Big Bend is big. Like really really big. The area contains over one million acres of public land in the national park and state park. For reference, that is just a little smaller than the state of Delaware. All of it. This is where we chose to spend a couple days over the holiday, bombing around backcountry roads and hiking. It was a blast!
Note: We visited both the national and state parks. During our visit the national park was running minimal services due to a US government shutdown. It is not my intent to cover or discuss that situation from a political standpoint, only a practical one.
Ok so maybe we didn’t “conquer” Big Bend, but we gave it out best shot!
After making Taylor drive up from Austin consistently for the last several years, he finally managed to convince us there is something worth seeing in Texas. Skeptical as though we were, we obliged and started planning a trip to the Big Bend area for the time between Christmas and the New Years holiday.
The plan was to meet up in San Angelo from our respective starting points and then proceed to our base point near the “ghost town” of Terlingua the following day. Immediately we ran into a problem as most of Oklahoma and Texas got pounded by a massive storm on the day we set off.
Undeterred, we all made it and the next day set off towards Terlingua. To be honest, our start wasn’t exactly… timely, as we ended up hitting the grocery and liquor stores for supplies and George spent a good chunk of time trying to get his Christmas gift off-roading lights installed on the Jeep.
Ahh well.
I also took a moment to make my Disco Oppo official.
We rolled out of town at a time that guaranteed we wouldn’t get into Big Bend until after dark, so we opted for a short visit to the Davis Mountains State Park. It was an interesting hike, but in retrospect in no way prepared us for what was to come.
We pulled into our motel late, called the night manager to get checked in, and prepared for the next week of adventure.
Black Gap
Day two also didn’t start as quickly as we were wanting, again owing to George’s offroading light install. To his credit, he got them finished before 11AM and we rolled out shortly after. Not exactly an early start, but we’re usually the last-in, last-out crew anyway.
I guess.
Anyway, in a move that ended up being rather foolish, we decided to start the day, and for that matter the trip, with Black Gap. This is allegedly one of the most difficult trails in both parks and by doing it first… well I guess we don’t have to worry about it?
We started by lightly airing down our tires and I disconnected my sway bar links. The latter was quite the faff as with the “quick” disconnect links I fitted to the Discovery a while back the quickness is very, very relative. Anyway, boy am I glad we went through the trouble! I’ve never heard my spring unload completely, let alone lift a wheel before. I did both on this trail.
Overall, Black Gap trail was a lot of fun! Technical, challenging, but there was always a good line to take and while the going could be slow we were having fun.
Traffic was lighter than expected. We saw a few cars exiting the trail as we were entering, but only had to pull over once to let a group of Broncos and an old Nissan though.
For the whole trip, this was the only even mildly unpleasant interaction we had on the trail. We briefly spoke to the Bronco crew, where they informed up “If you think what you’ve done already was hard, just wait.” to which we responded “Sounds like fun!” and that was that.
We later found out they told George, of the Renegade, that “he’d never make it” and he should turn back. This struck me as odd as (A) they were in stockish old Broncos and all three of them scraped their hitches on the way through the river bed we’d stopped in and (B) in general the offroading community offers helpful warnings, encouragement, or offers of help, not blanket disparaging comments.
No matter. We soldiered on.
The Renegade was in the lead when we rounded the corner to reveal both Black Gap itself and the infamous “step”. Simply put, the step is just that: a big rock step. Its difficulty seems to vary based on how many rocks you could be bothered to stack up in front of it. At first blush it looked difficult, but doable.
As George was in front, he went first. Also if he couldn’t make it there really wasn’t a point in us getting through ahead of him. So he lined up the Renegade to sight his line. Happy with alignment and the positioning he just… went for it.
Like… just went for it.
He quickly mounted the step and just like that it was over.
WTF?
He did bash the shit out of one of his rock rails, but overall the Renegade powered through the toughest obstacle in the park with a shocking amount of grace and no damage. (The rock rails lost a little paint is all.)
Ok… well unfortunately that meant it was the turn of the Landy. A little high from a good showing so far, exceptionally nervous about damaging my third favorite vehicle (or, even worse, failing to get up the step), and some (un)healthy confidence from having seen the Regegade just monster it, I lined up…
Low-range, center diff locked, first gear, hill-descent on. Here we go.
I quickly mounted the step and was up. Or half of me was. But my spotters noticed… well several problems. My passenger mudflap was in serious peril and my rear bumper step was about to lose some paint.
Irrelevant.
I punched it.
Despite some terrible noises as the Disco’s poor departure angle let me down, I cleared it.
Woof.
Ok.
The XTerra was next.
If I was heart-in-your-throat nervous before my run, Taylor was trying to mask having a heart attack. He was unsuccessful. Unlike me, the XTerra is his daily driver and the newest car he has ever owned. We tried to assured him that pretty much no matter what happened, he would be able to drive it out.
This was a lie, but I like to think it helped.
He sighted up. First gear, low range, center and rear diffs locked.
And he mounted.
PROBLEM!
In order to avoid the rock on the right that held my mud flap hostage, he’d taken a line further to the left, putting him in peril of getting into a fairly deep trench on that side. After some minor corrections his passenger side rocker was now being threatened by the very same rock. Crap.
Further, he was the only manual of the group and was now perked quite precariously with a fair danger of rolling back and making the situation much worse.
He punched it.
Credit where it is due, he cleared it all and was the only one of the three of us to avoid any scraping or damage.
It was still terrifying to watch.
So there we were. We’d cleared “the step” and were now home free.
The rest of the trail was far from easy, but we plowed through with the carefree spirits of a group who had just survived a brush with death.
...or at least a brush with extreme financial peril....
And just like that, Black Gap was over and we were on River Road.
Sunset was at an old Cinnabar (mercury ore) mine, the Mariscal Mine. The area was shockingly complete, with a massive processing operation still mostly intact. We shared a beer at the summit and decided this was a good way to end the day.
Then we had three hours of off-road driving to be able to get out of the park.
Funny enough, my GPS really, really really wanted us to take Black Gap back, asserting it would only take an hour to do.
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We opted to take River Road back, which was slower going than we’d expected, but still better than re-doing Black Gap in the dark.
When we finally hit pavement again, I had to reconnect my sway bar. While worth having out for the trail, I won’t lie to you that it was a massive ordeal to put back in. Due to this, I didn’t bother removing it again. However, given the twisty road we took back to the motel, I was glad I took the time to reinstate it.
Unfortunately, when we arrived back in town all the places to eat were very much closed. Luckily we had sandwich supplies in the cooler, so we had some cooler sandwiches and called it a night.
In part 2 we’re hitting Old Ore road, followed by a hike and some camping.