Guadalupe Mountains - a hike to the peak and back

Folks, today I accomplished quite a feat (for me).  I hiked to the top of the highest peak in Texas, Guadalupe Peak, at an elevation of 8,749 feet.  Admittedly, this is not such a dramatic height, but I've never hiked up 3,000 feet of elevation by myself.  Before I get to that, though, I have to cover yesterday's events.

I started out the afternoon in the little Corolla driving across the great expanse that is Texas.  I saw lots of interesting things, like...

Windmills.

The sun.

The rising temperature outside.

Yeah, that's about it.

But then I arrived at Guadalupe Mountains National Park!

The temperature had cooled off quite a bit due to a rainstorm shortly before my arrival, which made setting up camp slightly more enjoyable than it would have been in the 102 degree heat.

This morning I headed on the trail to Guadalupe Peak promptly at 6 am.   I was the first person to have signed in on the hiker registry for the day, but I knew I wanted to get an early start due to the heat and the fact that, while the NPS website said the hike should take 6-8 hours, I had no idea how long it would take ME.  I won't go into the gritty details of a strenuous 8.5 mile roundtrip hike up a mountain, but I will say that there were times that I doubted my abilities.  Here's a photo of El Capitan when I was nearing the peak.

Not too much farther along, just a little over 3 hours after I started, I arrived at the peak!

After eating lunch and poking around on the peak for an hour, I headed back down the mountain.  I wish I could say that going down was easier than going up, but the sun was beating down on me and it just seemed to take forever.  Regardless, I made it back down to the trailhead at 12:45 pm, meaning I was on the trail for just under 7 hours.  Not too bad for my first solo mountain peak!

Next up...Carlsbad, New Mexico!