During my 2010 visit to Big Bend, I realized my map from the 1980s depicted the presence of a cave not on modern Park maps. But I mistook the Lost Mine Trail to be the easiest path to that cave.
It wasn’t. So I resolved to find the cave during my 2011 visit.
The 2011 visit included a nerve-wracking drive around Nugent Mountain and up to Pine Canyon. My little Dodge Neon had no business on a road meant for rugged, high clearance vehicles. Nonetheless, I made the drive, followed by a hike. By the time I reached the area that was likely near the cave, I was not only tired from carrying too much equipment, but also concerned about traversing the road back down during the night. In the dark there was a greater risk of tearing-out my car’s oil pan on an overlooked road hazard.
So, I didn’t make it to the cave.
However, I did capture a few interesting photos. One of those was of a mountain resident that I came upon and followed for a short distance. Pictured above is that mountain resident. I suspect it was thinking, “If I don’t move, he won’t see me.” And true enough, I almost didn’t. What I at first saw was the above pictured eye that was watching me. Do you see it?
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 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 4.41 MB. 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.
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