March 2004
Call of the Wild
Seven images and captions—from the campsite to the view from the rim—show how executive editor S. C. "Sam" Gwynne spent seven days alone on the Solitario.
Sunset at My Camp: Since I had limited wood, I built only one fire a day around five-thirty in the evening and let it burn for an hour and a half or so. Note the firebox I used to avoid making a fire ring in the desert; the sealed plastic container with freeze-dried food; the water bottles; the chair; and the Coleman stove—all the essentials for life in the wilderness.
A Common Event: Eating a lunch of freeze-dried food. I would typically go for a hike in the morning, return to camp to eat and make diary entries, and then head out for another afternoon hike. Note the Deserts manual, the diary, and the unread book at my feet. Note also the mesquite stakes I had to make to ensure the tent did not fly away.
Inside the Lefthand Shutup: This gives you a sense of how narrow the Shutup is, and how pretty the rocks are. The bottom of the canyon is a wash that drains the center of the Solitario.
Inside the Shutup: These turrets are about seven hundred feet high, typical of the tortured rock of the uplift.
Inside the Shutup: I took a number of hikes through here. You can see the upward tilt of the rocks behind me, evidence of the extreme violence that took place here 35 million years ago.
The View From the Rim: This is what the view looks like while standing at about 4,800 feet atop the eastern rim of the Solitario, looking east toward Big Bend National Park. The mountain in the center is Hen Egg.
