From the Archives: Backpacking Big Bend National Park

In the Spring of 2012, I co-led an expedition to Big Bend National Park for the EHC Outdoor Program. This post is all about how to plan and DO a backpacking trip in the Big Bend backcountry.

Access pristine wilderness in Big Bend. Skip all of the "easy" routes (like outer mountains loop in the Chisos Mountains) on the outskirts of the National Park and make your adventure unique. The park encompasses 800,000 acres of desert, mountains, and streams. There's a lot of active wildlife too. In 2012, we hiked through a canyon that had hundreds of deer rib cages protruding from the sand., indicating an active mountain lion den.

Duration: Plan for 3-4 nights of primitive camping and two nights in a National Park Service (NPS) campground. You will want to stage your trip from a developed NPS campground. I recommend the Rio Grande Village campground, right on the river/Mexican border.
Traihead: Let the rangers at the NPS visitor center know ahead of time where you will be parking. Fossil Bone Exhibit Road is where we parked and began our hike. As the crow flies, it's about 25 miles to Ernst Tinaja, which is a decent landmark and a great place to hike out to the highway.
Trail: None, but follow the track of Tornillo Creek wash. Hike south to Ernst Tinaja, from where you can follow a faded dirt road to the main highway (NPS Hwy 12)
Route Finding: Moderate-advanced route finding skills/experience are essential. Get a quadrangle map from the NPS visitor center before you head out. You largely follow the Tornillo Creek wash for route finding, but beware flashfloods.
Water: The short answer is that there is none. This doesn't prevent a long backpacking trip though! Bring chlorine tablets, as you can filter and drink the rare above-ground portions of Tornillo Creek. However, we did not do this in an attempt to protect the ecology of the creek.
A better way to access water is to drive a high-clearance dirt road called "Old Ore Road" and stash water caches. Drive this road the day before you set off on your hike because the road is slow-going very rocky, and took about 5 hours in a 4x4 Toyota Tacoma. We hid 2 plastic water reservoirs at 3 sites and collected all of them during our hike in the Tornillo Creek wash.
Note: instead of driving Old Ore Road from south to north, drive north until the road gets unbearably rough and bumpy. It's easier and faster to just turn and around drive out the way you came (back to Park service highway 12).
Shuttle: Upon hiking out Old Ore Road from Ernst Tinaja, walk along Route 12. You should be able to catch a ride with any car on the highway within an hour or two. We hitchhiked with a park ranger.
Post-trip: Take a dip in the Langford natural hot springs, just 2.7 miles west of Rio Grande Village campground (NPS developed camping). From the campground ring-road, head south to the river, than follow the shoreline west until you see a moderately developed track called "hot springs trail."

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about planning your own backpacking trip to Big Bend.

All photography in this post is by Jess Daddio.