Big Bend Day 2: Laguna Meadow to before Jack's Pass

December 16, 2013

I awoke to find a small amount of ice on my sleeping bag.  I quickly packed up and hit the trail.

I soon came to the junction for the Blue Creek Trail.

There were great views as I descended to Homer Wilson.

I met several hikers hiking clockwise on the outer mountain loop.  They informed me that water was available at Fresno and Upper Juniper Spring. They stated that I was going backwards.  I told a couple of them that I was planning to do some zone camping.  I never fully thought of which direction I wanted to do this loop, but counterclockwise always felt logical.  The loop could certainly be done clockwise but traversing the Mariscal mountains may be more difficult starting from the North.

I took a short break at Homer Wilson for a snack and hiked a short distance to where I knew there was cell service by the parking lot near the road.  I also replenished some water as there was free water in the hiker box.

After Homer Wilson it was on to the Dodson!

The trail climbed up and view from where I had come was spectacular.

Soon I reached the junction for the Smoky Creek Trail.  I knew this is where the challenge of my journey would increase.  The Outer Mountain Loop trails are maintained very well, but some of the others are more rugged and not even included on the Big Bend national park map.  I purchased a topo map from mytopo.com that was useful for this part of my adventure.  A Trails Illustrated 225 map was also helpful while planning.

There were some areas that required a little scrambling on the Smoky Creek Trail.    The trail has also been rerouted off of where the map says.  I came to the bend shown below and accidentally went to the left following cairns that were actually on the old trail!

I realized my mistake when I looked back to see this view below and to my surprise saw that I was hiking away from Mule Ears!

 I quickly returned the trail, only to think that it actually split off to the right from in the view two pictures above.  This choice actually was not the trail and placed me in a very steep canyon.  I actually left the trail when I saw a cairn to the side of Smoky Creek and took a left, but I should have just stayed in the drainage and gone around a mountain.  At the time I was unaware where I had made my mistake but knew where I wanted to go so I decided to traverse to the right side of the canyon and found this view of Mule Ears.  I continued over the top and found a suitable decent on the other side.

The descent on the other side wasn't too bad.

Below is the view of the steep canyon that I found myself in.  I traversed over the side pictured to the left.

 I took some time to see if I could find water near Smoky Spring, but was unsuccessful.

I began making my way towards Jack's pass but darkness fell before I could reach it so I set up camp and called it a night.