Big Bend --Finally!!

I have been wanting to do some backcounrty hikining in Big Bend National Park for some time, last week on Wednesday I flew down to meet Jenn in Austin for a soon to be great trip.

I landed early on Wednesday afternoon, picked up my rental car and soon met Jenn at her apartment. We had a nice dinner and then made preparations to head out to Big Bend the next day. Temps had been running around 110 in the low country so we had to pack with alot of hydration in mind, we would need at least 1 gallon per day each so we packed all the water we could into our packs. We headed out early and enjoyed the scenery the entire way, I had never been to West Texas and the drive from Austin was a gradual change from Oak/Juniper Woodlands to dry desert cacti.

The main reason for the trip was to do the every-5-year census of Colima Warblers in Big Bend National Park. Jenn had met Jim and Lynn Weber, who co-ordinated the whole Colima Census, through her work with Golden-Cheecked Warblers. I guess Jenn is some super stud or at least gave that impression to the Weber's so they gave us a pretty difficult survey area. We would have to ascend to Boot Canyon, some 6000ft above sea level starting from "the valley" at around 4000ft. We would spend the morning hiking to our backcountry camp then taking our first census count with renound Big Bend birder Carol Edwards on Colima trail (BTW Carol has over 5k birds on her life list and her late husband over 8k, we were in some pretty exclusive company). The next day we were to cover about 1 mile of the East Rim Trail and all of the top of Toll Mountain. BTW Toll Mountain has no trails to it, it is very loose rock on a very steep slope, covered with every kind of ankle biting cactus you can imagine. After our count on Toll Mountain we were to be back at the lodge by 5:30PM for dinner and the "closing ceromony" of our census.

I am getting tired so this will be a multi part post, tune in for the next few day for there is some awesome experiences in this trip. I was able to check off one of the few "I gotta see this before I die" items off my list and it was in superb fashion....