December 18, 2023
Chris talks with Big Bend National Park Chief of Interpretation Tom VandenBerg about wintertime hiking in and out of The Park. What’s the difference between summer and winter hiking? In the winter you can comfortably visit areas of the lower desert that can be downright hazardous in the midday of summer – January is a great time to try out some of those desert hikes you might have been shying away from!
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Transcript for “Winter Hiking in the Big Bend”:
Intro
Welcome to the Heart of the Big Bend. It’s time to kick back, put your feet up, grab your favorite beverage or snack as we discuss declare proclaim, publicize and articulate about the wonders, magic, beauty, music and happenings here in the area known as the Big Bend of Texas.
Chris Ruggia
Hello, welcome, and thank you for joining us again for Heart of the Big Bend. This is a podcast and radio show coming to you every other week about visiting the beautiful Big Bend of Texas. Specifically, we will cover what’s happening in Alpine, an incredibly friendly small town nestled in a desert mountain valley at the heart of the Big Bend region. With easy day trips from Alpine, you can take in everything this amazing region has to offer.
I’m Chris Ruggia, Director of Tourism for the City of Alpine, and today I’m joined by Tom Vendenberg, Chief of Interpretation at Big Bend National Park.
Hey, Tom.
Tom Vendenberg
Hey, hello. Good to hear from you again.
Chris R
Yeah, I appreciate you you joining us again.
For folks who who don’t know, if you look back in our podcast feed, we have two great previous episodes with Tom about basics on the National Park and then a little more specifics about visiting the park.
Well, one of the things I really want to talk about today, Tom, is, is hiking in the winter time and what’s different between the summer and the winter. But first off, how are things going in the National Park this winter?
Tom V
It’s been going good so far.We’ve got some beautiful weather and some recent rains, actually a little more in our near forecast.
So the desert looks great right now.
It’s quite green, yeah. People are really, really loving it right now. It’s a wonderful time of the year to be in Big Bend National Park.
Chris R
Excellent. One thing I wonder – I know that we have some construction plans in the future in the basin and do you know roughly what our time frame is for those?
Tom V
The construction of the new Chisos Basin Lodge building won’t begin until this coming fall.
Chris R
This coming fall.
Tom V
The earliest it would happen would be sometime in October.
Chris R
OK. Well, that’s great to know. So sometime before then we’ll get you or Rick Jupin or somebody from the park to to come and talk, let people know what to expect in that time period when that instructions going on.
Tom V
Yeah, that’s a good idea.
Chris R
Excellent. Well, again thanks for thanks for calling in to talk to me today.
One of the things that I wanted to kind of share with people is letting them know how great a month January is in the desert, you know cuz people don’t necessarily January is kind of downtime after the holidays, but it’s it’s fairly relaxed out here, not very crowded. It’s like a perfect time to to take a little retreat.
You know, maybe you have a a frenzied holiday season and you need need a break from all that celebrating. And so it’s like the perfect time to get some quiet and some peace and some wide open space.
Tom V
It’s a good, good time of the year to come and get away from it all.
Chris R
For sure, yeah. And so one of the things that people might not necessarily think about is being out of doors in the winter time because they’ll think, Oh well, it’s it’s cold, right. But the average I would say winter time day is actually pretty comfortable to be around in, to be outside in.
Tom V
It really is. I mean between the months of November and kind of mid March, our average highs in the park are in the 70s and if you’re down in some of the lower elevation desert areas, it could be you know kind of upper 70s, low 80s which is really nice temperature to be outside.
Chris R
Yeah. Well, and of course anytime of the year you can have a cold snap or some inclement weather and so and in the winter time that’s going to mean it’s chilly you know and so especially in the mountains. And so that’s one of the things that will hold true both in the winter and in the summer is that temperature difference between the high elevation and the low elevation.
Tom V
Yeah, if you’re looking at the weather forecast for Big Bend National Park and want to know what the weather’s going to be like on your upcoming visit, it’ll typically show you the temperature at park headquarters.
Chris R
That’s kind of right in the middle.
Tom V
Yeah, that’s at middle elevation.
So, you know, if it seems a little chilly to you, you know, add 10° to that forecast and that’ll give you an idea what most of the park will actually be when you get here.
Chris R
Yeah. And so I guess before we talk about winter hiking, I want to talk just for a second about summer hiking because especially in the mountains in the Big Bend, I think it’s it’s the best weather in the state, hands down in my opinion.
And so even in the summertime it, it might get warm during the day, but not outrageous. It’s going to be cooler highs than most Texas metros throughout the warmer months.
Tom V
It’ll be definitely lower humidity, and you know, it could be 20° cooler in the mountains than it is down along the Rio Grande for sure. Even my experience is even on the hottest days of the year, which could be you know, May, June and July, if you get out and you’re hiking early in the morning and you’re off the trail by, you know 11:00, it’s it’s a wonderful thing to do.
