President's Day Road Trip '23

Dates: Feb 17-20, 2023

Crew: Abby Huff, Monica Mah, Yisha Ng

Locations: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, White Sands National Park, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Organ Mountains National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park. 

President's day = long weekend = mandatory road trip!

This trip has been on my radar for a long time, but it's hard to find the time to firmly commit to driving for 12 hours just to still be in Texas...fortunately our friends ran the same trip over MLK weekend and we were able to gently plagiarize their itinerary. The goal was to enjoy the gorgeous sights, hikes, and nature of West Texas and New Mexico without any of the summer heat. Monica's trusty new Subaru was pressed into service as a peoplemover and we begin our journey in the early hours of Friday morning...

Day 1: Manifest destiny

Friday consisted almost entirely of driving. As it turns out, living in a state the size of a medium country has its pros and its cons. After picking up me, Yisha, and Abby, the Subaru sped off in search of adventure, and possibly the Wild West. 

Day 2: Snow? In Texas?

Waking up to the miserable wintry mix had us questioning the efficacy of the Guadalupe Peak trail. Rangers were telling some other folks to expect the 9 mile hike to take 8-10 hours with the fresh snow up there. We went for it, bringing our rain, snow, and wind gear and spikes for our boots.

Hiking up the mountain, we quickly entered the clouds and any views we might have had disappeared. It was still a rewarding experience braving the wind and snow to be the highest people in Texas for a minute. We also ended up blazing the trail (with its 3000' elevation gain) in only 5 hours! We reached the pyramid at the top of Guadalupe Peak, 8,751' just in time to snap some shots while it was completely engulfed in mist. On our way down the mountain, the clouds miraculously cleared and probably afforded amazing views to the people who didn't get up as early as us...

After the hike, we drove to White Sands National Park to see the sun set over the dunes and mountains. Monica and Yisha provided silhouttes for Abby and I to hone our photography skills on. We ended the day by driving to camp at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, where old west-style buttes overlooked our site. Unfortunately, we also found we had left the tent poles behind the night before. The girls engineered a way to all sleep in the hatchback, while I laid out my bedroll for a bit of cowboy camping under the stars. It's probably too cold for tarantulas and scorpions to be out, right?

Day 3: It's rough and it's coarse and it gets everywhere...

The celebrity of the day was sand. Lots and lots of sand. After waking up from a shockingly restful night under the open sky, we set off back to White Sands National Park. The backcountry camping loop provided us 2.5 miles of neon orange posts to follow (no trail to speak of), although when you add wandering and playing in the dunes like kids in a sandbox, we definitely did much more than that.

Abby and I were in photographer's paradise in an endless sea of pristine white gypsum sand. I focused on trying to capture the natural contours in the curve of a dune's leading edge, which involved lots of wandering away from the beaten path in search of unblemished sand. We also had to take a break to do a mixture of jumping off, rolling down, and burying ourselves in the dunes... which lead to every surface being covered in sand that would stick around until the end of the trip. I particularly enjoyed taking a running leap off the edge of a tall dune and flying halfway down before punching through the sand waist-deep. It brought back memories of doing the same on a boy scout trip to Nordhouse Dunes in probably 2010-11, although I wasn't brave enough to try any flips this time around.

The striking dark skies were overhead the entire time, providing contrast to the bright dunes in an inversion of the typical landscape photo. They roiled over the San Andres mountains behind us, threatening storms but thankfully never delivering. 

After that hike we moved to the Gypsum flat trail to sled the dunes and enjoy the rest of the park. I switched to my telephoto lens to try and compress the layers of dunes with the background and get a different take on the park than my wide-angle lens or smartphone camera could provide. The setting also called for some action shots of dune sledding, and badass portraits with the dune goggles Abby was smart enough to bring along.

Leaving White Sands, we drove to Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in time to capture some shots of a model cow, the dramatic rise of the mountains into the thick cloud cover, and then hike to hermit cave in the monument. The volunteer in the small visitor center was like a western archetype come to life and told us about how the hermit was an Italian migrant who wandered the world before coming here, and would build a fire in front of his cave every night to let people know he was alive...until the fire didn't appear one day. He also showed us photos of his extensive rattlesnake collection! 

Making haste to get out before they closed up the gates, we hiked out to the cave and back. The clouds provided a consistent dramatic backdrop as they had all day. They also seemed to make the yellows and greens of the landscape pop, and we took advantage of that too. Once again I felt like I was in a jurassic park deleted scene with the brush-covered mountain ridges, thick foggy clouds bearing down, and silence we encountered on the trail.

Left to right: mist over the Organ Mountains, magenta barrel cactus spines, moo, stereotypical western windmill

Day 4: I'm just a caveman

Fortunately our tent poles were exactly where we left them, and we doubled back to sleep at Guadalupe again. With a high winds warning blasting it all night (sustained 35-45mph, gusts of 70) the tent stood fast. We got up early and were rewarded with a full panoramic sunrise that splashed blood-red clouds across the sky and briefly bathed the world with a warm orange glow. Making our way to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we opted for the hike-in entrance to the cave and were well rewarded for that too. Having been to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky before, I expected a large and long way down, but the scale of these caverns was an entirely different level. Mammoth may be the longest cave in the world, but Carlsbad has a sense of grandeur that I found much more striking.

The entrance hall is a gaping maw that wound deeper and deeper until the last views of sunlight faded away. Soon afterwards, the first stalactites, stalagmites, and columns made themselves known, and never really stopped after that. Each cavern we entered had distinct formations with fanciful names like the Whale's Mouth, Doll's Theater, and Fairyland. The cave was sparsely but artistically lit and provided more light for my camera than I expected. I was especially impressed by the size of Iceberg Rock, a massive breakdown block that detached from the ceiling a couple hundred thousand years ago. At 200,000 tons, the rock weighs as much as two supercarriers!

At the end of the natural entrance trail we reached the Big Room, where people in the 1900s once did what they always seemed to do: threw parties, cooked fried chicken, and contemplated blasting in a hole to drive cars through. Looping through the big room gave us views of massive active stalagmites, deep pits, and needlelike clusters of thousands of stalactites on the ceiling. I also took this opportunity to experiment with flash, illuminating the foregrounds and bringing out rich colors in the further parts of the cave.

It was a jam-packed holiday weekend and delivered on my expectations. Everyone was remarkably adaptable and cheerful in the face of some serious type 2 fun, and my efficiency and skill with my new camera continues to increase! This is weekend 1 of 5 in a row with outdoor activities, so stay tuned for posts about snowboarding, climbing, and caving next!