Rising 5,000 feet above the desert floor travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises, spa and resorts

One of the greatest morning scenes in Texas, USA, is found just south of the Guadalupe Mountains, where the first rays of sun transform the dramatic eastern escarpment of El Capitan into a brilliant copper-orange curtain of light. The Guadalupe Mountains are part of one of the finest examples of an ancient marine fossil reef on Earth. Geologists come here from around the world to marvel at this extraordinary natural phenomenon, which formed approximately 250 million years ago in the geologic period know as the Permian. Today, El Capitan is the most distinct landmark within Guadalupe Mountains National Park, with trails around the base and near other mountains providing great views of the mountain.

El Capitan stands at the southern edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. The mountain is visible for tens of miles, and can be seen from such distant locations as Carlsbad, New Mexico. The mountain is composed of Capitan limestone, which formed from the skeletons of small aquatic creatures that lived during the Permian Period. During the 1800′s, settlers used the mountain as a landmark for navigation. El Capitan, used as a signal peak for hundreds of years by travellers in the area, is a stunning peak rising quite abruptly out of the Chihuahuan Desert floor in West Texas.

El Capitan is composed of Capitan Limestone, which is the Permian-aged limestone reef deposit. A reef is a submerged resistant mound or ridge formed by the accumulation of plant and animal skeletons. The Capitan Limestone is a massive, fine-grained fossiliferous limestone that formed by growth and accumulation of invertebrate skeleton of algae, sponges, and tiny colonial animals called bryozoans. These skeletons were stabilized by encrusting organisms that grew over and cemented the solid reef rock, unlike modern reefs built by mainly a rigid framework of corals.

The fauna in this area is characteristic of that of the Chihuahuan Desert but with more trees. The trees along the road way in this area consists of One-seeded, Alligator and other Junipers, Pinon Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Scrub and Live Oaks. There are actually Douglas Fir in the higher elevations. Hwy. 62/180 runs through the middle of these mountains. The mountains themselves are actually an old Corral Reef dating from back when this area was under the ocean. Therefore the majority of the rock in this area is fragmented limestone.
El Capitan is guarded by cliffs on three sides, and those faces are rarely climbed due to the unstable condition of the rock and the sheer nature of the peak. Hikers can scramble up to the summit by first climbing to near the summit of Guadalupe Peak and scrambling down to the south to the Guadalupe Peak-El Capitan saddle, then up the backside of El Cap.
This El Capitan is not to be confused with its El Capitan cousin in Yosemite – El Capitan of Guadalupe Mountains National Park is comparable in stature and sheerness.