Windows Trail - Our Last Day in Big Bend with the Spring Break Crowd

This was our last day at Big Bend National Park, so we were up early to take advantage of the cool temperatures--and to be sure we could get a parking place at the trail head! This is officially the beginning of spring break, and we have heard rumors of the crowds that fill this park in the middle of March. The sun was just rising as we got close to Chisos Basin, lighting up the mountains. We had already driven 45 minutes from our campground to get here, so we were up early this morning!

We parked our pickup at the Chisos campground amphitheater, because the ranger told us that would save around a half-mile of steep hiking by parking here rather than starting at the lodge. It didn't take long to see the notch in the mountains straight ahead. That is the "window" that we are hiking towards on this Windows Trail.

The Mexican jays were patrolling the Windows Trail, hoping for a snack from the many hikers they'll see today.

This hike goes downhill towards the window, so we knew that we would have to go back up-hill to eventually get back to the pickup. In the meantime, we were hiking down into a valley ringed by mountains. This valley is filled with cactus, including the Engelmann cacti surrounding this Engelman on the trail.

Another interesting cactus is this large agave plant that we are hiking beside. It's hard to tell just how big these plants are in a picture . . .

unless you have a human standing beside them. Denisa is trying to stand close, without getting speared by the dagger points on each of the leaves.

The sides of each of those leaves is also equipped with saw-blade-like points.

As new leaves unfurl from the center of the plant we can see that the saw blade is imprinted on the middle of the leaves on this very healthy plant. The more common name for this large agave is "century plant" because they grow so long. Instead of 100 years, the more average life of the century agave is around 20-30 years. During that time they are growing bigger and storing up fuel to reproduce. Then instead of unfurling new leaves from the center of the plant, a large stalk will start to stretch to the sky.

That flowering stem grows quickly, until it opens into yellow blooms at the top of its 20-foot stalk. We haven't seen any blooming this year yet, but we see some of the dead stems with the brown seed pods still in place from years past. In our other trips through the desert, we have seen stems as big around as telephone poles, and almost as tall.

The process of growing that huge stem and flowers takes all the energy of the plant. That beautiful 30-year-old agave plant will die soon after it blooms. You can see the green century plant has turned brown and died in the pictures above and below.

While you were reading about century plants, we were hiking further on the trail, and now we are approaching the Oak Canyon section.

While it was nice and cool early this morning, the temperatures heat up quickly in the sunny desert. So we are glad for the shade of the canyon walls already this morning.

After a long series of stairs and boulders we finally got to the destination of this hike--the window.

It's actually a pour-off, where the water from a big rain will pour off this rocky peak. The action of the water and the countless visitors that have made their way to the window have polished this gray stone into a slick glassy surface. Considering that a few feet behind Mark is a 220-foot drop-off, one must be careful not to slip on this slippery surface.

That's why Denisa is standing further away from the opening. Besides, that allows for better lighting than the shadowy pictures closer to the window.

We had a dozen people right behind us on the trail, so we didn't have long to take pictures and enjoy the view. When we turned around to head back to the trail head, we met many more hikers. One couple told us they had lengthened their hike by going up a spur trail. But they warned us that this extension would include a steep hike straight up the adjacent mountain. So of course, we headed up the incline.

By hiking to a rock outcropping, we could actually look down on the Windows Trail now far below us.

While we hiked uphill and now felt quite high in elevation, you can see that the adjacent mountain is much much taller!

This spur trail is the Oak Spring Trail, with some great views of the desert valley far below. We have wandered into another of God's wonders today!

We can look down below to see the zig-zags of the Oak Springs Trail that continues for miles down that valley. We think we'll stay up high, instead of continuing on this unplanned trail today.

While the Windows Trail was great, we really like that we accidentally found out about this really fine higher addition.

Mark never seems satisfied to stop until he has scrambled to the farthest peak possible.

You can see his silhouette on that knob on the right, with views of the high mountains on the left and the low valleys to the right.

From here, the Oak Springs Trail heads down to the valley, so it is time for us to return back to the Windows Trail.

Since our early morning start on the trail, the traffic on this popular trail definitely picked up. This is the most popular trail in Big Bend Park, and we knew it would be busy on this spring break weekend. After we talked about the throng of hikers heading towards us, Denisa started counting. We met over 100 hikers on this short stretch of the trail. Spring break has definitely arrived in Big Bend! Spring has arrived in other ways as well. The Texas mountain laurel was blooming a wonderful shade of purple to brighten up the desert.

After meeting a steady flow of people, suddenly we met no one for the rest of the trail. We realized later that all the parking places were full in this Chisos Basin section of the national park, and the rangers had closed the road to get here. No more cars heading this way meant no more hikers starting the Windows Trail.

Our 5-mile Windows trail hike turned into a 6-mile hike with a lot more elevation gain than we had planned. We had just enough energy to walk up to the amphitheater where we found shade and benches to sit and eat our picnic lunch. We were joined by Mexican jays, who seem to love to pose for pictures.

We'll post the rest of those blue bird pictures while we describe our drive out of the park. We drove up to the Chisos Basin visitor center, only to find that a ranger was re-routing vehicles away from the full parking lot. He had the tough job of telling people that everything was full, and they should try to come back later in the day. Those people had already driven 7 miles from the main park road, only to find they couldn't hike or do any of the Chisos Mountain activities because of the crowds.

We were glad that we had gotten up early and had already done our hiking for the day. When we drove the seven miles back to the main road, we saw that 24 cars were in a line at the junction. When our car left, one car was allowed to drive to the Chisos Basin. We hope they found a parking place when they got there. It looked like it would take a very long time for that increasingly long line of cars to get permission to procede to Chisos! For the last time, we drove the 18 more miles to the west entrance of this national park, meeting a steady stream of cars that were adding to the crowded conditions inside the park. As we exited, we counted 32 cars waiting in line to enter the national park. The crowds were getting worse!

We had to speed up our travel and get to Big Bend a little sooner than we had originally planned because we couldn't get camping reservations during spring break. But we are glad we did come 5 days earlier than planned. Our earlier arrival meant that our last day in Big Bend National Park was the first day of a very busy spring break week. Based on the traffic and crowds we have seen today, we're quite happy to be heading to less hectic areas of Texas tomorrow.