Desert Welcome

El Capitan (front) and Guadalupe Peak

We landed on Texas ground but the city emerging below us could not have been more western. At its core sat a collection of mid-rise buildings. To its immediate north, rumpled mountains soared from the houses that hugged its base. The thin ribbon of green marking the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border disappeared into the urban sprawl of El Paso and Juarez.

Aside from a stop for hiking hats, El Paso would have to wait. We aimed our rental car east, cutting past the southern border of massive Fort Bliss and eventually the solitude of the Chihuahuan Desert. Auto traffic on U. S 62/180 fell once we passed the businesses supporting base personnel, including a fair amount of adult establishments.

Once we shed the city, pronghorn appeared frequently, grazing among the brown grasses and shrubs. We were entering one of the more unusual border regions in the Southwest, a place seldom-visited but full of geologic wonders. Like all deserts, life was much richer than depicted. The plans don’t grow as tall and are protected from drying out, but they have a certain charm. Yucca, mesquite and creosote filled out the rolling terrain and tanned hills.

The geology of the Chihuahuan Desert told stories of wetter eras. To our north, an imposing escarpment broke through the afternoon haze. Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, was part of the Capitan Reef, a 300-million-year-old fossilized reef that extends into New Mexico and forms many of the region’s highest peaks. At that time, a shallow sea covered the region. Deep beneath the uplifted reef sit Carlsbad Caverns and other subterranean passages

Guadalupe Peak (left) and El Capitan from the southwest

 At the end of the escarpment, the unmistakable El Capitan juts abruptly from the desert. Known for its three steep sides, El Capitan has been used as a guidepost by Indians and later 19th century Western settlers. Even today, it worked better than a GPS in this corner of the Southwest.

The headquarters of Guadalupe Mountains National Park sat in the shadows of El Capitan. A stop at the visitor center mapped out the Friday hike to the top of Texas. A friendly ranger mapped out where we needed to be careful, where we would encounter false summits and whether we should worry about black bears and mountain lions (there was no water on the route so they stayed away or rattlesnakes (most of the trail never got enough sunlight to warm rocks for their liking).

The gigantic fossil reef spread out next to the highway. Texas gave way to New Mexico with the most modest of state welcome signs. Even as we pulled into White’s City, a shadowed El Capitan headlined the southern horizon.

White’s City probably should have gone as White’s Crossroads. The town only had a few hotels, a cafe, a gas station, a trading post/general store and a post office. If you felt like walking into Carlsbad Caverns National Park from your hotel room, you could (walking to the visitors center would take much longer). Quick comfort food at the Cactus Cafe put out our hunger.

 For food and supplies for our hike, we headed to Carlsbad, a bustling town of 25,000. On Carlsbad's outskirts, a collection of well-kept motor courts lines 62/180 before giving way to strip malls. We made the mistake of going to Wal-Mart for our supplies, giving up before we reached an Albertsons in downtown Carlsbad. But we got what we needed – energy bars, water, nuts, suntan lotion and a bottle of Gruet Brut to pop when we finished our hike.

With the sun setting over the Capitan escarpment, we decided to heads into CCNP. Chalk up the seven-mile drive to the visitor centers as another National Park Service engineering success. The road winds and tilts through a desert canyon. Mule deer emerged as daylight waned.

 The road curled up the visitor center, where the big elevator shafts drop 750 feet to the caverns’ Big Room. The elevators close early in the afternoon; at dusk, the natural entrance to the caverns becomes the top draw. From the lot, the hills dropped steeply to a desert plain. For as sparsely populated as this region was, lights from refineries and other manmade objects twinkled clear to the horizon.

Up above, clear skies guaranteed twinkles impossible under normal city lights. Carlsbad Caverns’ famous half-year residents were emerging to drink and feed. The Mexican free-tailed bat lives in the caverns from spring to late fall. We missed their mass emergence from the cave, if it occurred at all this early in the year.

Dusk at the Carlsbad Caverns visitors center

With dusk in full swing, we saw handfuls of bats fluttering and rising from cave, not the famous bat whirlwinds twisting upward from the cave. They would pop up, get their bearings, then shoot off into the night sky. A skunk hunted for bugs in the parking lot, drawing more of an audience than the bats.

In the amphitheatre built for bat-watching, very noise was loud. People who ignored the call for silence earned bat fly-bys. We arrived to around 50 people watching bats; by our own departure, less than 10 remained. With the bat busy with their night, we embraced our own.

Dipping away from the visitor center and park building, clear desert sky swarmed in. Without the moon’s presence, tens of thousands of stars filled the nighttime canopy. Constellations burned bright above a hazy backdrop of Milky Way. Several stops in the steep canyon provided sharp views of the star field. After a whole day spent shedding the haze of the city, the clear skies were the biggest reward.