that no 100-mile stretch of PCT desert could hold a candle to what we experienced over those four days in the Big Bend.
To top off our peak Big Bend experience, we drove from the Chisos Basin to Boquillas Crossing just before the newly reopened port of entry closed its gates for the day, and we caught the last ferry raft across the Rio. We hopped in the back of a truck and made our way to Jose Falcon’s, where we got a room and a delicious cabrito taco dinner and then extra beers for a walk down to the local hot springs. We caught a lovely sunset reflecting off the calmly flowing waters of the Rio as we soaked our trail-weary bodies in the gushing agua caliente.
Looking back toward the Chisos Mountains from the sleepy village of Boquillas, I was basking in the afterglow of such a great hike and my mind was opened again to new adventures and new vistas in Far West Texas. The experience re-filled my cup, and it made me thirsty for more. I began to see new possibilities in this vast region, and I was reminded that, even after a 100-mile hike, there is so much more I have yet to explore of this million-acre desert playground.
The hike was, in a sense, a celebration of Texas’ best idea: the Big Bend as public land. I returned to Texas and saw with new eyes a vast region where the Texan spirit is truly free to roam. An inspired landscape that opens wide its prickly arms and says Yes. An unfenced land where wild desert dreams run free.
As Texas as it gets.
As it turned out, Far West Texas had cured my post-trail blues. And it wholly reframed for me the Big Bend region. What I could now see was an expansive and contiguous desert landscape where I was truly free to roam. The Big Bend once again felt big. And I once again felt strangely at home roaming this wild expanse, embraced by those prickly arms.
That epic hike got me moving again. And it planted the seed for another adventure almost exactly one year later, one that would also feature Haiku. I began scheming what a friend and park ranger referred to as another one of my “hair-brained hikes,” a 75-mile hike through Texas biggest state park, which I named the Big Bend Ranch 75.
In celebration of Texas’ biggest state park, an ideal park for desert backpacking, the route would hit several waypoints that highlight the very best that the 300,000+ acre Big Bend Ranch has to offer. Where wild desert dreams run free.
To be continued.
Tyler Priest is a former park ranger and outdoor guide who plots adventure by day and bartends by night. He can be reached at tylerdrewpriest@gmail.com.