Big Bend a BIG secret

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DEAD HORSE MOUN­TAINS,  TEXAS — Before you head out into Big Bend National Park’s awe-inspiring back­country,  a ranger will tell you how to avoid the potential perils of the Chihuahuan Desert.

Drink lots of water to ward off heat exhaustion. Wear long pants to protect your legs from thorns and cacti. Secure your food to pre vent nocturnal visits from black bears or the cute little desert peccaries known as javelinas.

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But you won't be told a thing about the burros -- domesticated donkeys -- that wander across the Mexico-U.S. border into the largest and most spectacular national park in Texas.

So shortly after dawn on New Year's Day, when a trio of four-legged illegal aliens wandered up to my campsite overlooking the Rio Grande, I thought it was a bright idea to stick my head outside my tent and say hello.

The burros weren't impressed. Steam escaped from nostrils as they snorted aggressively and made pawing motions you typically associate with territorial stallions, not comically cute donkeys that nonetheless stand almost as tall.

Since I'd been charged by large mammals before -- once by a feral horse and another time by a bison -- I knew enough to retreat into my tent. I sat and listened to my heart pound in my chest until the clip-clop of retreating hooves signalled the end to this unlikely donkey terror.

"Nobody warned us about burros," muttered my wife as we packed up our gear in record time, donned our backpacks and began our trek out of Boquillas Canyon, a 250-metre deep valley that encloses the Rio Grande in the southeastern corner of If you've never heard of this park, you're in good company. Only about 350,000 people visit Big Bend every year, which means an average of less than 1,000 people a day are present in a park that's larger than the state of Rhode Island but easily rivals better-known southwestern destinations such as Grand Canyon, Zion and Death Valley National Parks.

Located in a relatively isolated corner of West Texas, along a large curve in the Rio Grande, Big Bend National Park offers hikers, paddlers and wildlife watchers not just solitude, but a surprisingly diverse array of desert, mountain and canyon scenery. The park is basically three wilderness destinations wrapped into one.

Big Bend's outskirts are dominated by the stark beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert, the driest of North America's four true deserts, where yucca stalks, prickly-pear cacti, creosote bushes and the claw-like lechuguilla plant poke out of the otherwise rocky landscape.

But in the centre of the park, the tree-covered Chisos Mountains rise out of the desert to a height of almost 2,500 metres, which is comparable to smaller peaks in the Rockies. The pinyon-and-juniper forests near the top of the citadel-like Chisos are home to mountain lions, white-tailed deer and a spectacular network of hiking trails.

The third component of the park is the Rio Grande itself, which passes through impressive chasms such as the Boquillas Canyon and the Santa Elena Canyon, the latter easily reached on a short trail in the southwest corner of the park. Even though the river serves as an international border, paddling trips can be arranged, and you can camp along the banks without ever noticing a border patrol. While burros cross the river with impunity, the desert terrain is too treacherous for most human interlopers.

Most actual tourists who visit Big Bend head straight for the Chisos Mountains, home to both easy walks and relatively strenuous climbs. If you're in decent shape, you must make the 20-kilometre return trek to the South Rim of the mountains, where a nearly sheer face drops 800 metres to the desert below. From the rim, you can see the entire southern half of the park and well into Mexico, if the smog that wafts in from the twin border cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso -- 400 kilometres to the northwest -- isn't too thick.

Black bears and mountain lions are occasionally spotted in the Chisos. But the animals you're most likely to see in Big Bend are white-tailed deer in the mountains, roadrunners and kangaroo rats on the desert floor and the pig-like javelinas near the Rio Grande.

Wildflowers are in bloom in March and April, which is one of the busiest times of year in the park, in terms of tourist traffic. But "busy" is a relative term in such a big place: The early spring is still the best time to visit, as the midday sun isn't too brutal and nighttime temperatures are more than bearable, especially for winter-hardened Winnipeggers.

Midsummer hiking, on the other hand, is dangerous in Big Bend due to the extreme heat, lack of shade and absence of water. And the dead of winter, when I visited, will require you to prepare for sub-zero nighttime temperatures and the possibility of snow.

But the amazing array of scenery more than compensates for the extremes of the desert climate. Laurence Parent's Hiking Big Bend National Park lists 47 trails in and around the park, ranging from easy day hikes and to gruelling multi-day treks.

If you have a tent, backpack and a good pair of hiking boots, I strongly recommend the Marufo Vega trail, a 22-kilometre loop in the southwest corner of the park. This overnight trip, which includes a couple of extremely steep sections, takes you up from the desert floor, over the Dead Horse Mountains and down to the Boquillas Canyon, where you may camp along the Rio Grande, in the shadow of the Sierra del Carmens. You can purchase a detailed Marufo Vega trail map at one of the park's four ranger stations.

If you encounter any burros along this trail, keep quiet and you should be OK. And I don't just mean in the presence of the donkeys.

On my way out of the park, when I told a ranger about my encounter with aggressive asses, he couldn't help but chuckle. "I've never heard of burros behaving like that," he said. "They usually run away as soon as you approach them."

IF YOU GO

Big Bend National Park: Open year-round. Entrance fees, good for seven days, are $20 per vehicle. Official park info: www.nps.gov/bibe. Also consider Hiking Big Bend National Park (Falcon, US$14.95) and Trails Illustrated Big Bend National Park (National Geographic, US$11.95).

Get there: After flying from Winnipeg to either Austin or San Antonio, you'll need a day to make the road trip to Big Bend. From Austin, drive west on State 290 and Interstate 10 to Fort Stockton, then head south to the park on State 385. Give yourself eight hours. From San Antonio, head west on State 90 to Marathon and then head south on State 385. Give yourself seven hours and keep an eye on your fuel gauge. You may also combine these routes to make a round trip.

Camping: Big Bend National Park has three developed campgrounds, at Chisos Basin (at 1,700 metres above sea level, the best staging ground for mountain hikes), Cottonwood (near Santa Elena Canyon in the southwestern section of the park) and Rio Grande Village (in the southeast, near Boquillas Canyon). Nightly fees for all three are $14 per site.

Backcountry campsites are $10 per night and require a permit, obtainable at one of the park's four visitor centres. In the busy Chisos Mountains, you must camp at designated sites. You can camp almost anywhere you like in other areas of the park, provided you keep away from roads, trails, water sources and historic sites.

Hotels: The only hotel in the park is the 72-room Chisos Mountains Lodge (chisosmountainslodge.com, 877-386-4383). Rooms and cottages run from US$108 to $137 per night. There are motels outside the park in the towns of Terlingua, Marathon and Alpine. The most upscale is the historic Gage Hotel (www.gagehotel.com, 432-386-4205) in Marathon, which has 36 rooms (US$90 to $291), three detached houses (US$320 to $381), 10 hectares of gardens and a bar menu that includes smoked brisket sliders.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 3, 2010 E1