Katie's Outdoor Adventures: Backpacking Caprock Canyon

Sean and I led a 4 day / 3 night backpacking trip to Caprock Canyons State Park as a post Fall semester trip. Sean had proposed this trip, and I had been to the park before, so we were well prepared. We also had three people - Brad, Andrea, and Will - who had just finished guide school part 1 come on the trip as 'shadow guides'.

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Sean and I finalized the menu on Tuesday, and then Brad and I did the food buy while Will, Sean, and Andrea pulled gear. We spent $315 on our food buy (8 meals + snacks), which was really good considering that our budget was $500. This comes out to just $2.63 per meal per person! Once we returned I worked on sorting, repackaging, and labelling all the food while Sean went to some far-away store to buy more backpacking fuel and the others finished the gear pull. This made me the meals expert throughout the trip.

We met Wednesday morning at 6:15am to divide the group gear, tents, and food into 15 approximately equal-weight piles. Of course, the piles with dromedaries weighted more, but this is unavoidable and at least the dromedaries were empty sometimes! I also made an effort to separate the meals such that everyone's packs would decrease in weight at about the same pace. I picked the pile with the smaller dromedary, dried apricots for Friday's lunch, bagels for Thursday's breakfast, tortillas for Wednesday's dinner, the smaller first aid kit, extra baggies, and a rain-fly.

The participants arrived around 6:30am, and we hit the road at 7:10am. We stopped at Subway for lunch about half-way. The entire drive, not counting the lunch stop and a few gas stops, took around 6.5 hours. Since Sean and I were the only authorized drivers, we each drove our vehicles the entire way. At least Sean towed the trailer! It wasn't that tiring, and the scenery was interesting enough since we were almost completely on 2 and 4 lane back roads (many with 75 mph speed limits). I got really comfortable passing slow moving vehicles on 2 lane roads at high speeds on this trip (which is pretty crazy considering how nervous I was the first time I did it on the Guadalupe Mountains trip just a few weeks ago). We took the older Suburbans, which at points did not seem to appreciate going 75-80 mph.

We arrived at the park around 3pm and checked in at the visitor's center. Here we learned that we would have to return each day to check in for our camp site each night. This was awkward and frustrating since this was supposed to be a backpacking trip! We decided to come back the next morning (Thursday) from the Wild Horse site and check-in for our North Prong primitive site, and then hike in and back out on Friday night to check in for our South Prong primitive site.

We ran a shuttle to the Wild Horse camping area, left some of the dromedaries (mine had leaked all over my bag - thankfully my dry bags and zip-lock bags had protected everything except my fleece and rain gear - I was really thankful I had decided to put my sleeping bag in a big dry bag at the last minute when I was packing), and hit the trail around 3:30pm from the Canyon Rim trail head near the Honey Flat camping area. We hiked a relatively flat 4.76 miles on the Canyon Rim trail and the Wild Horse trail before ending our hike at the Wild Horse camping area. We arrived shortly before it was completely dark, and everyone set up the five tents while Sean and I prepared our dinner of mango, black bean, and mandarin orange tacos along with sliced cheddar cheese. This dinner was really good, but could have used a bit more filling for the tacos. After dinner we heated water for tea and hot chocolate while the participants did the dishes.

After no one claimed to have any empty space in their 3-person tents for Sean and I, one group admitted that they were fitting four people into their tent so Sean and I realized we'd have a tent to ourselves. It always works best for the guides to share a tent, since we tend to wake up earlier than the group every morning to start cooking. It was a nice luxury to have a 3-person tent for just the two of us.

There was only one other site occupied at the Wild Horse camp, and its occupant had a few horses. We heard these horses throughout the night, but more annoyingly, a rusty windmill woke us repeatedly during the night with its loud creaking. I had a really strange dream that night too in which I was sitting in Emily's office back at Gregory Gym after apparently not remembering anything about the trip that occurred after the first night (but apparently having made it through the entire trip and drive back safely). I was throwing up and really sick, and they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Strange dream that seemed really real at the time.

