Hi. We're thinking of going back to BB this winter. Glad to see this new forum; took me a while to find it.
I'm re-posting a Mesa Anguila trip we took in late 2000; I figure it's bound to be useful to somebody out there...
John & Tess
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TRIP REPORT: Mesa de Anguila, Big Bend National Park, TexasThis is being sent to various friends, relatives, the BB chat page, etc…so apologies in advance for the length. Skip over whatever bores you…
Take care,
John & Tess
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WHEN: 11/27-12/1, 2000
SPECIAL THANKS: Jack on the Big Bend chat page for all the critical water info. Jim (or Joe?) the ranger at Lajitas who told me about terraserver.com, where you can view aerial photographs of the mesa. Big Bend Shuttle for a friendly conversation and good shuttle service.
HIKE: a 5-day, 4-night exploration of the mesa. Ascend the mesa at Lajitas and descend towards Terlingua Abaja. No re-supply, carry in all food and hope to find water up on the mesa.
ARRIVAL: Tess & I flew in from DC and met my sister Katharine in Austin. Drove to Lajitas on Sunday and stayed at Lajitas on the Rio Grande for the evening. Hadn’t driven into BB via this route before. Seeing Santiago Mtn. & Elephant Mtn. from the west was stunning, catching the sunset as we drove south.
NEAR DISASTER—DAY ONE: Monday morning we planned to hit the trail at about 9am but a series of near disasters delayed our start until 12:30. I woke at about 6:30 with the coyotes yipping and light just beginning in the sky. The mesa, previously hidden in the darkness of last night’s arrival, began to reveal itself. My excitement mounting, I turned to go in and pack up when I noticed a flat tire on the truck. Darn! Since we were leaving it for Big Bend Shuttle this would have to be dealt with now.
After finally mastering the sadistic spare & “jack” setup of my sister’s ’94 Ford Ranger, I changed the tire and rolled the bad one towards the rear of the vehicle. With my left hand I tipped the tire over and down to the ground but I was careless and the tire bounced back up about 4” and slammed into my straightened & stiffened fingers…YEOWWW! Pain shot through my fingers--the whole hike was in doubt for a few minutes until it was clear that my fingers weren’t broken, just very badly sprained.
I decided to shower up & see what happened with the damaged digits. The hot shower felt good…and the water pressure was awesome. Finally ready to rinse, I maneuvered my back directly under the nozzle. Mmm…AAHHH! The cold water had abruptly ceased. I rocketed screaming out through the shower rod and curtain in a desperate attempt to escape the scalding water; my entire back turned bright crimson within seconds. Instinctively, I grabbed for a towel—OWWW! I had, of course, forgotten that my swollen fingers couldn’t bend or grip. My back felt like it was melting and as tears welled I began chuckling at the sheer absurdity.
Well…you get the idea. Five hours, two tire-plugs and a hotel-discount later we finally embarked towards the saddle leading up to the mesa. My back was fine and the fingers started working again the next morning. Nothing like a little excitement!
MESA: For the uninitiated, consider the Mesa de Anguila to be a 12x5 mile lozenge with pointed ends and the 12-mile span aligned roughly WNW-ESE. The Rio Grande defines the mesa’s southern edge, mainly undulating through the Santa Elena canyon (1500’ sheer cliff walls). At Elena’s mouth the mesa’s southern cliff face turns back on itself about 135 degrees and heads NW, the cliff now tracing a huge fault line and forming the mesa’s northern edge. A few miles further NW Brouja Canyon jaggedly interrupts the cliff line before it heads back to Lajitas at the mesa’s WNW tip. Without climbing gear you can only reach the mesa from the Lajitas end. [edit 3/08 -- not true. one can ascend & descend easily via the old trail leading to the Mesa via Dam Tinaja -- this is an isolated & spectacular route]
On top of the mesa are many smaller mesitas as well as the two most prominent formations, Canyon Flag (3900’) and Mariposa, which dominate the central portion of the mesa. The sheer size is exciting. As soon as you ascend the saddle from Lajitas you can see the deep slice of Santa Elena 12 miles away as the crow flies [edit 3/08 -- patently false...can't see the canyon from here, must have been a little revisionist exaggeration on my part
however, we did climb the highest point at the mouth of the saddle. I suppose one might be able to see the canyon from there; maybe that's what I remembered?]. There are also several small canyons, many deep drainages and thousands of smaller washes on the mesa. These washes look like cute little ripples when viewed from a distance but don’t be fooled—it takes a long time to get to something that looks tantalizingly close!
ROUTE: Each day involved 8-12 miles of hiking.
