Big Bend, Texas

As the sun sinks below the horizon of the Chihuahuan Desert, a chill fills the air. In the warmth of your sleeping bag, you take in an impressive, star-studded sky before drifting off. This is rugged country on the Texas-Mexico border: stark and dusty, yet full of life. On the Rio Grande River whitewater cuts the river’s edge and leads through towering canyons. For millennia, the Rio Grande has flowed through this region, carving canyons up to 1,200 feet deep in its banks of limestone and rhyolite. The desert expanse beyond is dotted with colorful cacti and blooming desert brush whose images seem to come alive with the setting sun.

Hiking at elevations up to 7,500 feet into the desert interior of one of the least-traveled National Parks in the U.S. reveals a vast landscape of high mesas, steep ridges and rolling, cactus-covered hills. Run class I, II, and III rapids, explore slickrock canyons and hike the fragile, mountainous desert in the heart of Texas’ Big Bend region, watching weather move on horizons 50 miles away.

The river runs through the Big Bend region and the scenery is spectacular. It’s a place of intrigue and solitude, of natural beauty and excitement. Most of all, it’s a place of diversity, in its ecology and topography. In this contrasting environment, you can touch 400 million year old rocks with one hand, and a day-old flower with the other, and the temperature can fluctuate 50 degrees or more between dawn and mid-day.