Chris R
Yeah and that’s some of the things I wanted to kind of flag for folks is that when you’re thinking about hiking in the warm months, you want to, you want to avoid the hottest parts of the day because it does, especially we were talking about that, that temperature differentiation as you get in the lower elevations and along the Rio Grande, it’s that much warmer than the the mountain temperatures.
So when in the hottest parts of the day, it gets very, very warm. And so when you’re hiking in the summertime, you really want to focus on early morning if at all possible.
Water obviously is a huge thing, and one rule of thumb my wife and I have when we’re hiking any time of year, but especially when it’s warm, is we bring at least half again as much water as we think we’re going to need.
And when we hit half, when we’ve drunk half of that water, we stop and turn around no matter where we are in the trail. We might be 100 yards from that great view. But no, that’s the rule. No argument, no question. You hit half your water, you turn back around because we’ve had, you know, that that weakness come on, you know it’s your last part of the trail.
You’ve run out of water and it and your energy drops fast when you get just that, even that little bit of heat exhaustion.
Tom V
Yeah, the humidity is so low that you’re often you’re losing so much moisture through perspiration, but it doesn’t pool on your body to evaporate so fast that you may not even notice it.
So it’s really important. That’s a that’s a pretty good rule, Chris.
I’d say if everybody did that, we’d have fewer problems that we sometimes face here, unfortunately. That’s good, that’s good.
Chris R
It was hard one, you know we we had, we had some slightly unpleasant hike finishes, you know that that we learned from.
But then of course that holds all year round. You want to have plenty of water but when the temperatures are cooled that pressure is not as strong. And so there are parts of sorry, especially the National Park or Big Bend Ranch State Park there are some desert lower desert areas that are comfortable. They’re beautiful year round, but you can hike them with ease in the winter time. I would view some places as being accessible in the winter in a way that they just aren’t the rest of the year, yeah.
Tom V
For sure places where you can spend a little more time, you know, enjoy yourself a little bit more and not worry about getting back at a certain time. So you’re you’re absolutely right, yeah.
Chris R
Like our favorite winter hike is a is Dog Canyon, which is the northern part of Big Bend National Park. It’s down from the Persimmon Gap entry, and the first part of that hike is a little over a mile probably, and it’s just a straight shot across the open desert, so there’s no shade, there’s not a lot of even plants there.
Tom V
Yeah, you can see the destination from the trail head. And it’s very enticing. It’s about two miles each way. It’s a little more than it than it seems. And like you are correct, I mean, there’s just no shade along that trail. It can be a little uncomfortable in the summertime. This time of the year, it’s a great hike to do.
Chris R
And it’s such a a smooth walk. It’s like the ground. It’s that soft desert dirt, you know under your feet. There’s no elevation gain or loss for most of it, so it’s a really easy walk and in the winter time it’s just like a casual hike across the the desert.Open till you get into the Arroyo and into this beautiful Canyon.
Tom V
There’s some wonderful geology on display there, and then you know if someone’s looking for something a little more adventurous out in that area, you can take a side trail. If you’re up for about 3 miles more round trip, a little more adventurous hiking, you can make your way over toward a little slot canyon that’s called Devil’s Den.
Chris R
Little tricky to find but yeah.
Tom V
That’s a pretty cool thing to do, too.
Chris R
It’s gorgeous, yeah. It’s sometimes it’s hard to tell which what – what’s the turn I’m supposed to take there? Look for the Cairns.
What would you pick as kind of a something that you wouldn’t think to do as readily in the summertime, but it’s a payoff in the winter?
Tom V
Yeah, there’s a few, you know, one that comes to mind is the Chimneys Trail that can be really enjoyable. Again, it’s one of those hikes that is in the lower desert areas can be kind of uncomfortable in the summer, but in the winter time, you have all day you can explore out there and it’s, you know, the Chimneys trail is about 2.5 miles each way, little less than 3 miles each way out to a series of prominent rock features.
These, these tall fingers, these towers sticking up out of the desert floor. And they’re, you know, they’re a signpost today. They’re they’re a feature. They’re a landmark and they were thousands of years ago, too. There’s a rock art all around the base of some of those chimneys and that’s a that’s a really neat place to go it.
Chris R
Really is, yeah. It’s got this nice signpost so you know this is where we’re going. So just like the Dog Canyon hike, you can kind of see your destination.
So that gives you those cues along the way. And once you get there, as you walk around and through these pillars of rock, you get so many kind of beautiful landscape compositions to see through through the rocks.
Tom V
And that trail keeps going. If somebody you know, if you had a couple of vehicles and you could arrange some sort of shuttle or drop a vehicle off, you can make a wonderful seven mile hike from the Chimneys Trailhead to the old Maverick Rd. That’s a really great way to spend a day in the winter time.
Chris R
It is, yeah. You know, one time we we went a little farther, and that was when we had the we ran out of water, we pushed it a little too far, and we were looking for red as spring and we almost made it. But then we’re like, no, no, it’s too far.
Tom V
Yeah, that takes a little orienteering to find your way out to that spring.That spring, as you you might recall, it used to have a really big tree at it and you could see it from miles and that tree fell down a number of years ago. So it’s kind of hard to find until you come right upon it. But there’s there’s some smaller trees growing up, but that is one of the remote Backcountry springs and that’s a that’s that’s something I wouldn’t want to hike to in the summertime, but this time of the year would be great, yeah.
