What is Your Most Amazing Moment in Big Bend?

[Casa Grande]

man, this is my favorite thread of all time. I'm glad it's still moving forward. I hope everyone on the board posts their own!  I love to live vicariously through your experiences  :D

[mescalero]

I can't seem to pin down my best moment, but I'll share some.  First, When I was eight years old I remember watching Hailey's comet from Grapevine Hills early in the morning.  I'd like to see it the nest time around also.  Second, sitting in the bar in Boquallas at sunset while Doris strummed away at Janis Joplin songs. Third, a solo night at Laguna Meadows and encountering a cougar.  Next, bivying the night out on Emory Peak  during harvest moon.  Truly, a land of extremes...

[TexasGirl]

Well, only one trip--so far--to choose from, but there were many awesome moments.  I think in the midst of my misery on Pinnacles trail, being enveloped in a cloud of butterflies, was pretty well up there.

[jimbob]

After coming to Texas in August 1979 for school, I drove to Big Bend at Christmas break. Just driving out, I was captivated by the landscape of west Texas and especially the park.  I camped in the Basin, intending to hike the Outer Mountain Loop.  The morning after my arrival, I drove over to Blue Creek Ranch to cache water.  The light and view during the ride over to and down Ross Maxwell Drive was special.  It was a clear and beautiful morning, probably not a lot different from many others but something entirely different for someone used to the eastern woodlands.  At that point I realized that BBNP was an exceptional place.  

The trip, the hike, everything was great but the memory of the ride over to Blue Creek Ranch is what really stayed with me.  I took the same ride last month on a clear morning after a front had come through. Neither the view nor my feelings about it had changed.

[riverrat]

Only one trip for me as well but I'll never forget it...I was in a state of awe for most of the week so pinpointing the "most special" may not happen but one of the most memorable was captured in this pic of the moon setting over Terlingua. If I knew how, I'd post the video of the moment too but I am techno challenged. So I hope the still conveys the beauty of that moment.

Follow the link below and scroll down to the landscape pic.

http://www.bigbendchat.com/portal/forum/index.php?topic=2935.0

(Again, thanks to David for posting these for me.)

[STARLITDARKNESS3]

I am so late on this thread, but what the heck..  My most amazing moment...  I have to say that waking up at 3am and watching the space shuttle break the atmosphere and travel over the north side of the Chisos and finally disappear on the other side of Lost Mine Peak was pretty spectacular.  The fireball and amazing contrail was something else.     

My most memorable moment.  In early 1999, my brother was trapped in a roof collapse and suffered heavy damage to his left leg. The Docs were close to amputating his leg and we pled and finally they said they would try to do something.  We thought he would not walk on his leg again. God knows how many operations later, he started to use his leg again. Slowly building up strength, but never regained full physical ability with it. 

About a year later and still undergoing treatment and therapy, I asked if he wanted to come along and camp with us.  He did, I thought he could stay at the Chisos campground while we went and did a few hikes.  He would have nothing of that and asked "where to".

Limping and straining, we traveled slowly and I could see pain in his eyes, but he never said anything.  That is, not until we were sitting next to the antenea at Emory peak.  When I told him we are here.  He raised his hands high and shouted "we did it, we did it!!!"   I realized that day what a feat it had been for him, a true struggle and show of dertermination.  To the many, its Emory peak, to my brother it is Everest.


I hope that all of us can one day find our Everest.

[Casa Grande]

I am so late on this thread, but what the heck..  My most amazing moment...  I have to say that waking up at 3am and watching the space shuttle break the atmosphere and travel over the north side of the Chisos and finally disappear on the other side of Lost Mine Peak was pretty spectacular.  The fireball and amazing contrail was something else.     

My most memorable moment.  In early 1999, my brother was trapped in a roof collapse and suffered heavy damage to his left leg. The Docs were close to amputating his leg and we pled and finally they said they would try to do something.  We thought he would not walk on his leg again. God knows how many operations later, he started to use his leg again. Slowly building up strength, but never regained full physical ability with it. 

About a year later and still undergoing treatment and therapy, I asked if he wanted to come along and camp with us.  He did, I thought he could stay at the Chisos campground while we went and did a few hikes.  He would have nothing of that and asked "where to".

