Wild Camping New Mexico: Guadalupe to White Sands

GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS & CARLSBAD NATIONAL PARK

I actually began my journey of wild camping New Mexico in West Texas, in the little thought about Guadalupe National Park, which is the gateway to backpacking New Mexico. The Guadalupe Mountains are a majestic, dense and high altitude mountain range that skirt the state line between Texas and New Mexico leading up to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I met with a friend who had been camping in Big Bend a few days before and was happy to extend her backpacking adventure to include Texas’ only other National Park.

Guadalupe National Park is pretty relaxed with entry so you can just drive up to the easy to access campsites and fill out a slip that includes your camping fee and put it in the Ranger box. The park is not very frequented which makes it feel a bit like a well-kept secret, this surprises me considering Texas is a huge state that consists of mostly private land, so you would think that its actual National Park land would be a much sought after refuge but not in this case. Another great aspect of the park is that it boasts the largest mountain in Texas—Guadalupe Peak, at 8,750 feet. My friend Emily and I opted to tackle this the morning after we initially arrived and car camped at the base camp. There were so many stars it was disorienting, I even thought I saw some of them moving/swaying back and forth at odd intervals but surely it was just my imagination though I’ve heard that in New Mexico the “veil to the heavens” is lower, and you can take that to mean what you’d like. I could see the milky way through my backseat windows. I couldn’t sleep well because I was too excited for this leg of my journey which I had been eagerly anticipating since I set out on my road trip. This segment of my journey would be mostly solo travel, and mostly back country camping in areas replete with mountain lions, rattlesnakes and in some cases bears, wolves and potentially other predators, not to mention rare cell phone service so that if I would get hurt it might be extremely difficult to get aid or get out.

The morning before my 30th birthday, Emily and I set out on our relatively short assent of Guadalupe Peak (it’s about 6 miles). The assent is steep with lots of loose rocks making it easy to slide. It’s also very hot so we had to carry full 3-liter water bladders with no natural water sources on trail to resupply our packs. The sweeping views out over the former seabed mesa and the alligator juniper trees that offer occasional shade on the way up make it worthwhile. At the top of the trail there is a marker that indicates you’ve made it to the highest point in Texas and the views are pretty fantastic. Because Texas is so flat you can really see seemingly forever. And the habitat below looks formidably barren, while the lush pines and junipers of the high Guadalupe Mountains are like a sanctuary. On the mountain top we met a young couple who had a converted van who were driving across America to stop at all the national parks on the way, it was cool to know other people are out there doing the same dream. In fact Emily also was in a converted van and said that her brother had traveled around Mexico in it for six months. In the parking lot of the Guadalupe Peak campsite there was a converted van with a license plate form Holland, which shows that loads of people are doing this from all over the world, and driving all over the world. Sometimes when I look at my favorite travelers on Instagram it seems like a distant dream to be able to travel the world and adventure as you go but there are literally people doing it everywhere, it really is just a matter of deciding it’s a priority and doing it.

Emily and I hiked to the slightly removed campsite at the top of the mountain over some rolling hills and nestled under shady juniper trees. There we set up camp but it was only around 2pm and we didn’t have a lot else to do up there so we played various games to entertain ourselves like how many rocks can you stack before they tumble over, who can hit trees with rocks at varying distances, climbing up trees and off-trail ridge walking (which we soon abandoned as this seemed snakey). One thing I appreciate about not having service when you’re out in nature is that it forces you to entertain yourself in different ways than being on your phone and there is something to be said for being bored, even as an adult when we feel the pressure to constantly be working or thinking about our bills or worries. It was nice to take the time out and to just focus on the raw beauty and landscape around us. At nightfall we were finally able to go to bed, which is about 8pm and then we woke up at dawn, as I almost always do when camping.

In the morning we hiked down the mountain, making it down around 10am when we whipped up a huge breakfast consisting of 3 eggs each, a green pepper, russet potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, avocado and butter and bread with coffee. It was the best and most satisfying breakfast knowing that we threw it together without any seasoning or plan but it worked out marvelously and was comforting after summiting the highest mountain in Texas. It was also a nice birthday breakfast as I was quite depressed about being 30.

Emily and I decided to go to the Carlsbad Caverns together as it was only 45 minutes up the road from Guadalupe National Park in the same mountain range, actually. Though Carlsbad Caverns does not have campsites within itself it is possible to get a backcountry permit to camp in one of the canyons that are actually a part of the park such as Yucca Canyon, Slaughter Canyon, or Rattlesnake Canyon. I have a book called 100 New Mexico Hikes by Craig Anderson, which I highly recommend and his advice is to hike into Yucca Canyon. The permits are free but are required as the canyons are seldom used and replete with mountain lions. Also the trailheads themselves are a bit hard to find as you have to drive back towards Guadalupe National Park but then turn off at a road that only says Rattlesnake Picnic Area and then drive down a long, bumpy dirt road for a few miles to the Canyon entrance and trailhead.

We explored the caverns around noon and finished around 2pm, the caverns take about an hour and forty-five minutes to explore but we got behind a school field trip group which slowed us down, also the caves are spectacular so we took our time. They are a bit chilly, which you might not think about when you park in the above extreme desert heat but I would wear long sleeves if I went back as I had goosebumps and was pretty chilly underground.

YUCCA CANYON

After we finished the tour, Emily had to drive back to Texas and head home so I got my free backcountry permit from the ranger and headed to Yucca Canyon. When I found the trailhead and parked and was getting my gear together a ranger drove up and asked to see my permit. This is the first time in all my adventuring that this has ever happened to me. He then asked me if I had pepper spray for the mountain lions I could potentially encounter. I spent a couple minutes hunting for it before I found it in my jacket pocket.

