Travel - The City of Carlsbad, NM, and Guadalupe Mountains National Park

 After the Davis Mountains Death March, we drove to Carlsbad.  Our dinner in between was drive-through Dairy Queen, which is much the same throughout the world, and therefore deserves little comment, and we spent the next five days, prior to returning home, in the Carlsbad area at the Home2 Suites there.  West Texas and eastern New Mexico are both in the throes of the Permian Shale oil boom - there are "company towns" scattered throughout the region made of trailers and RVs with no reason to be there other than drill rigs - and the towns of the region are no exception, Carlsbad included.  On the south side of town are a number of new-construction chain hotels, including where we stayed.  The facilities were clean and sufficiently spacious for all six of us to stretch out, and their COVID protocols were solid, with masks being mandatory in public spaces, no hot breakfast, social distancing enforced, and rigorous wipe-down protocols.  As usual for a Hilton chain, they had coffee on-tap in the lobby at all hours, but, also as usual for a Hilton chain, the coffee wasn't capable of independent thought or violent action on its own, and therefore not up to my standards.  The only area that I was disappointed, based off previous chain stays, was the breakfast, which was due to COVID measures and not to action on their part.

At home, we live in a rural setting, so delivery food is a decadent luxury that we take advantage of at least once a vacation, and our first day in Carlsbad was a recovery day after the Davis Mountains, so we took advantage of being in town to order delivery.  There were plenty of options for this.  Most of the restaurants in the area are delivering through DoorDash or one of its equivalents these days, and I was absolutely shocked to find not one but two Pizza Inns in the city, as I thought that chain long extinct.  We chose Pizza Hut; I will pass over my thoughts on that order in silence.  Similarly, I will pass over the other decadent luxury we sampled - cable TV - in silence.

Our second day in town, we went to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which is about half an hour to 45 minutes south of Carlsbad.  Our original plan had been to climb Guadalupe Peak, which is labeled as a strenuous eight-hour hike with substantial elevation change, and see the top of Texas.  However, my wife had pointed out that perhaps we were not to that stage of hiking, and our experience in the Davis Mountains had convinced me that she was right.  Instead, we chose the McKittrick Canyon trail as far as the old Pratt Ranch, past which we would make any decisions about where to go next.  I do not regret this decision one bit - but first, because these travels were during the Plague Times, I must discuss the COVID measures at the park.

Guadalupe Mountains, like Fort Davis, has COVID protocols in place.  Unlike Fort Davis, it's a fairly well known, well established park that is a common destination, so their protocols are a little less rigorous than the much smaller park - larger parties are allowed inside the Pine Ridge visitor center at the park entrance, strictly rationed.  I've been in a position to watch park rangers perform law enforcement duties precisely twice; both times I've been very impressed with their professionalism and situation handling.  This was one of those two times, as I watched someone attempt to jump the line and go in the exit door, and the ranger very politely but firmly redirected him in a tone that, even if it had lacked official backing, was an excellent display of command presence.  They have set standards, and at least while I was there were following them rigorously.

Now the part people actually care about - why do this in the first place?

McKittrick Canyon follows the one year-round stream in the park, and its whole length, up to the backcountry campground, is 7.6 miles one way.  We only went as far as the Hunter Line cabin, an old ranch structure, which was about 3.6 miles one way.  There's about 500 feet of elevation change over the course of that - about the same as the Fort Davis hike - but the change is much more gradual and doesn't involve nearly as much doubling back.  More importantly, the hike is breathtaking.  

Entering McKittrick Canyon - the surrounding limestone cliffs

McKittrick Canyon begins in a stretch of West Texas scrubland only really livened by the fact that the Permian Reef limestone has made it through the surface.  The difference between this, and the surrounding several hundred miles of driving, is that there is a creekbed down the middle of polished, blinding-white limestone, and on each side of the canyon is an escarpment of the Permian Reef, a great horseshoe of limestone at the center of which are the Guadalupe Mountains.  I will discuss the geology of this region later, but suffice to say that it is a dramatic change from the flat lands and oil rigs of most of the Permian Basin.

As you enter the canyon, the sky begins to change.  The above picture captures some of this - note the gradation of blue - but by the time you get farther into the canyon, it feels like, despite being at the same general altitude, the sky is closer, more immediate, more blue than it was at the beginning.  The difference in air quality is stark, and for anyone observant enough to notice it, it makes a convincing argument in favor of cleaner air.

More than the sky changes, though.  At some point, maybe a mile or so in, the creekbed widens out and the vegetation starts looking less like West Texas scrubland.  The most notable indicators of this, because of their bright-red wood, are the madrone trees, which we used as landmarks for determining when the party should rest and play catchup.  "Stop at the red tree" is a good direction even when you're distracted.  These are a distinct species of madrone from what my wife grew up with on the west coast, but discovering that you could, in theory, grow them on our property was a revelation.

