Mike's Southwest Travels: Smith Spring

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Smith Spring

September 28, 2005

Location:  Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Excerpt from: Smith Spring
Another easy hike, this time starting at Frijole Ranch, gently climbs 400 ft/122 m through desert scrub to Smith Spring. This peaceful oasis at the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains is resplendent with maidenhair ferns, pine, madrone, alligator juniper, oak and bigtooth maple. Although you have only walked just over a mile, you feel far from civilization: dappled sunlight filters through the green canopy and the only sounds are water softly running over weathered rocks and the faint hum of busy insects. Loop back via a second oasis, Manzanita Spring, for a total distance of 2.3 miles/3.7 km. Trailhead: Turn off US 62/180 1.5 miles north of Headquarters visitor center onto the 0.75-mile gravel road to Frijole Ranch.

For an extensive history of the Frijole Ranch, click here: The Frijole Ranch - Pioneer Legacy of the Guadalupes.  For my completely made-up history, read on.

Here's some gear from an Indian killed at the Spring, whilst trespassing on land he erroneously thought was his, just because him and all his ancestors lived there.

Here's the saddle of the man of the who shot the Indian.

Here's the antlers of the last Smith Spring elk, also shot by the man who owned the saddle who shot Indian, who trespassed on the land he thought was his and ancestors, which all lay in the house that Jack built.  (If you don't know that nursery rhyme, then that didn't make any sense.  If you do, then it probably still didn't.)

Here's where they detail the relationship between the Frijole Ranch, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, the Beta Reticulans, Kennedy's assassination, and of course, the Shriners.  It's all just like I thought.

Manzanita Spring is just down the trail.  What a great time for a nice dip in the pool.  Except, of course, it's "endangered" water.  Keep out!  By the way, that's El Captain in the background.

Like the blurb says, it is an easy hike.  Unless you had just walked for a total of about six miles over at nearby McKittrick Canyon on the same day.  When I started this hike, I peered into the distance and thought to myself, Oh please, let the spring be closer than that little clump of trees to left, up the mountain.  They weren't, and they don't tell that it's mostly uphill.

   

I don't know what the name of this small mountain is on the trail.  I would have named it "Teat Peak."

 

Here's a gully on the trail.  It runs about 180' deep and there are boulders all over the place.

   

Of course, much like McKittrick Creek and Manzanita Spring, no swimming allowed at Smith Spring either.  Nothing like 100-degrees with humidity, hot and exhausted with your shirt off, gasping for breath and staring at a cold, clear pool of water.  It took all my willpower not to defy the park service.

Here's a lovely fern-covered waterfall.

 

A plaque gives you the history of the spring.  Guardrails surround the trail to keep people from destroying the fragile ecology of the spring.  But you can easily hop over them to get the good pictures.

At the Spring, I saw bluebirds, squirrels, and fish.   I didn't see any frijoles though.  I think they were hunted to extinction in this area.  When will Man learn?

I took a quiet nap on a rock bench and snapped this picture.  Rocks never felt so comfortable.  A cool breeze beneath the trees, while listening to the babbling brook, revived my spirits.  You know, it was almost worth the near death experience.