Limping and straining, we traveled slowly and I could see pain in his eyes, but he never said anything.  That is, not until we were sitting next to the antenea at Emory peak.  When I told him we are here.  He raised his hands high and shouted "we did it, we did it!!!"   I realized that day what a feat it had been for him, a true struggle and show of dertermination.  To the many, its Emory peak, to my brother it is Everest.


I hope that all of us can one day find our Everest.

that's a great one about your brother, starlight.  one for the books.

and it's never too late for this thread!

btw--I was there during the space shuttle entry too!  I was camping at Paint Gap when it happened.

[STARLITDARKNESS3]

Thanks CG, there are some memorable moments from every trip I have taken to The Bend but I have to hand it to my brother.  I know I could not have done what he did.  The pain during and after must have been unbearable, but it was all worth it to him.

I am trying to post some pics from old trips.. still learning here..

[toejam]

Sipping tequila on that big rock porch on the southeast rim...

[em2]

October 18, 2004
Reaching the top of Elephant Tusk, not only one of my most amazing Big Bend moments, but probably one of the most memorable of my life.  Who knows how many people had climbed it before me, but according to the register jar at the top, I'm the 5th person to reach the summit (my buddy got to the top before me).  It was a pretty "amazing" moment.

Lots of others over the 30 years I have been going to BB, but I would put that one at the top of the list.

[dubeaux]

Howdy.  New here.  Probably should introduce myself on the thread for that but I saw this and can't resist posting.  This takes a few paragraphs to set up, but you'll see why at the end.

In January, 1972 I was a college student at home in Houston on Christmas break.  A buddy and I decided to go explore Big Bend before heading back to campus, so we headed out at 5:30 one morning in a '69 VW bug.  Going west on I-10 we soon ran into a state-wide blue norther and ice-storm that made our drive very slow and very cold.  San Antonio was a frozen wasteland by the time we arrived, but at least the traffic was almost non-existent, although the Texas Highway Dept. did a good job of sanding the roads down quick, so we didn't do too much skidding. 

The day was depressingly cold and grey; the VW heater was going full blast but we were still shivering (the floor was like an ice rink); the outside mirrors were perfect balls of ice, and we were already thinking about how miserable we would be camping out. We didn't have enough money to stay at the Lodge.  West of Sanderson, on U.S. 90, a bird strike broke the left headlight.  We found a replacement at the gas station in Marathon (times were simpler back then), then turned south on 385 for the final approach to the park.

In the late afternoon it was getting darker, greyer, colder with icicles hanging off the yucca, cacti and barbed wire. Probably around 20 degrees F with a northwest wind.  Near Persimmon Gap we stopped and got out so I could point and tell Greg, jumping up and down to stay warm,  "Lo! The mighty Chisos!"  I had been to Big Bend once before, with my grandparents, and thought I knew the lay-out. A few miles further on I had to admit my geography wasn't so hot - we had been looking at the Rosillos.

Panther Junction was closed so we headed up the road to the Basin, thinking this was a really bad idea.  The Chisos were sheathed in a heavy coat of grey, frigid, ice.  Sky, rocks, plants, road signs. No color anywhere. The peaks looked like giant refrigerator coils, and my soft young butt was dreading getting out of the bug to set up a tent in this frozen hell.  I was seriously thinking of turning around and fleeing back to Houston when we topped Panther Pass and looked down into the Basin.

We couldn't believe our eyes.

It was green, GREEN!  The rocks were red and the vegetation was GREEN!  No ice!  None. The surrounding mountains had completely protected the Basin from the effects of the storm.  I have never seen a more warm and inviting place in my life.
I don't remember if we shouted for joy, but that's what I was feeling, along with immense relief.  Our morale rose as high as Emory Peak in about five seconds.  We made camp, and though it got down to 19 that night, we had good equipment and were comfortable in our bags.  Next day the sun came out, things warmed up, and we hiked to the top of Vernon Bailey ridge (up through the hood-doo rocks), which I think is now an out-of-bounds area.  Anyhow we had a great trip, did the River Road in the bug, and I've been coming back ever since, dayhiking, backpacking, canoeing and camping.  I've had many wonderful experiences in Big Bend over the past 36 years.