Chris R
Absolutely, yeah.
And we, we definitely want to point people to good portions of of Big Bend Ranch State Park as well are are really kind of that warm lower elevation desert area.
It’s going to be really comfortable all through the winter and some of it might be intimidating, let’s say during the summertime.
Tom V
You know, another trail that is really enjoyable in the winter. We try to have people shy away from in the summertime is that trail from Daniels Ranch to the Hot Springs area.
We actually renamed that trail a little while ago. It’s the Ernst Ridge Trail and that’s three miles each way and it takes you through just spectacular Canyon country. You can see the Rio Grande below you. After three miles you’ll end up at the Hot Springs area, maybe have lunch and then hike back. And that’s super cool trail to do in the winter time.
Chris R
Yeah, that whole Rio Grande Village part of the park is just going to be so much more hospitable throughout these months.
Tom V
You know, another one that comes to mind if people are really up for an all day adventure which involves driving some of the backcountry roads and just visiting one of the most seldom seen corners of the whole Big Bend is the Mariscal Rim Trail. You’d want to come and talk to a Ranger in one of the visitor centers before you headed out there, but we all hear about the Big Bend and if you really want to know where the actual bend is in the river that makes that sharp turn, that’s in Mariscal Canyon. It’d take you a couple hours of driving to get out to the trailhead, but it will take you to the top of a, you know, a 1400 foot precipice. It’s the narrowest and steepest of all of the canyons in Big Bend National Park and it is spectacular. But that is a full day adventure.
Chris R
What kind of vehicle are you going to want for those roads?
Tom V
Yeah, you would need to make sure you have a four-wheel drive vehicle with good tires and some good clearance. So that might be one of the ultimate winter hiking trails in Big Bend.
Chris R
Now, is that something that maybe some of the outfitters in the studio beauty area might be able to help people get to?
Tom V
I think they do. You could talk to some of the hiking outfitters and I know they they’ve done that in the past. It’s also a section of river that they might be able to float you through depending on the water levels, yeah.
Chris R
Absolutely. Well, is there any anything else that comes to mind that stands out around the winter time that people want to be looking out for or thinking about when they’re visiting the park?
Tom V
Well, winter is our prime season and there’s no better place in the country, I think, than Big Bend between November and March. I mean it is perfect weather. We see the weather reports and see the blizzards and the cold weather up north and we just kind of laugh here. This is perfect down here in Big Bend.
I would say, before you head out, stop by one of the visitor centers, talk to one of the Rangers going to get the latest updates on trail conditions, see if there’s any closures or any concerns. Always want to make sure someone knows where you’re heading out and and when you plan to be back.
I think that’s you know, paramount importance and then you already mentioned some important things to think about as far as water. I think in in addition to water, you should make sure you have some snacks, you know some salty snacks to kind of keep your body chemistry correct as you’re hiking and sweating. I just can’t say enough how beautiful the place is in the winter time and it’s it’s great that we’re getting some of the messages out and we see so many people that’ll come here in the summertime and they want to do all these hikes and we just, you know, you just really can’t do them very safely. This is the time of the year to get out and and really stretch your legs and Big Bend.
Chris R
If you were thinking, yeah, I want to spend the whole day outside, this is the time of the year to do it.
Tom V
Can’t beat it.
Chris R
No question. Well, Tom, thanks. Thanks so much for for calling in. Again, I look forward to our next talk and and yeah, it’ll be good to once again to let people know what what they’re going to expect into the fall and then the spring and later of next year with the with brand new facilities coming, but they’ll be a a process to get there, right.
Tom V
Yeah, it’ll be probably a couple year process until we’re on the other end of it. At that point it’ll be wonderful. The park will be so much more welcoming to, you know, today’s visitors, but you know, it’ll be a little painful for a couple years as as we are under construction and one of the most, you know, prime parts of the park, absolutely.
Chris R
So yeah, we’ll we’ll try and make sure that we get the the whole kind of breakdown of of what everybody can expect and and what they can do to appreciate and enjoy the park all through that period.
Tom V
Absolutely.
Chris R
Excellent. Well, hey, thanks again, Tom, and I hope you have a great holiday season with you and your family and of course all the family at the National Park.
Tom V
You bet, and thanks again. It was fun talking to you again, Chris.
Chris R
Anytime you want to come back, let me know. Thanks.
Tom V
OK!
Chris R
Thank all of you for joining us again for Heart of the Big Bend.
You can get more information about the show at visit alpinetx.com/podcast or search for Heart of the Big Bend on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, most other podcast apps. And for everybody listening in on the local broadcast on KVLFKALP Radio here in Alpine. Thank you so much and we’ll be back in two Fridays.
Outro
You’ve been listening to the heart of the Big Bend. Hope you liked what you heard and that you’ll find the time to experience all that the Big Bend has to offer. See you soon, partner.