Pine Canyon Hike 2018

Pine Canyon Trail is listed as a moderate hike in our favorite Big Bend Hiking Guide, the Falcon Guide to Hiking Big Bend. And even on a Summer day, like the day we hiked in July, if you start early enough you can still have a pleasant hike at Big Bend National Park.

Lupe on the trail

Pine Canyon trail is a high desert trail starting at about 2500 feet in elevation and ending at about 5400 feet (based on my phone).  On this trail, you're climbing up into the high desert mountains about 2.5 miles (the book says 2 miles but it's more) and it gets cooler as you go.

You get to the trailhead from the Panther Junction Visitors center by turning South towards Glen Springs Road, an improved off-road trail, turning right on Glen Springs Road and then right on Pine Canyon Road where you'll pass five Pine canyon campsites along the way.

After a roughly 7 mile off-road drive, you'll get to Pine Canyon trailhead which has its own parking lot.

Trail marker describing the hike

As the Guide describes, heading west towards the Chisos Mountains the trail follows an old dirt road, which is a continuation of Pine Canyon Road, into a densely wooded pine canyon.

Sotol agave grasslands

The uphill hike starts in sotol grasslands and after a mile enters the canyon.  As the elevation increases the plant life changes into a dense forest of Mexican pinyon pine, junipers and oaks.

After another mile, we found ourselves in a creek bed thinking that this was the end of the trail, however, continuing another 1/2 mile, we found ourselves at the base of the 200-foot pouroff, which becomes a waterfall after heavy rains.

pouroff

The hike was exhilarating and had an exciting ending at the beautiful pouroff.  The surrounding, tranquil space created there provided a place to sit and chillax after the hike.

If we can, we'll head back in just after a heavy rain to see the waterfall.

The hike out was equally beautiful as we passed Texas Madrone, Arizona pine and bigtooth maple as well as the always-present Harvard agave.

Since Microsoft recently upgraded their Photos app to make it super easy to create videos, I had to try it and made this short video of this hike.  Sorry for the silly animations, I had to try them.  Let me know what you think.   And - here's a link to our Google Photo Album for this hike.

Chow, Bert

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