Hueco Tanks State Park

We love visiting the Texas State Parks, and we found another favorite for our list today!  The address for Hueco (pronounced like Waco) Tanks is in El Paso.  But since we are parked on the west side and it is on the far eastern side, it took us an hour to get there.  We found that "hueco" means "hollows" and these depressions in the rock hold water and become tanks when it rains.  It obviously hasn't rained in a while, because this hot-tub-size hueco was dry.

Hiking on top of the north mountain is like hiking on the moon.  The terrain looks like something out of this world.  There were rocks to scramble over and huecos to scramble into.  It was a very fun hike with great views of other mountains all around.  Rock climbers from all over the world come here because the surface of the hard igneous mountains has eroded into perfect hand and foot holds that make climbing on a natural surface so fun.

An added bonus to this climbing is that it can take you to some very well preserved pictographs that were painted on the interior of caves hundreds of years ago.  Because the hollows held precious water in this desert, it has been a gathering place for people for many centuries.  One group, the Jornada Mogollons, lived here in 1150, and they are famous for their well-preserved rock art.  Many of their drawings include "masks" on faces.  In fact there are more than 200 in the park.  One group of masks can be found by scaling to the top of North Mountain and finding a duck-shaped rock.

Then we hiked from the duck towards the alligator-shaped rock, walked under his nose and straight up the mountain to a small cave entrance.  You'll have to get on your belly or back to crawl in and out of the cave.

But once inside, you have some perfect mask pictographs that have been protected from the weather for almost 1000 years so they are very clear!

We found out that the reason they are so clear is that the painting was done with colored minerals that were ground into powder and then liquid was added to make a paint.  This mineral-based paint soaked into the igneous mountains and became part of the stone.  If it was a plant-based paint made from berries, etc., it would have washed off years ago.  The pictures are quite clear, and there are over 2,000 different pictographs found throughout the park.

This cave was almost tall enough to stand up in, and had interesting shades and shadows.

  We had a great time finding the hidden cave with some hiking buddies.  They offered to take our picture right outside the cave.  Have I mentioned lately that we are having a great time?

Because of the sensitivity of the area, only 70 people are allowed into this state park at a time.  So reservations are always a good idea.  While the North Mountain is open to those 70 people on a self-guided basis, the only way to go to the other mountains is with a guide.  Again reservations are necessary.  But while the word "guide" usually means expensive, here at Hueco State Park you can get a delightful and knowledgeable guide for the $2 guide fee.  Our guide was a volunteer that has lived here in his motorhome for the last 7 winters.  We liked him immediately when we found out that he was a retired pediatrician from Oklahoma.  John explained the plants that we saw along our hike, including their medicinal uses.  Here he is talking about those Engelmann cactuses that we all love!

He led us up and over rocks and into more mountain caves where more pictographs were found.  He explained the pictures we were seeing and their ages.  Some of these pictographs were a thousand years old.

John explained the difference between petroglyphs (that are carved into the stone) and pictographs (that are painted on the stone).  At signature rock, we saw the rectangle framed petroglyph and the red painted horse pictograph together.  There were also signatures from gold miners heading west to California in the 1840's.  But sadly, there was also graffiti and signatures with fake dates that were added recently.  That is why the park was formed and is so closely monitored now.

John showed us indentions in the cave floors that were used hundreds of years ago to grind seeds and grains into flour.  Some of them were colored and were probably used to grind the minerals that became the paint for the pictographs.

After John led us over mountains and scrambled down into caves, one of the boys in our small group asked him how old he was.  John said we would never guess, and he was right.  He is 85, and attributes his good health to staying active.  He won second place in the national senior pole vaulting championships when he was 72!

We spent 6 hours in the park, and had a great time hiking and climbing.  We also found some beautiful cacti blooming, so Denisa coerced Mark into another picture since it matched his shirt today.

It was getting close to closing time, so we were heading back to the car after six hours of hiking for the day.  Mark was in the lead when the rattles sounded.  He jumped back to see this rattlesnake poised and ready to strike right in front of us.  

Denisa ran half way back up the mountain before Mark got her stopped!  We had to patiently wait as the western diamondback rattlesnake finally lost interest in us and crossed our path into the brush.  He was about 4 feet long, and was too long to get a picture of his entire body in the clearing of the path. 

Denisa was sure glad to get back into the safety of the car.  She was also glad that the rattler showed up on the very end of the day, because that experience would have certainly stymied all the fun we had throughout the day before that.  One last picture of the day, just because Denisa liked it so much, and she didn't want to end with that nasty snake picture!