September 29, 2016: The Narrows and Mt. Baldy Hikes
	Return to the Index for Our Wichita Mountains Trip

For our second day of hiking in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, we started by picking up a couple of Subway sandwiches for lunch on our way into the Refuge. We plan to eat these on top of Elk Mountain. After that long hike, we'll stop in to the Visitor Center and then head over to Mt. Scott. I am hoping we can do the "boulder avalanche," but I'm not sure. In any event, we plan to head on back to Dallas late this afternoon.

The Hike to the Top of Elk Mountain

We checked out of the Comfort Inn about nine, and again went up Interstate 44 to Highway 49. There, we stopped at a gas station that has a Subway franchise and picked up some sandwiches and bottled water for our lunch.

The trailhead for the hike to the top of Elk Mountain (a little over two miles round trip) is at the Sunset Campground- the westernmost facility in the Refuge.

To get there, we followed Highway 49 into the Refuge and just past the Visitor Center. There, we turned north to continue following that highway, and drove about three miles to the turnoff to the south for the Sunset Campground.

We parked and got our stuff together for the hike. Fred and I have done this hike two or three times before, and we have also done the hike to Charon's Garden a couple of times; that trailhead is here at the Sunset Campground as well.

Starting Out on the Elk Mountain Hike

The weather this morning was really beautiful, and the drive from the Interstate into the Refuge and then to the Sunset Campground was really nice.

The Road from Highway 49 Towards Elk Mountain

Plaque at the Sunset Campground

We parked and took a few minutes to get organized for our hike; we would be gone four or five hours, so we needed to make sure we had everything with us. I took a few pictures right from the picnic area as we were getting ready.

Sunset Pool and Bridge

Looking Towards the Charon's Garden Trail

From the parking area, Fred got a good picture of the bridge across Sunset Pool that would take us to the Elk Mountain Trail, and then we walked over to the bridge to cross it and begin our hike. Just before crossing the bridge, I took this picture of Guy and Fred before we crossed the footbridge. I also took two movies- one before we crossed the footbridge and one as I was doing so:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) Looking Ahead at Elk Mountain

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) We Start Out on the Elk Mountain Hike

The Trail to the Top of Elk Mountain

The trail up to the top of Elk Mountain began ascending steeply right on the other side of the footbridge from the picnic/camping area. The trail was well-marked and obviously well-traveled.

You can see the very first portion of the trail at left, in a picture that I took just after I crossed the footbridge. Guy and Fred have gone ahead, as I had to go back to get my selfie stick that I had left sitting on the roof of the car. Here is a movie that I made as I was catching up to the guys:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

On the way up the trail, I stopped occasionally to let my camera take a panoramic picture or to take a series of pictures that I later put together into one. In each of these panoramas, you can easily see that we are getting higher and higher along the north side of Elk Mountain. Here are the first three panoramas:

Looking Up at Elk Mountain

The View to the Northwest

The View to the North (from the halfway point)

Also along the trail up, Fred had Guy and I stop a few times for a portrait (and I also found a gnarled old tree beside the trail worthy of a photo). Here are those pictures:

Other than the panoramics and the portraits above, Fred and I each took a number of pictures on the way up the trail; as we got higher and higher the pictures got more and more expansive. I have weeded out a great many of them as not being of particular interest or defective in some way or duplicates between the two of us. And then I put our pictures into time sequence for a slideshow of our ascent.

The slideshow is below; as usual, you can move from picture to picture using the little forward and backward buttons in the lower corners of each picture and you can track your progress through the show with the numbers in the upper left of each picture:

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Towards the end of the trail to the top, I made my final two panoramas:

Looking Back Down the Trail

The View to the Northwest

After about 45 minutes of steady climbing (towards the end of which I had to take my shirt off to keep from overheating), we came out onto the top of Elk Mountain, right by the pile of rocks which is actually the highest point on the plateau.

At the Summit of Elk Mountain

When we arrived at the top of Elk Mountain, we went immediately just to our left to the actual high point of the mountain. To call this Elk Mountain is a little misleading, for the mountain isn't so much a peak as a plateau with its own ups and downs and one point- actually a pile of ancient granite- that is higher than the rest of the plateau.

So, when we got to the top of the trail and turned to our left, this was the view of the actual peak of Elk Mountain that greeted us:

So the three of us went up onto the pile of rocks that you can see above and then were really on the summit of Elk Mountain. We knew we'd reached the summit because there was a bronze survey marker driven into the rock exactly at the highest point.