But the single most amazing - no, magical moment, for me - was when I came over the pass and looked down into the Basin on that cold winter day.

[benthegrate]

SO hard to pick one...

Maybe it was my first trip to the park back in 92(?)

My parents and little brother and I were zone camping between the Boquillas Canyon Rd and the Ore Terminal.  In the dead of night we woke up to hear a pack of coyotes yipping and howling.  The sound got louder and louder until they were right in our camp, running between our tents, yipping and hollering the whole time.  They kept yipping until the sound faded away as they headed over the next ridge.

................... .......

Once, in the late 90s, I was looking around in a massive cave/overhang on Casa Grande, telling my friends stories about lost gold buried in a cave in the Chisos.  Legend says an old Mexican woman found the gold in the cave, but a demon shook the cave and caused it to collapse as soon as she touched it.  They said, "Maybe this is the cave!  It has a collapsed roof."  I said, "If there's any gold in this cave, it's buried under so many thousands of tons of rock, it'll never be found!"  My friend Jessi decided to get all new-agey-spiritual and say, "Well, let's just ASK the cave if the gold is here."  So we all stood in a circle and held hands and asked the cave if the gold had ever been hidden there."

We all must have opened our eyes at the same time, cause we all whooped and hollered and freaked-out simultaneously.

In a far corner of the cave stood something we had not noticed on our thorough search, but almost dominated the chamber now that we were aware of it.  There, in a spot that was bathed in sunlight from a jagged hole in the roof, grew a magnificent tree with sparkling golden leaves dangling from its branches.  Fall had long passed, but this tree was still covered in autumn gold.  (Wind couldn't reach it to knock off the leaves because it was far enough back in the cave.)  And as we crept closer, we saw that the ground beneath the tree was blanketed with yellow flowers (maybe dandelions?) growing impossibly from a quarter inch of dust on top of the boulders.  No real gold in the cave, but gold of a much more precious and memorable nature.

That's still the closest I've ever come to what I'd call a supernatural experience.  I swear that none of us had seen that tree before that moment, then all of a sudden, almost everything was golden.

................... ...........

I have so many...  Then again, every single sunrise over the del Carmens from the warmth of Hot Springs is life-changing.

[Roger, Roger]

Like many of you, I have a hard time picking just one.  

But I would go with my senior trip in high school, one portion of which was floating Mariscal Canyon.  It was May of 1996, and on a cool night there were 4 of us (including my future wife) that found a nice sandy spot to throw down our sleeping bags.  As we lay on our backs under the stars, in the most remote corner of one of the most remote places I have ever been, on a perfectly calm night, we talked about the future.

Technically, we were sleeping on the Mexico side, so I guess that isn't really a Big Bend story.  But I'll count it anyway.

I just want to thank David again for this site and specifically this thread.  I read through it about once every 6 months and it brings back great memories. 

The above is my single greatest.  But my second best would have to be Spring Break 1998 when I climbed Emory with my girlfriend (now wife and mother of my 3 young children) and two other friends.  We had come up from the Basin up Pinnacles, and dropped off most of the gear at a campsite (can't remember which one).  When we got back after summiting, the two of us guys began to set up camp and start drinking the box wine we had brought up for the occaision (stupid 20 year old college kids that we were).  Right about the time the two of us were getting our tipsy on, the girls decided they were scared about the bears and they were READY to go.  Right then.  So we packed up in the dark and hauled down to the basin, and drove all the way back to Alpine to a friends house, as we drank the rest of the wine.  Not really that fun actually, but I love thinking about the story.

[mrlukeplease]

Nobody said anything about the Aliens.

The first memorable moment for me was driving 385 south from Marathon this past June and seeing exactly one (1) oil-services pickup truck and one minivan full of elderly Missourians.

No other vehicles. No traffic jams. No endless line of Hummers waiting to pay their day-pass fees for Jellystone Park.

[Undertaker]

Standing getting rid of some water, and watch bear walk by about 15' away, very cool and will speed up the #1 and almost give you a #2. On side of road on way up to Chisos.