Walking Around Big Bend’s Empty Quarter
Dec. 4-10, 2022
Dugout Wells, past Chilicotal Mtn., around Talley Mtn., along the river to the Old Ore Terminal and back.
82 miles
The Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, known as Rub’ al Khali in Arabic, is one of the least habitable places in the world. It is the largest unbroken expanse of sand in the world, and the Arabian peninsula’s largest desert. Taking up much of the lower quarter of the Arabian peninsula, the Empty Quarter has an area larger than France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined, covering some 650,000 square kilometers (200,000 sq mi). It stretches across the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
As I started thinking about this walk I wanted to both fill in places on the map that I had never been to and that people don’t often see. The area between Tornillo Creek and Mariscal Mountain and from the Glenn Springs and Black Gap roads to the River is 100,000 acres, so only one eighth of the park area but still big and empty and I have rarely read of anyone walking around it. Surely not as remote as the Arabian Empty Quarter due to its smaller size and the roads that crisscross it; it was one of the last big areas I had yet to explore.
This would be a trip across wide open spaces with huge views, think of it as the South Rim but from below with expansive views of the Chisos, the Sierra del Carmen, San Vicente and Mariscal Mountains. There would be some narrow canyon parts too but mostly far reaches, a completely different view of the park than most folks see.
This was my fifth trip with Robert and he was equally interested as it was almost entirely new ground for him too. Unfortunately we couldn’t get Mitch to join us, too much going on. Robert and I collaborated on some route changes that made my original thoughts even better. Here is the Caltopo map with each day in a different color and our original plan is the dotted red line, you can click on any of the dots to see what they mark. Plans were made and plane tickets bought. Watching the forecast closely we knew that it was going to be warmer than we wanted down in the hottest part of the park but we took equipment and precautions to be able to deal with the heat. Little did we know it would also be humid and there would be incessant gnats to deal with too.
One of the reasons that the area is little explored is that there are few to no water sources and we wanted to check as many out as we could for future reference. Our planning relied on water from Glenn Springs, the Rio Grande, a water cache along the River Road, Rio Grande Village (RGV) and Carlota Tinaja, going in we could not get any reports on Carlota and decided to roll the dice based on some very recent photos of water in pools in Ernst Tinaja canyon and an easy bailout point if it was dry.
In what has become Standard Operating Procedure, I flew in late on Dec. 2nd and Robert picked me up at my hotel at 6:00 am the next morning. Easy driving to the park and we arrived at 1:00 and quickly got our permit. It was a pleasure to have experienced ranger Bob write our permit, who has written permits for me before, including intelligent discussion about our route and water sources. No fuss, no muss.
Off we went to the River Road East to drop our cache of food and water (in bear canisters) near the old San Vicente community that we would get to at the end of the fourth day and then to RGV to see if there was a water hydrant near Daniels Ranch (there wasn’t) so that we could determine our route through there the fifth day. We finished the afternoon at the Chisos Mining Co. motel doing the final packing for the trip.
I had arranged, before leaving home, to meet for dinner with a couple of folks from Big Bend Chat who were also in the park, camping and driving some of the back roads. We had a great visit and meal at DB’s Rustic Iron BBQ at his new sit down place at the Ghost Town. Like all BBC encounters it was a non-stop, rapid fire conversation and it was really good to finally meet each other in person.


Trail Day 1
Up and to the Big Bend Resort & Adventures Café at 7:00 for breakfast and then the 45 minute drive to Dugout Wells. Walking by 8:30 and as we were walking the road west toward the park road, ranger Bob rolls in, another long conversation about various park subjects and we were finally across the road and off trail by 9:00.