Sean and I woke up at 7:40am on Thursday and quickly heated water for our breakfast of bagels. We woke the participants shortly after 8am. We ate breakfast, and then dealt with that night's camp site registration and setting up the car shuttle at the South Prong parking lot while the participants packed up their remaining gear and took down the tents. I ended up with a full large dromedary since my smaller one was left behind (since it was leaky). I was fully prepared for this heavier load to make the day's hike miserable, but it actually did not end up being bad at all! We finally left the Wild Horse camp around 10:30am. We talked with the 'shadow guides' before the hike began, and put them in change of the guiding starting from the beginning of the hike (and ending at the end of the next morning's breakfast).

We hiked about 4.66 miles before reaching North Prong primitive camp. We had lunch about 3.5 miles into the hike, around 12:45pm. Lunch was massive, as it consisted of a half block of cheese and a half block of sausage for everyone. As hard as I tried, I could only finish half of my half block of cheese (and spent the remainder of the trip attempting to finish the other half). After lunch we continued onto camp, arriving around 2:30pm. The hike became prettier near the end of the day as we hiked deeper into the canyon and were able to see many of the red rock formations.

We set-up camp, and then I led some people that wanted to go off-trail exploring on how to disperse our off-trail impact. We ventured to some tall rock formations, at which point we realized the trail from our camp actually led exactly to where we had wanted to go. Oh well - it was still a good learning experience for the participants to learn how to hike off trail while minimizing their impact. We scurried up a small red rock hill, and sat and enjoyed the views. My leg did not like the descent from the hill though, so I went back on the trail to camp with a few of the participants. Once back at camp, we noticed that the participants who had stayed near the tall rock formations had climbed really high on some. Not only was it potentially dangerous, but Sean noted that it also seemed like they were likely having an affect on the foundations. I felt bad that I had not considered this. Sean sent Will and Andrea to try and get them to come down.

Once everyone was back at camp, some of us began playing cards while others took naps, read books, and chatted. I played spades and spoons for a few hours. Eventually the 'shadow guides' cooked the quinoa dinner, while Sean supervised. Dinner took a while to prepare, but it was tasty. I'm personally not a fan of quinoa, but I forced myself to eat two small bowls. The walnuts were a good addition, and I would probably add more in the future. There was some leftover quinoa at the end, so we bagged it up.

The next morning, Sean and I woke at 7:30am and found that a rain puddle had formed near our heads during the night. Sean's down jacket and down sleeping bag had gotten wet, as had my synthetic sleeping bag. We got up and prepared water for our oatmeal breakfast. The participant that had the brown sugar forgot about it, so we did not have brown sugar. No one missed it, so perhaps we can leave it behind in the future. We aimed to leave camp by 9am, and got rather close. We did our daily group circle stretches, and then began our hardest day of hiking (still only about 4.39 miles). From the start, we climbed a steep trail up to the John Haynes ridge. The day remained overcast and misty until shortly after lunch around 1:30pm. The John Haynes trail was rougher than most of the other trails, but the views were pretty even with the overcast, hazy weather. We stopped for lunch before a steep climb. Lunch - which was tortillas with peanut butter, sunflower seeds, and dried apricots - was very popular. This was a meal we did during the Guadalupe trip, and it has easily become my favorite backpacking lunch meal.

After lunch we hiked a bit father on the John Haynes Ridge trail, before deciding to take a short 0.3 mile each way detour to a Fern Cave. This 0.3 mile stretch was probably the hardest of the trip! The climb down to the cave was steep and the trail seemed to have eroded substantially in some sections. We probably should have left our packs at the detour point, but we left them about 0.2 miles down the trail. My knee was not happy with this descent, and really did not like when a rock gave way beneath me and led to me falling about 3 feet into mud (thankfully, I had my rain pants on at this point). The fern cave was cool though.

