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The dying November sun glistens off the tight plastic packaging around our Earl Campbell's Hot Links. My companions Heinrich and Jack are busy re-staking the tents in the midst of a growling wind while I prepare a pre-expedition delicacy of sausage wraps and beans, the wholesome meal that will give us greenhorn mountaineers the strength to finish the trek to the 8,749-foot pinnacle of Guadalupe Peak the following morning.
The first part of the hike up to the highest point in Texas was as "strenuous" as the guidebooks had reported. Historically, people sought great heights to view what was on the other side. |
Hiking up a vertical trail that gains 3000 feet before reaching the summit is one thing, but doing it with fifty pounds strapped to your back is quite another. What's more is the terror that Guadalupe Mountains National Park is home to black bear, bobcat, mountain lion, coyote, and rattlesnake, and riddled with cliffs that drop 1700 feet or more. So, even if you manage to survive a fall there would be no water to drink and you'd have to navigate fields of desert shrubbery with ominous names like yucca, prickly pear, snakeweed, pickleweed, and four-winged salt bush. 
In modern times, there is no reason to stand atop the highest point of anything except for the fact that it's there. That, and the bragging rights that follow. Even so, there's got to be more to this mountain climbing thing than doing it just to do something. Like Deadalus, perhaps we think the higher we get, the closer we'll be to God or beauty or poetry or whatever. Or maybe we think that if we stand on the top of mountains we won't be so human, that once we get above the world we'll be omnipotent. In our cases, it'll either be divinity or any number of pulled tendons, hernias, and chapped lips. 