The three of us stood right on top of the marker for our portrait at the summit of Elk Mountain:

The views from here were, as you would expect from being at the highest point for quite a ways around, spectacular. For one thing, the expansive views were a wonderful backdrop for our pictures of each other here at the summit:

Fred and I at the Summit of Elk Mountain

Guy Atop Elk Mountain

The summit of Elk Mountain was an irresistible position from which to try to put together one of my 360° panoramas. I have found that while my camera can sometimes do them, they require me being on a flat surface where I can turn at a steady speed without watching where I am stepping- not something I would want to try here. So, instead of that, I took a series of 9 individual pictures and stitched them together in post-production. The resulting panorama can't be really appreciated at the scale it would take to put it all on this page without a scrollable window, so here it is in a scrollable window for you to enjoy:

At left are Guy and Fred at the highest point on Elk Mountain. There is another picture of them below, but this picture looks out to the northwest across the relatively flat top of Elk Mountain; we'll be exploring that area in a little while.

I actually made three or four movies from this spot, but only two of them are worth including here. One is a simple pan around the top of the mountain and the other is a bit of a "selfie editorial" about the beauty of places like this.

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) The Panoramic View from Elk Mountain

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) A "Selfie Editorial"

After I made these movies, we headed off to explore the top of Elk Mountain. Fred and Guy got down off the summit before I did, as I was finishing up the last movie above. So by the time I took my last two pictures from here, they were already back down to the level of the trail.

This view, taken from the summit, looks to the northeast, and in the center of the image, far back on the horizon, you can see the peak that is Mt. Scott.

As I turned to descend from the summit, I was able to get a nice picture of Fred and Guy down at trail level, and the view looks across the relatively flat top of Elk Mountain.

Exploring the Top of Elk Mountain

As you might remember from looking at the aerial view of Elk Mountain above, what we did next was to simply wander off across the rocky top of the mountain, in general making a big circle around the area. The aerial view route is a bit misleading, as we went up and down and in and out of one rock formation after another, trusting that, eventually, we would work our way back to the summit and the trail down again.

Of course I have a penchant for using aerial views to track places we go, but in the case of Elk Mountain, the aerial views are not of the resolution necessary so that you would get a lot out of following our route. So for most of the pictures we took here on Elk Mountain I'll just put them in slideshows (although the pictures will be generally in time sequence as you move through the show using the little buttons in the lower corners of each image).

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The first slideshow is at the left; it consists of pictures taken during our two-hour circuit of Elk Mountain. (It is easier to group portrait-oriented pictures together, rather than mix them with landscape-oriented ones. I also thought that one huge show would be overwhelming.)

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There is another slideshow at the immediate left, this one consisting of more pictures that we took as we were wandering around the top of the mountain. This area reminded me a great deal of Hueco Tanks, a place in Texas northeast of El Paso that is the same type of boulder-strewn area. If you haven't seen those pictures, check out the album year 1992.

Here on Elk Mountain, there are all kinds of neat formations that you can climb around on, although not all of them are totally accessible to casual hikers such as ourselves- ropes or other equipment might be necessary to get to the top of them. But there was no shortage of very interesting cracks and crevices to go through and big rock outcrops to climb on, and expansive views all around.

There were a couple of places where I thought the views were so neat that I stopped to create a panoramic image for this album. Here is one of those:

There was one particular formation that we found that was close to unique- it was a narrow crevice between two huge rock formations that reminded Fred and I very much of the slot canyons near Palm Springs.

Looking Towards the Entrance

Myself and Guy

A Tree Grows in the Crevice

Fred at the Far End

The crevasse was actually just below the large rock where we found a little tank filled with water and growing grass (there will be a movie of this formation a bit later). I was the first one to climb down into the crevice near the tree- below the rock where Fred and Guy were still standing.

I made a movie in the crevice that you might find interesting: (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

It was fun going through the crevice, even though there was no way out the far end to get where we wanted to go. So we returned out the entrance and then went around the large rock outcrop to find a way forward.

Fred and Guy went ahead of me out of the crevice, so by the time I got back up on the rock to make the movie below, they were already around the other side of the rock.

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

On the other side of the rock was a formation that Fred and I have seen before, most recently on our trip here some years ago with Mario and Steve. At first I thought it was a petrified tree trunk, but that's really just the way it looks. It is pretty interesting, and you can see a couple of good pictures of it at left.

I mentioned above that the tank with the grass would appear in a movie, and now's the time for that. Now is also the time for one of two larger slideshows of pictures that we took here on the top of Elk Mountain. The first slideshow is below, left; it has the pictures that we took before we stopped for lunch. As usual, move through the slides with the forward and backward buttons in the lower corners of each picture, and track your progress with the numbers in the upper left.