Madrone tree, rock shelf, and most of the hiking party

The madrone trees were the first signs of what was to come.  About a mile and a half, two miles in, the trail goes from open West Texas scrubland to a mixed forest.  We identified several species of oak, at least one of maple, and most surprising of all, the kinds of tall, thick pines you associate with east Texas Piney Woods - all in addition to the prickly pear, beargrass, and yucca that we had gotten used to seeing in the scrublands.  The stream was our constant companion through this stretch, always babbling just out of sight.  The trail crosses McKittrick Creek twice where water flows even in bad years, which this one apparently is, but in both spots there are sufficient stones above water that even my more finicky children crossed without undue difficulty.  This stretch is heavily forested, and, as an infantryman with plenty of experience pushing through dense brush, I am amazed that anyone once navigated it without the trail that we followed.  Nevertheless, one man not only did, but paid to have building supplies hauled in.

Once upon a time, in the 1920s and 1930s, McKittrick Canyon had been the vacation getaway of a petroleum geologist named Wallace Pratt, whose money paid for the cabin at a break point on the trail, but whose geological expertise is stamped all over said cabin.  It is located at a fork in the creek, just above the flood plain, and is composed of mostly local stone, for certain definitions of local - it was quarried at the visitor center about ten miles away, in 1930, and hauled in up the creekbed.  Pratt's cabin features two guest rooms, a living room, a porch, and a couple of outbuildings, all built of naturally planed silt limestone quarried from an old riverbed.  Perhaps more astounding, Pratt both electrified, and ran water, to his cabin more than two miles from the trailhead.  Most of the old utility structures are still present.

Why would Pratt do this?

View of - not from - the porch of Pratt's cabin

Pratt's vacation home has been described as the loveliest place in Texas.  I would not grant it that, but I would put it in the top ten, possibly the top five.  The sky is bluer, the air is cleaner, it is surrounded on all sides by thick vegetation, stream, and mountains.  This is the setting in which we ate lunch.  We took advantage of the west-facing porch, which has shade even in the early afternoon when the sun is most direct, then set out on the last of our potential legs, down to an old line cabin of the Hunter ranch, which owned most of what is now Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

The hike out to the cabin is at the very beginning of where the McKittrick Canyon trail gets steeper; shortly past the cabin it goes through what is described as the steepest trail in the park, and we did not go that route, since it is another four miles and 2200 feet out and we were not camping.  The cabin itself isn't restored and is mostly used for storage, and there are more noteworthy caves in the area than the nearby Grotto, but the site is in very good condition and allows a sense of what it must have been like to live and ranch in the area.  One nice touch for me was that we were accosted by curious honeybees while we were there; as someone who has tried his hand at beekeeping, finding them in a place is a reminder that if bees can live there, people can live there.

All in all, we did the 6.8-mile, 300-foot hike in about five hours, including lunch break.  It is rated as a moderate hike, but I suspect that is because of climate and length rather than challenge or grade.  Only going the four miles out to Pratt's cabin is, in all honesty, an easy hike only complicated by stream crossings.  It was certainly much easier than the Davis Mountains Death March, with only a handful of places where the grade was going the "wrong" way.  The surroundings are not only very pretty, but pretty in unexpected ways, with dense forest and trees that typically have higher water demand than the scrub land surrounding the park would supply.  In fall, I am certain that it would be a riot of color.  For the moment, the McKittrick Canyon Trail is my ideal day hike.

On our return to Carlsbad, we had dinner at the Guadalupe Mountain Brewing Company, which was located right next to our hotel - close enough that even after hiking almost seven miles our legs were up to it, even the seven-year-olds'.  While they aren't really a child-friendly establishment, they aren't a child-averse establishment either, just posting a notice that kids can't be left unattended.  We technically violated the state COVID protocols by having six people at a table, but it's difficult not to have six people at a table when you're a family with four kids.  The food is typical bar fare such as subs, pizza, appetizers, et cetera, but is very well-executed, and even showing up on St. Patrick's Day, when they were very busy, we were through the line quickly and efficiently, found an open table without difficulty, and they were quick in delivering the food.  Out of the meatball subs, nachos, tacos, and pizza that we ordered, my personal favorite was the extreme nachos; if I were only to order one thing from that list, that'd be it, hands down.  I would not have thought of using beer cheese on nachos, but it worked very well, especially as an electrolyte delivery system after hiking.  The pork on both nachos and tacos was flavorful, juicy, and in the case of the nachos, crisped just right.  Their portions were such that, even after ordering basically a buffet of snack foods, we still had half a pizza to bring back to the room for kid breakfast.  Because we were within walking distance of the hotel, and because we'd earned it, my wife and I each had their mango lime cider.  It was a little dry for my tastes, but then my ideal sweetness is "maple syrup."  The flavors were well-balanced, sat well on the palate, and paired well with literally everything we ate.  Personally I am glad they had something other than beer, especially on St. Patrick's Day, and would heartily recommend anyone looking for a fun night out.

Next on this trip - points between Carlsbad and White Sands National Monument!