DAY ONE: Lajitas to Tinaja Blanca and then camp on the southern shoulders of Flag above the cliff.
Steep ascent then moderate. Good trails.
DAY TWO: Canyon Flag to the northern mesa rim near Elena. Sometimes arduous in the washes. No trails to speak of much beyond Canyon Flag.
DAY THREE: Brunch at Elena, then NW along rim, passing Brouja cleft on right and Tinaja Grande on left. Ascend NW up the wash with mesita on left until intersection with Canyon Flag crossover trail. Long day. No trails.
DAY FOUR: Descend the mesa down the steep path at the NW edge of the northern rim and follow at the bottom of the cliff going back SE to Brouja canyon. Long day. Some tough going both on mesa and at bottom, combined with very easy parts. The actual descent is steep at times. Sketchy trail on top only.
DAY FIVE: Explore Brouja and hike out to Terlingua Abaja. Piece of cake.
We stuck to the schedule well but lollygagging in the mornings caused a few late arrivals at camp, especially at Brouja. We got to camp late and had to get water from Brouja, about a mile away over many hillocks. On our way back the last light faded as we meandered and climbed over the moonscape. Upon reaching the plain where we’d left our packs we found we hadn’t taken a compass bearing (drat!) and we all raced out onto the plain (wearing our feeble little headlamps) trying to find our packs. We finally spotted some dark shapes about 50 yards away—woo hoo! Although we laughed it was really quite a close call. I think that even five minutes later we wouldn’t have seen them at all.
VIEWS: The views rivaled any I’ve seen. Positioned anywhere on the northern cliff edge between Brouja and Elena you could see a stunning 360…Canyon Flag and Mariposa back to the west, the Chisos Mountains, Mule Ears, Castellan et al to the NE, and Elena and the wildly canyoned Mexican Chihuahuan Desert to the south. Looking NW you could trace the rippling uplift in the mesa beyond Brouja as it leaned out over the desert below. Sunsets climaxed over Mariposa and were suitably surreal, although there were too few clouds to really do it justice.
The northern view (Chisos, etc) is especially cool due to the pent-up suspense factor. After you pass Mariposa and Canyon Flag the mesa devolves into a thousand washes, mainly running NNE-SSW. To get to Elena you need to constantly bear E & NE, cutting the corner of these washes to get to the northern rim of the mesa, where you can follow the cliff edge comfortably along to Elena without becoming coyote bait out in the furrows. Since the northern uplifted mesa rim is several hundred feet higher than the southern rim, it’s not until you finally climb out of that last blind wash that you finally see the 8000’ Chisos peaks and what seems like the whole world in front of you. Awesome.
ISOLATION: Although we saw NOBODY until Terlingua Creek there were signs of civilization. Monday night you could actually see some light pollution from Lajitas looking west back towards the saddle. Tuesday night we could see the lights of a small village somewhere in Mexico. Daytimes on the mesa with any view except north off the rim felt truly isolated. Overall though, I’d say that the ’98 Marufa Vega hike in Big Bend seemed more like being in the wilderness.
FAUNA: Aside from the snake (see below) we also saw various hawks and eagles, including one that soared above Terlingua Creek for about 20 minutes showing off as he searched for prey. He hung out so long we finally got bored with him and he left, having lost his audience. A very cool but regrettably dead spotted newt or salamander at Grande. A large, multi-pointed mule deer buck who we flushed from a wash on top of the mesa. A frog. Heard coyotes in the mornings and saw numerous tracks but no sightings. Smelled javelina, numerous tracks and a nifty skull on the flats near Brouja but no sightings until Tess saw one from the car north of Persimmon Gap. Numerous deer tracks. An unidentified mammal in a wash on the mesa (coyote pup? Bobcat?). Katharine sighted all four tarantulas, although it’s worth noting that twice she didn’t see them until walking past them, a matter of inches. Dozens of swallows cavorted in Santa Elena Canyon and over the cliffs. They buzzed us and chittered away while we brunched at the intersection of the two cliffs; 1500’ down—the desert on one side and the Rio Grande emerging from Santa Elena on the other side.
FLORA: The desert was IN BLOOM! It was truly amazing. Yucca and giant dagger, 6 or 7 different types of yellow wildflowers, 2 or 3 in purple and some in white as well. The yellow flowers were literally everywhere, cheekily blooming even in the most lunar of landscapes. Many of the washes resembled lush gardens, especially the drainage running NW from Grande (bear right as Grande’s cliff peters out on your left and a mesita appears in front of you) all the way up to where it intersects the trail coming over from Canyon Flag. At times I thought I was in a patio or courtyard in Seville perhaps…the slick-rock underfoot and yellow flowers tracing the walls. Just about ¾ miles ENE of Brouja we camped in a sandy plain (about ¼ mile by ¼ mile) that was almost entirely dotted with yellow flowers, in some places so thick you couldn’t see the sand beneath.