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Here is the movie I promised that shows the tank:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) At the Tank After Leaving the Crevice

From the crevice, we continued our exploration of the top of Elk Mountain, and it was only a few minutes later that we got up high on another rock outcrop that offered me another opportunity for a panoramic view:

It was about this time that we thought it was time to stop and have our sandwiches, and we started looking around for a suitable place, perhaps with some shade, where we could sit down and spread things out.

Right after we had come by this balanced rock (see picture at right), I found a kind of tunnel between two huge boulders that were leaning on each other. We all thought this to be a great place to have our sandwiches.

Here are two more movies that I made while we were walking around exploring the top of Elk Mountain:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) The Boulders Atop Elk Mountain

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) Climbing a Boulder on Elk Mountain

We've almost returned to our starting point now, so it's time for the slideshow of the pictures we took after our lunch stop.

At left is a final view near the summit looking towards Lawton. Our after-lunch pictures are in the slideshow below. As always, use the forward/backward buttons to move through the pictures:

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It took a bit of searching, the top of Elk Mountain being all of a jumble, before we saw the route back to the top of the trail up. Just before we got there, I climbed atop a nearby boulder for a final panoramic view from the top of Elk Mountain:

We found our way back to the trail down, but before we left the top of the mountain, we relaxed for a short while back at the summit. There, I happened to take two pictures- one of Fred and one of Guy- and noticed just now that I could put them together:

We are, once again, on the north side of the summit of the mountain, and so this view looks out to the north. The road we took to get here from the Visitor Center is down in the valley; it is Highway 49, which continues on west of here through Oklahoma.

We were fortunate today; the weather has been perfect- beautifully clear and not too hot (if you don't count the exertion coming up the trail).

I couldn't resist concluding our visit to the top of the mountain with a movie to put sort of a benediction to the hike.

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) Leaving Elk Mountain

The hike up, the wandering across the summit, and the lunch we had in the shelter of the huge rocks were all extremely enjoyable. They were particularly so because we had someone along who hadn't visited the Wichitas before, and who seemed to have enjoyed it all immensely.

We discussed some of the other hikes as we made our descent, but Guy seemed to be enjoying himself so much that we planned on a return visit sometime soon- perhaps in the Spring- to do some of them.

We got back to the car and we were all in the mood for a soda. Once we'd gotten refreshed, we headed off to the Visitor Center to have a look around. I've taken pictures there before, and so wasn't inclined to take more of them today. I found something in the gift shop for my sister before we headed off.

I had hoped we might do the boulder avalanche on Mt. Scott, but it seemed as if that should be one of the things left for a return visit, so we decided to just drive to the top.

The Drive to the Top of Mt. Scott

From the Sunset Campground parking area, we headed back out to Highway 49 and headed back towards the center of the Refuge and the Visitor Center. We stopped there for a while and then continued east on that same highway to get to Mt. Scott.

I had hoped we might do the boulder avalanche, but that wasn't in the cards today; instead, we followed the spiral road to the top of Mt. Scott.

When we got to the top of Mt. Scott, we got out of the car and walked around the summit observation area, admiring the views and taking pictures and movies. Since Mt. Scott sticks up above the prairie pretty much by itself, there are expansive views in almost all directions. The only thing I can really do in this album is just show you the best of the pictures, panoramics, and movies that we took; it doesn't even seem to make much sense to try to tell you the direction in which each shot looks (other than to point out that three lakes, a bunch of wind turbines, and the town of Medicine Park all lie east of Mt. Scott).

Let's begin with three panoramic views- all three of which look to the east:

Here are two good movies that I made at the top, both of which pan around to show you the vistas below Mt. Scott:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) Panning East and South from Mt. Scott

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) Me Narrating Our Visit to Mt. Scott

As for the pictures we took, a slideshow is the best way to show them to you. In the show below, left, just use the normal backward/forward buttons to move through the pictures, and track your position with the numbers in the upper left corner of each picture. Remember, if you see water, you are looking east.

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Here is a movie I took over on the west side of the parking area:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls) The View West

Our last picture from the top of Mt. Scott is a panoramic picture of the view to the west:

We left Mt. Scott about four in the afternoon and began the drive back to Dallas- retracing the same route we'd taken coming up. The only difference was that instead of going back through Van Alstyne and Plano, when we got to I-35 we just took that south directly back into Dallas. These two days were just great, and the three of us look forward to returning to the Wichita Mountains again.

You can use the links below to return to the previous day of this trip to the Wichitas or to return to the index page for this trip, and from there continue through the photo album.

	September 29, 2016: The Narrows and Mt. Baldy Hikes
	Return to the Index for Our Wichita Mountains Trip