Best Hikes of 2016 #1- South Rim at Big Bend

I DID IT. I FINISHED BLOGGING ABOUT 2016 BEFORE 2018 STARTED. ALL HAIL MY BLOGGING PROWESS.

In all seriousness, I meant this to be a couple of posts, not a year-long project spanning 9 posts. The bad news is that it took me a year to write all of this up; the good news is that this is the most consistently I’ve blogged in years. The better news is now I’m free to blog once every year or two like nature intended.

Anyway, you’re here to finally know which hike somehow beat out the trail that ended at an ice cream parlor for #1 on my rankings. The South Rim hike at Big Bend is my favorite hike of 2016, but also my favorite hike ever. I did it in June 2016, when daylight was plentiful, greenery abounded, and birds strutted around in colorful breeding plumage. While I imagine it’s a great hike any time during the year, I would aim to do it in spring or summer, in which you can fully appreciate the variety of habitats and the amazing array of birds, with the latter especially noteworthy in Boot Canyon. If you want to see a Colima Warbler in the United States, this is the only place to do it, and I’m happy to report that we were successful on our attempt and I now have a self-satisfied checkmark next to the species in my Sibley that I love to flaunt in front of the more hardcore birders in my life.

You can customize the South Rim in a number of ways, including whether you make a loop or do an out-and-back. We did a 14-mile loop, starting with the gradual climb up the Laguna Meadow trail to the eponymous Laguna Meadow itself (my favorite part of the hike), followed by the breathtaking Southwest Rim trail. We then cut back through the riparian Boot Canyon, finally descending down the steep Pinnacles trail to Boulder Flat. Each part of the hike is unique, scenery and wildlife changing before you can grow to accustomed to it (if that’s even possible). But I’m not going to describe it in great detail, much to everyone’s shock/horror/relief, partially because it’s been a year and a half since the hike and I didn’t take great notes, and partially because I could never do it justice. Okay, and partially because I won’t get this posted before 2018 if I prattle on much longer and I really don’t want to change my intro. Instead, I want to harken back to something I said from my #2 hike of the year.

I meant it when I said the Bright Angel hike may stick with me longer than any other. The sharpness and specificity of those memories, the concrete accomplishment, the easy summary of events, those all give Bright Angel staying power. They help keep it near the top of my list. So what keeps the South Rim at the top of my list? The splashes of color and wonder. The dynamic landscape. The mystery and intrigue of each section. The echoes of everything I felt that day, of love and happiness and pain and fear and true awe at the world. The emotions that reverberate more powerfully than memories: the way my heart aches in the best way possible, the gratitude that I have the ability to experience so much of the world, the sorrow that others will never have the same opportunity due to nothing more than the circumstances of their birth. The pure inspiration that the hike conjured in my soul, the inspiration to fight through every pile of shit in my career path, to find the value in every scrap of nature we can save, to make every climate-denying politician regret the day they chose to stand against science.

For most of the hike, there aren’t specific viewpoints I can recommend or cool places to stop as you walk from one checkpoint to the next. I remember moments, snapshots of the hike that aren’t special because of the view or a big tree or a rare animal, although you encounter all of that (*clears throat as Sibley “accidentally” opens to Colima Warbler page*). Those moments are special because of what I felt as the morning sun backlit a bird we just couldn’t identify, or as I ate lunch against a tree, or as I sat on a rock to rest after a hurried 20 minutes of hiking, because even the mundane felt extraordinary. No other hike has made me feel the way the South Rim did, and I don’t know how many hikes have the same potential.

There’s a hike like that out there for everyone. In 2018, make it your goal to find it.