He said, “No, you need to have that out and in your hand.”

Now, before this I had thought a little bit about mountain lions but this encounter made me extremely paranoid about running into them. He kept reassuring me that seeing them was very rare and that they had plenty of food to eat in the canyon in the way of deer and sheep so they wouldn’t chase me for food, but still yet I felt tense. Especially because I was the only hiker going into the canyon and there would be no signal at all. I really need to get a Spot so that I can send a rescue signal up wherever I am in the world. But as of now I don’t have one so I will just have to sing, make noise with my hiking poles and try to be generally loud as I clamor into backcountry spaces. Nonetheless, I was very alert as I was hiking and looking frequently behind me and up on the canyon walls. It was hot as 40 hells as I was walking for the first two hours. And in fact the first two hours, carrying a 15 pound + pack, through an isolated, dry canyon did have me questioning myself. But I pressed on, determined to get to the summit where the flat space of juniper trees was apparently based. Around 5pm I arrived at the top, but it was a large expanse with lots of brush and trees and rocks, but no obvious place to camp. I didn't like the lack of visibility for a long distance because I was still nervous about mountain lions. I finally found a large, flat rock that was big enough for me to put my tent on and I set up camp. I made dinner and then immediately got into my tent so that I could read my book.

At first light the next morning, when it was still the dusky blue as the sun hadn't crested the horizon yet I got up and put my gear away. There were heavy, dark storm clouds billowing on the horizon and I was nervous about being on top of the canyon during a heavy rainstorm. So I began to hustle down the canyon, talking to myself the whole way in order to make noise to scare off any cats. The dawn was brimming over the mountains and peaking through the canyon walls looking incredibly beautiful and it made the whole journey worthwhile. When I reached my car I laughed out loud because I realized I had done one of the most frightening things I've ever done and I survived and felt stronger (and dirtier since I'd not actually showered in days now). Then I drove to White Sands National Monument.

WHITE SANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT

The route to White Sands National Monument led me through Cloudcroft, New Mexico, which is an alpine town in the southern part of the state. I had no idea that Southern New Mexico had alpine forests, but it did. I would later learn that this is an ideal vacation destination for people living in El Paso, Texas. As I came down from Lincoln National Forest, which contains the mountain with Cloudcroft, I saw arid, dry desert flats stretching out far and wide with distant mountains in the distance. In the middle of this flat expanse I could see glimmering white sands, I figured this must be where White Sands National Monument lay. I drove down and arrived at the National Monument around 1pm, when it was white hot in the afternoon.

I got a backcountry camping permit from the ranger in the visitor center, there are about nine designated backcountry camping spots on a loop trail that you can choose from. A gallerist in Santa Fe would later explain that if you hire a sherpa you can go a lot further out over the sands, but I had no business for that kind of intensity--one night was fine. As I was driving into the park I noticed lots of white sand had spilled out across the road, making it look like snow was covering the way.

Many people had brought sleds (or bought them from the visitor center) and were sledding down the dunes. I packed up my bag and began hiking across the dunes for my campsite. I met a couple of guys who had just graduated college and were also driving across America, they let me share their sled and I tried out sledding down the dunes a few times. We also found that just running and jumping off the dunes was almost equally fun. The sand immediately underneath the top layer was surprisingly cool to the touch. After I had played for a while and when the hot afternoon sun and the back glare off the sand was becoming too much for me I decided to carry on.

Setting up my tent, in-between high, shifting dunes was much harder than I had anticipated as it was very windy in bouts. There were no rocks to hold down my tent in order to get it set up and once it was up I couldn't get the pegs to stay in the ground and I basically had to have everything inside the tent to keep it from tumbling away or blowing over. There was absolutely NO shade. I was sweating bullets. The ranger had warned me to put on lots of sunscreen, even under my chin to protect from the glare off the sand. I made lunch on my Jetboil stove and fought off the seemingly hundreds of massive ants that came to join me out of the sand. But after eating that was all I could stand of the heat before I had to go take refuge from the sun inside my tent. But even laying there in nothing but my underwear, sheltered from the sun I felt like I was being slowly baked in a tent oven. I tried to read, I tried to sleep but it was too hot. I was melting. At a stroke of divine grace I realized I could use the reflector side of my emergency blanket to prop up above me like a tarp inside the tent to reflect the sun back and keep the inside of the tent cool. I used my hiking poles, strategically placed to hold it up. And it worked! I was cool under the blanket. I remembered that I had seen another solo female hiker setting up a tent a few dunes down from me and I wondered if she was equally miserable inside her tent, or if she had some other program for dealing with the heat. After I cooled down under the makeshift tarp I drifted of into what felt like an induced sleep. I woke up near sunset, and it was much cooler outside. I climbed up on the dunes and watched the sunset, which was glorious. I was surrounded by mountains on every side and then as far as I could see in every direction were pure, white sand dunes, rolling gently in the wind. It felt spiritual and sublime.

The next morning I woke up at dawn and hiked out of there, feeling content and happy in my unreal world. It looked like a dream at dawn, like the calm after a violent storm or the pause button on reality. I felt like I was in the afterlife and waiting for Dumbledore to appear and tell me how to defeat Voldemort. I got to my car, threw out all my accumulated trash in the dumpster and drove out of there before 7am. I had to wait at the entry way for the ranger to unlock the gate to let me out. Then I drove onwards in the direction of Gila National Forest and the Cliff Dwellings National Monument.