The last bit of the hike from the detour point to the South Prong primitive camp required some steep descents. Especially since it had been raining earlier in the day, some of these descents were difficult. There was one point where the rock was so steep and smooth that many of us opted to sit and slide down the rock. The trail was also difficult to follow at points, so some of the descent might have been more difficult than planned since I'm not sure we were on the actual trail at points. None the less, we reached camp around 2:30pm and quickly set up our tents. This time Sean guyed out the rain-fly near the broader end of our tent, in case it rained again. We also tried to air out the tent since there was still a lot of wet residue from the rain puddle that morning. Then Sean, Brad, and I hiked 1 mile really quickly back to my Suburban and we drove to the visitor's center to check-in to our final camp sites. Apparently our reservation had been for the South Prong tent camping sites by the parking lot (and not the South Prong primitive sites that we had instead set up camp at), but they moved our reservation to the primitive sites. However, the primitive sites were more expensive (since less people were allowed per site), so I had to pay the $16 difference with my credit card since we had no other forms of payment with us. Emily is going to handle the reimbursement once the Christmas break is finished. We each refilled a dromedary bag and moved both vehicles to the South Prong parking lot. Then we made the 1 mile trek back into camp. Once back at camp, Sean and I started cooking our final pasta dinner with chicken, soy-based bacon bits, sundried tomatoes, peppers, and spices. This was another meal we had on our Guadalupe Mountains trip, and it was just as delicious this time! After dinner we heated some hot water and then called it a night.

We awoke Saturday morning at 7:15am to cook our final breakfast - pancakes! Sean manned the sticky skillet while I manned the non-stick medium pot. It was a fine line setting the stoves such that the pancakes were not burnt yet the stoves did not go out. We both produced some pancakes that looked beautiful, and some that were beat up and/or terribly burnt. In each case, they tasted great though (especially with syrup). It was a fun meal to end the trip on!

We packed up camp and did the short 1 mile hike out to the Suburbans. We loaded our backpacks into the trailer and then headed to the visitor center to let the participants change clothing and buy souvenirs from the gift shop. It felt so good to change into clean clothing!

Around 10:45am we began our drive homeward. We stopped around 1:15pm for lunch at the same Subway we stopped at on the way. It took forever to get through the Subway line - we spent 75 minutes at lunch! After lunch we continued onward and reached campus at 6:10pm. It was a long drive back, and I was getting a bit fatigued by the time we reached Austin despite drinking two energy drinks during the trip home.

We spent about an hour cleaning, drying, and restocking gear as well as filling out evaluations. All of our gear was so muddy, wet, and dirty from the trip! However, with fifteen people helping, it went relatively quickly.

Overall thoughts
I was amazed that my right knee did not bother me very much! Between wearing the IT band while hiking and consistently taking ibuprofen, I kept the pain to just mild soreness and stiffness. I experienced no sharp pain during the trip! Going into the trip, I had put the chance of experiencing this little pain at about 10%, so I was very happy that my knee did as well as it did.

It was an interesting experience trying to step back while guiding and let the 'shadow guides' make mistakes. I've been constantly taking on more and more responsibility when guiding, so it was a change of pace to step back. Of course, mentoring new guides is part of the process though and will need to be something I begin to work on. From our side, I think I would try to give a bit more of an introduction to the 'shadow guides' perhaps the night before after letting them watch us guide for a day. My biggest comment to the 'shadow guides' was that they needed to keep the group more informed (how long are we stopping for, when is lunch, what should we do now that we've arrived at camp, ect) and take more initiative. But considering that they had not been through guide school part 2 and this was their first trip, I think they did reasonably well.

The trip as a whole went well. The route was perfect, progressing from simpler scenery to downright amazing scenery. Both of our primitive camps were set in great areas. Parts of the hike were rough, especially with the wet trails, but the hikes were never too difficult (especially considering the short distances we covered each day). It was awkward to have to check-in at the visitor's center each day, but I would not let that keep us from running the trip again.

I used my rain pants for the first time since the South Llano trip in Spring 2014. I always carry them on trips, but rarely use them. I remembered on this trip how nice they are though, and I bet they will be utilized more on upcoming trips.

Personally, this was a good trip for me after the Guadalupe Mountains trip. I really struggled physically, both with knee issues and fatigue, during the Guadalupe Mountains trip. I had some serious doubts during and after that trip about my abilities as a guide. However, in preparing for this trip and in guiding this trip I regained confidence in my guiding abilities. And I learned that everyone can have bad days on trips - it's more about how you push through them and keep going.

UT RecSports ran four backpacking trips this semester, and I guided all four! I've grown so much since the first trip of this semester to Lost Maples. My outdoor skills have improved, and I feel really comfortable backpacking now. My guiding skills have also improved drastically. I can thank Emily for much of this, since she was lead guide on my first trip over Spring Break 2014 and then on both of the Fall trips we guided together she pushed me to step out of my comfort-zone and fulfil lead guide roles more often. I'm excited to see how I continue to evolve in the Spring!