Saturday morning started with a quick breakfast at the hotel in Carlsbad and an hour drive Guadeloupe Mountains National Park.

The target: state high point number 12, Guadeloupe Peak. The mountains in the park, which are the highest in Texas, were originally a reef in an ocean that used to cover the area millions of years ago.

Welcome to the Jungle blared over the radio minutes before we arrived at the visitor center parking lot. Topped out the Infinity volume. Ears were ringing. We were ready to climb.

Guad (my affectionate short name for the mountain) rises to 8,750 feet. We started somewhere around 5,568 according to my altimeter. That gave us roughly 3,200 feet of elevation gain over the 4.2 miles to the summit. Not the worst I’ve experienced but no joke either!

The weather was perfect. 60 degrees and sunny with mostly clear blue skies overhead. While you can’t see the true summit, you get a pretty good look at where you are headed from the get go.

When we dropped by on Friday, we heard that over 50 percent of the trail was snow and ice covered. We both had the ever-trusty Khatoola Microspikes, so we were in good shape to truck through it.

There are great views along the trail. You climb the entire time, but it doesn’t really feel bad because there are great views and you keep getting a different perspective on the top of the mountain as you ascend towards it. There was new terrain around every turn.

As you climb higher and near the summit, you get to the see the back side of El Capitan, which tops out at around 8,000 feet.

Finally, the summit comes into view. A few more step and you’re on the top of Texas. The views are fantastic in every direction. It was pretty windy (15-20mph) but comfortable.

“This is not my first rodeo”. That’s a phrase we throw around pretty often. It was true of this hike. We know how to do this right.

As we started down we saw droves of Texas Tech students hiking up in tennis shoes. One was carrying a golf club as a hiking stick. America is in good shape as long as that guy is around!

I have to label this as my favorite state high point hike to date. Mt. Washington was an amazing experience and certainly got the adrenaline going. This hike was scenic at all times. The views were amazing. It was great to have some company for the hike.

The hike to the top took a little over 2 hours. The downhill trek added another hour and a half. Since the only food we’d had for the day was breakfast at the hotel in the morning and a snack at the summit, we were starving by the time we got down.

We met some nice folks from El Paso at the summit and they recommended we check out L&J’s Cafe in town. That was the next stop. It included the celebratory beer: Frontera IPA brewed in Big Bend. Lunch/dinner was enchiladas as recommended by the server. A combo of beef/mole sauce, chicken/green sauce, and cheese with red sauce. We were only 2 miles from Mexico so I had high expectations, and they were met.

I pushed to go ahead and make the remaining 5 hour push to Tuscon so that we didn’t have to drive again on Sunday. That’s what we did. It was exhausting after a day of hiking and on a full stomach, but we made it.

Top of Texas!