The second peak to the left in this photo is Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 ft. From this perspective the left-most peak, El Capitan, looks taller, but it is shorter by some 400 ft.
In the early fall of 1990, I drove out here to do some camping. Much to my dismay, the entire area was encased in a dense fog when I arrived. Poor prospects for pleasant camping. I was told by the Park Ranger that the weather was to clear up the following day, so I decided to spend the night in a motel somewhere. I drove up to Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is about 50 miles north.
Having nothing to do that Sunday evening, I watched the first episode of Ken Burn's "Civil War". This wrecked my camping trip. I drove around the rest of the week with a trunk full of unused camping equipment. I had to stay in a motel each night in order to watch this great series. (This led to at least one humorous incident; I drove maniacally into Farmington, New Mexico, right at showtime one night and screeched to a stop at the first acceptable motel I found. Bursting into the "lobby", I asked the desk clerk if they had PBS on their cable system. He replied that indeed they did, but they had no rooms available. I hadn't considered this possibility! What if there is a sheep-herders' convention or such going on, and the entire supply of motel rooms in the town were exhausted? Wild-eyed, I frantically asked the now somewhat wary clerk where the nearest motel was that would have rooms, and he gave me directions to one. I got there in five minutes, they had rooms, they had PBS, all was well.)
Monday morning, and the weather indeed turned out to be as beautiful as the day before had been dreary. I started out by descending to the depths of Carlsbad Caverns, eschewing the elevators and walking the entire cave.
I then immediately drove back to Guadalupe Peak, and spent the next five hours hiking to the summit.

This is the view from the summit. Clouds had rolled in during my climb, and I had to wait about an hour for a clearing to appear before I could see the ground below. Just below center of the photo is the highway to El Paso, which is where the photo at the top of the page was taken from.
As the clouds would intermittently part, I could glimpse the top of El Capitan below, jutting ghost-like into the mist.
It is interesting to note that at one time, this formation was a gigantic undersea mountain, when this entire region was beneath an ocean during the Permian era.

All text and photographs1997, Randal P. Dean

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