The Highest You Can Get High in Texas

^{Not so fun fact, this was our last trip before the world shutdown.}

During our road-trip to Carlsbad Cavern NP and White Sand NM (it’s a designated a National Park now), we drove through El Paso on the 62. I remember asking my mom to drive because driving through this flat section was so boring it was making me fall asleep. That is until we saw this big ass mountain that seemed to popped out of nowhere on our left. My interest piqued, I checked my phone and saw that the mountain we are approaching is actually a national park- Guadalupe Mountains NP. We couldn’t visit during this trip, but I knew I wanted to come back to that National Park stamp on my passport.

Carolyn and I flew into El Paso Presidents Day weekend with the intention to hike Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. We left our hotel at around 5am to get to the trailhead before anyone else. The trail up to Guadalupe Peak is about 8.5 miles round trip. During the hike it was very windy and, despite the clear sun, surprisingly chilly. There were sections of the trail that still had snow.

The view is pretty incredible. There aren’t any other mountains nearby so the land below seems endless. At the peak there is a monument that I think was commissioned by American Airlines. If you know anything about Toby and American Airlines, this trip happened a few weeks after that whole ordeal. We didn’t spend too much time up here because it was uncomfortably windy.

We took a leisurely pace down the mountain and I really wanted to add on the Devil’s Hall trail. It was about 4pm when we reached the junction and adding Devil’s Hall would have added an extra 4 miles to the trip. We opted to finish and hit up the visitor’s center with an easy nature walk to end the day.