Texas state high point

On day two of our trip to Texas Eric and I headed to Guadalupe mountain on a quest for the state high point.

We headed out at 5am for the 2 hour drive to the National Park.  On the way we ran into some dense fog and as we got closer to the park we ran into some freezing fog and icy roads.  We arrived at the park at 7am and were not surprisingly the only ones there.  Everything was coated in rime ice.

We headed out up the path and although the footing was a bit sketchy we made steady progress.  Unfortunately something just didn't feel right and when we finally got above the fog line and got a view of the surrounding peaks we realized we were probably not on the correct path.  At that point we bailed and headed back to the trailhead.  My hair was coated with rime ice from the fog.

We headed to the first trail junction and then found the sign we were looking for, it was coated in 2 inches of ice which we chipped away at to ensure we had the right trail.

Well, now we were only an hour and a half behind in our run to the summit...but we had 3 miles extra in the bank!  Of we went, this time up the correct trail, and about 1.5 miles in we got above the fog and the footing got substantially better.

There were only a couple of parts where I was a little nervous with the drop-off and the somewhat sketchy footing.

We hit the 8700' summit (5 miles) in 1:40 and spent 6 minutes getting a few pictures before heading back down.  The run down took 1:29 and the slightly warmer temperatures made it a bit easier.  In all it took us 3:15:02 for the 10 mile round trip (and another 1:21:38 for the 3 miles prior to that).