(more pictures below)

I was expecting a mountain. I was expecting a few trails around the bottom of the mountain. I was also expecting a mountain trail to the top of the highest peak of Texas, for mountain climbers.

So when my dad and I walked into the visitor center, I wasn’t expecting much. I had agreed that I would hike to the top of the mountain if, and only if, there was a hiker accessible trail to the top.

When we walked out, however, I was stunned. The park ranger had explained to us that the trail would take a day. It was 8 miles round-trip, which normally wouldn’t freak me out, but the trail would climb 3000 feet. And then another 3000 feet down.

6000 feet was a bit more than a mile. Up. If somebody had asked me to climb half a mile straight up, I would have thought they were joking. But here I was, about to climb up half a mile, and then back down half a mile.

I snorted. The park ranger had told us there were little children who had climbed it. That hardly helped my self-pride. I turned around, looking up. The giant peaks loomed around me. They looked very tall. They were not, however, the highest one. Guadalupe Peak was. And it was behind all the other giant peaks.

My dad and I rampaged the trunk, grabbing bottles of water, quickly matching up ingredients to make sandwiches, and readying backpacks. I wrapped my camera in my dad’s sweatshirt. The bag would be too heavy.

For the first time, I noticed the importance of carrying very little things. Before, I stashed books, cell phones, chargers for those cell phones, music players, bubble gum, sunscreen, a bag of stale chips, and a lot more junk I didn’t need.

I dumped it all out and replaced it with two bottles of water.

A few minutes later, we set out. I took a look at our car, and turned around, beginning to hike.

Hiking is not as easy as walking. There is a giant difference. Walking is your average path. Hiking is borderline climbing. My dad and I climbed small hills.

Sometimes we would go back down after a small hill, and I would feel happy and mad at the same time: happy because my feet got some much-needed rest, but mad because I had spent all that energy climbing up. And now we were going down. It didn’t seem fair, working my feet like that.

My dad and I took periodic rests on large rocks strewn next to the trails. Sitting down, resting, it was very much needed. We would take turns sipping from the few bottles of energy drinks we brought. The sweet taste was so good, sometimes I would want to take large gulps.

Then my dad would stop me. Slowly, my dad would tell me. And I would nod, annoyed, passing the drink back to him. He would cap it and then help me put it into my backpack.

Slowly we gained ground. We started climbing higher and higher. Sometimes, while we rested, I would point out our car. It was the only thing for miles and miles around, other than fields and the single winding highway.

Gradually, our car got smaller. Then we turned and started climbing the back side of the mountain. Here there were more trees, and sometimes we would walk through small forests. We couldn’t see our car anymore, so we just chatted.

My dad originally planned to teach me math along the way, like he did when we were driving. It was true that it helped distract me from the boredom of long car trips, but I couldn’t imagine myself working both my brain and my legs at the same time.

We still attempted, however, but soon my dad would run out of breath, and I couldn’t pay very good attention, carefully climbing the rocky paths.

Then we climbed to the highest point of the mountain.

It wasn’t the highest point in Texas, like Guadalupe Peak was, but it was still a mountain, still an amazing feat. I looked around us, seeing hundreds of things (excluding our car).

I stepped up the last rock to the top, where the path made a turn and wrapped around to the next mountain. A sudden blast of wind nearly knocked me off my feat. The wind here was so strong, my dad’s hat fluttered away, but not before he grabbed it midair.

I tightened my own hat, and we kept on walking.

It was funny how our chit-chat and random conversation would always end up on the topic of elevators, escalators, and ski lifts. Our feet seemed to automatically direct us toward these topics.

In this fashion, three hours passed. We maintained a strict pattern of one rest per half an hour. Sometimes my dad would want to rest, or vice versa, and I would urge him on. Just a bit more, I would tell him.

We stopped and ate our sandwiches. The sharp taste of pickles tasted great in my mouth, and I stole some of my dad’s pickles. I like pickles.

We continued our climb.

Another hour passed.

Then I saw the top of the mountain, its treeless top; its lump, standing out from all. Eagerly I pointed it out to my dad. We got excited. It wasn’t that far from where we were standing right now. It wouldn’t take that long before we got to it.

The path angled toward it.

And then my dad groaned. I asked him what was wrong. He pointed towards a point in the other direction of the peak.

And then I realized the “peak” wasn’t quite the peak at all. Because further away, I saw not one, not two, but three mountain peaks, all higher than this one.

I sighed.

The path continued winding.

Another hour passed in this fashion, but more and more people walked by the trail, encouraging us on, letting us know how far we were: one hour, half an hour, forty-five minutes (they weren’t always consistent), 0.63521 miles (from one person with a GPS), fifteen minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes…

Slowly, we wrapped around the mountains, drifting in and out. Five minutes, the last person said. Five minutes.

I didn’t believe her, however, as all the possible mountain peaks had turned out to be decoys (I gave them that word), and there wasn’t even a possible decoy in sight, let alone the peak of a mountain. I was starting to get annoyed at this mountain, and its ways of tricking me.

All I could see was the path, long and ahead, climbing and zigzagging to the top of the mountain. There wasn’t anyone to greet anymore, just more mountain.

And then suddenly I saw a triangle, made of metal. There was only one man-made structure that was actually bolted into the mountain: the marker triangle, indicating the top of the mountain.

I yelped with joy and ran ahead, the point got higher and higher, revealing more of itself, of it’s Tibet prayer flags hanging from the top, of the small metal box at the bottom with the words “VISITOR LOG” written on it, or the few people standing on the top of the mountain.

I sat down and began signing the visitor log. I noticed other people next to me:

Then I turned around. The wind blew hard, it was very cold, but I ignored those. I looked out. It was not the first time I had taken a look at the large expanse, but it was the first time it invigorated and stunned me.

Hundreds of fields, small mountain peaks, but now just small obstructions easily looked over, the winding road, with tiny ants, smaller than the point of a pen, slowly making their way on the road. From here, they were so slow. I couldn’t imagine driving any slower than 120 miles per hour here.

I whistled. It was a great place to be.

After spending more than half an hour on the peak, and over three hours for the descent, my dad and I finally made it back to the bottom, after it was dark and the sun had set. We were very thankful we brought flashlights, for without them, I might have fallen off a cliff and died.

We took the following pictures (and more, but not shown) at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It is a park to be remembered, and a sight to be treasured.