There’s not too much to do on the north side of Big Bend National Park, or so we thought. Although we only managed 3 outings in this portion of the park, they were all unique and interesting. Plus, I got my cactus fix big time! I hope these inspire you to add these adventures to your list. Well, at least two of the three.
Dog Canyon
5.8 mi. | 380′ ele. gain | 3 hr.
Near the north entrance to Big Bend, there’s an unassuming trailhead for Dog Canyon. When you pull in to the parking area, it barely clocks as a canyon hike. All you can see is a white, flat desert with some topography far off in the distance. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
I knew this hike was out in the open for most of its length, so we chose to do this in the morning before it got too hot. Along the flat expanse en route to the canyon, I became closely acquainted with the horse crippler cactus, as it was everywhere. This squat, deceptive little plant lies low to the ground and is covered with thick, curved spines. I can see how it could cripple a horse. Walk carefully across the desert.
Once we got to the canyon, things began to get even more interesting. I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this hike, but I changed my mind once we started poking around in the folds of the rock walls. There was a lot to see here! We discovered many different types of plants, including several species of cactus, living in every crack and crevice they could find. The canyon goes and goes, with no official trail end, so we just kept walking.
At one point, the walls close in and form a short “narrows” that is likely everyone’s turnaround spot. Out of curiosity, and since we’d already come all the way out here, we decided to explore a little more. With enough time, energy and water, you could spend a whole day out here. We had a limited amount of all those things, so we eventually turned back to the trailhead.
Balanced Rock
2.7 mi | 510′ ele. gain | 2:20 hr
I spend a lot of time looking at maps before visiting a new place. One night, while poring over the Big Bend map, I became enamored with the area of the park known as the Grapevine Hills. It looked remote and different and I thought it deserved a visit. Please note that the access road is High Clearance/4×4 and it’s not recommended for passenger cars. I won’t mention what kinds of vehicles we saw at the trailhead. There were only a couple marginal sections of road, but it’s not worth getting your vehicle stuck for this hike.
The terrain here felt very different from the other parts of Big Bend. I thought we’d time warped into Bishop, California, with all its mounded granite rocks collected in tall heaps. It was a very pretty area, though the featured “balanced rock” wasn’t all that interesting.
To try and salvage an otherwise ho-hum hike, I thought we could make a beeline for the highpoint of the Grapevine Hills. It wasn’t too far off trail and I thought we could make a loop back down to the van, which wouldn’t add a whole lot of time to our short hike.
To spare the details, I was wrong about a lot of things. Navigating the large stones and crevices full of cacti and other thorned plants was incredibly tedious and slow-going. There was a lot of going up to go down, backtracking, dead ends and false starts. Not to mention we could see storm clouds brewing in the distance, and we didn’t want to have to find out what happens to the back roads out here when it rains.
We bailed before the highpoint and tried to find a quick shortcut back to the trail. We mostly found cliffs and other impassable obstacles and now we were both pretty annoyed. The clouds continued to pile high and darken.
At last, I pieced together a connected route that led us back to flat ground and we picked up our pace to get the heck out of there. Lucky for us, the rain mostly held off until we were back on the pavement. Take heed: if you do this hike, save yourself the trouble and skip the off-trail rambles unless you have plenty of time!
Dagger Flat Road scenic drive
To finish up this series, I present to you a scenic drive with options to stop and explore to your heart’s content. This drive wasn’t on our radar until we had a yucky weather day and felt like seeing the park from inside a warm vehicle. But after having done this drive, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone visiting Big Bend!
The Dagger Flat auto tour is a 7 mile dirt road with several interpretive stops along the way. You can download the informational guide using the link above to read about the many different plants that have adapted to life in this harsh landscape. There is also an audio tour on the NPS app. I highly recommend stopping at all the signposts and reading from the guide. Give yourself at least a couple of hours to take this drive, since you’ll be driving slowly and hopefully stopping your vehicle in many places to poke around and explore.
As we drove out of Chisos Basin toward Dagger Flat, we experienced a temperature inversion. Though it was sunny and mild up in the basin, the landscape was coated in freezing fog down below. That made for some interesting ice buildup on the plant life and put a unique spin on our scenic drive.
With the help of Aaron’s eagle eyes, we managed to find a wide variety of cactus on my plant list, including a few rare ones. You’d never notice them from the vehicle, so it’s important to get out and wander. I was grateful that it was so cold outside on our visit because I’d be miserable doing this kind of adventure on a hot day.
Thanks for joining me on this big tour of Big Bend! No matter how many days you have to explore this large and diverse park, you’re bound to find something you love. And if you find you don’t have enough time to see it all on your first visit, that just means you’ll have to plan a return trip. Questions about this park? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below.