Other than flowers there were many grasses, ocotillo, lecheguilla, nopal (prickly pear), some small “fuzzy” columnar cacti and just a touch of small scrub chollo on the NNW side of the mesa. Also creosote (in bloom) leather-stem and lots of acacia. Down off the mesa the chollo increased, being joined by a healthy dosage of horse-cripplers the closer we got to Brouja.
TEMPERATURES & WEATHER: The timing and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. It rained sporadically (rare!) over the 2-3 weeks before we arrived, filling the mesa with water and the desert with flowers. We had nary a threat of precipitation and clear, starry skies. The moon was waxing towards ¼ and set before midnight. The Milky Way, Orion, etc were crystalline. No planes, no noise pollution.
Temps varied in the 70s touching 80 during the day and dropped down to the low 30s at night. We had frost on our packs one morning. We were caught in a cold, heavy dew overnight and spent a miserable hour or two that morning damp in the chill breeze before the sun dried everything out. The temp went from the upper 30s to the low 60s in a couple of hours. We also were “dewed” in the plain near Brouja but had set up the tarp when we felt the clamminess creep in.
NEAR DISASTER—DAY FIVE: So, there we were. Happily tromping along in the dry wash, heading towards Terlingua Creek where our truck lay waiting. Five glorious, perfect days on the mesa under our belts.
We reach the creek. Across are some nice cottonwoods and the gauging station. On our right is a sandy ledge about waist-high. Perfect pack-height. The shade is also appealing as we shrug off our packs onto the ledge and start pulling out our lunch stuff. We toss various things here and there on the ledge and next to the thick grasses at the back of the ledge. I sit on the ledge, next to my pack. Tess looks back to get something she’d forgotten…
…and sees the snake. A big (5-6’ long), thick (2-2.5” diameter), RATTLESNAKE! He is NOT happy, and rattles and hisses as we leap away to safety. Apparently all of us had been bustling about within a foot or two of this literal snake in the grass for several minutes, and as he slowly moved off we reflected on our dumb luck.
MAPS & COMPASS: We thought we would need the USGS topo quads, a good compass and the skills to use both. Turns out all you need are the topos and common sense. A good thing since we didn’t really have good compass-related skills. The topos are critical however…finding water, the northern descent down the cliff and avoiding cul-de-sacs make these maps a necessity. [edit 3/08 -- now I would be using GPS, perhaps also taking along paper topos...]
WATER: We originally assumed that we would have to hike in carrying ridiculous amounts of water, but Jack’s info, the fortuitous rains preceding our arrival, and the reports on the BB chat page allayed our fears. We ended up ascending with just two liters each and counted on finding water at Tinaja Blanca 7-8 miles later up in the middle of the mesa. We did. There was water everywhere! All the tinajas were full and countless other washes and drainages held water as well. We did carry a lot of water east from Blanca to Santa Elena as there were no tinajas en route and the drainages tilted south towards the river, away from the northern rim route we wanted to take. Since we only found water in a couple of washes among the dozens that needed traversing we felt better for having schlepped the extra 10 lbs. of water all day. For the remaining 3 days we were back down to carrying a couple of liters each as we knew Grande would be full and there was water throughout our descent. We counted on finding water in Brouja Canyon after the descent from the mesa and we weren’t disappointed there either—a virtual Appalachian stream danced among the rocks long before actually ascending into Brouja’s mouth. Yes—the water was FLOWING!
Fwiw, we decided to ditch our Pur Scout filter for this trip and went with the Pristine (Canadian brand) water treatment. AKA Aquamira (US brand). Combine 7-14 drops of part A with an equal amount of part B. Yields chlorine dioxide. Wait 5-10 minutes then dump solution into 1 liter of water. Shake and in 15-30 minutes the water is ready to drink. Tastes like a mountain stream…even that funky old green tinaja water. Increase dosage appropriately for larger quantities of water. Two 1-oz bottles treat 15-30 gallons. Kills crypto, giardia, viruses, bacteria, etc. Prefilter with a bandana to remove the fun chunky stuff. Works as advertised and saved all that energy spent endlessly pumping, and then cleaning the filter when it clogged. Bye bye Pur.
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Hope this helps out any potential Mesa Anguila hikers...
