Inside Big Bend National Park there are two trails leading to the geological formation named, the Window; a 2.8 mile trail descending 980 feet from the Chisos Basin Trailhead and a 2.2 mile trail descending 500 feet from the Chisos Basin Campground. A round trip, then, is either 5.6 miles that consumes about 4 hours of your time or 4.4 miles that consumes 3 hours of your time. There is also a 0.3-mile-round-trip Window View Trail that, instead of leading to the formation, provides an overview. This last trail avoids the rustic routes though the canyon and is recommended for viewing the setting sun without leaving you on a trail after dusk. This trail is located adjacent to the Chisos Basin Trailhead.
The Window is a “pour off” from the Oak Creek Canyon drainage system. As with the entire park, the Window and the routes to it are within the overlapping territories of mountain lions and bears. This is the primary reason for staying off the trails during dusk or overnight.
As for me, I spent just under two hours or more in the dark on the return leg of the 4.4-mile tail. The trail is uneven, crosses shallow pools of water, exhibits varying degrees of inclines and a few “tiers” of “stepping” stairs that have been molded into the geology. With an unnecessary “over-supply” of water, shoulder bag, backpack, camera equipment and tripod, my hike was a burdensome and slow one. And in the dark, a lot of things look like bears: A family of which, I learned a day later, were living in the area—with one of them being sighted on the day of my hike.
Now, as for the photograph: It is the first of three images on this site showing a view from The Window (not counting two self-portrait photographs of this scene that convey context in size and geology).
This first image is as it would normally appear—given the available lighting and particular settings of the camera at the time. The foreground is darker than the background and depending upon your computer’s display settings, may appear utterly black.
The darker foreground is due to the exposure being made for the horizon in the background while shooting at settings documented in the Camera / Exposure / Image / Flash data indicted elsewhere on this page. A small amount of “fill flash” was used to subtly depict foreground detail (which, again, may be invisible on a screen having a high contrast ratio). Regardless of whether you see minor foreground detail, the end result for this image preserves the horizon’s richness of color and the lighting conditions when I captured it.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 755 KB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.