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Big Bend National Park

This is one of our favorite collections, not just because it focuses on our favorite national park, but because it highlights the beauty and energy of the park. These photos are classic. Join this group and add your own photos!

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Balanced Rock
Ursus americanus, Black Bear - <span>Cattail Falls, Big Bend National Park, Brewster County Texas</span>
Colima Warbler, Oreothlypis crissalis - <span>Pinnacles Trail, Big Bend National Park, Brewster County Texas</span>
The Boot in the Chisos Mountains - <span>Boot Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Brewster County Texas</span>
Arca at Santa Elena Overlook - <span>Arca Swiss Discovery 4x5 view camera set up overlooking Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park.See more about this location and the final image I made on my blogthelargeformatcamera.blogspot.com/2012/05/santa-elena-can...See more images from Big Bend on my websitewww.wildernessphotographer.net/Texas/Big-Bend-National-Pa...</span>
dreams of big bend - <span>outrageous storm rolling thru Austin tonight, right in the middle of my precious sleep, haha. going thru some old Big Bend photos while I wait for the lightning and hail to stop. we desperately needed some rain, so that's at least good. plant damage assessment in the morning. in the meantime, a remake of an old fave of mine.- - - My Big Bend Set - - -
some other photos from the trip,
including some really cool panoramics.playlist</span>
ERUPTION!   (MG_3289) - <span>At the end of the Cretaceous about 65 mya, (million years ago) Big Bend went from an area that was being compressed to one that was being pulled apart. This was caused by huge movements called plate tectonics. The  Pacific plate (called the Farallon plate) had suddenly done something unusual- it went from being shoved down into the lower crust and mantle and instead it broke and slid horizontally under the thin western North America continental plate. As the eastern edge of the Farallon plate moved further and further under the western North America plate, it caused the overlying plate to crumple and be squeezed. This led to the two big thrust systems in the west: the older Sevier thrust that is in western Utah and western Wyoming and the younger Laramide thrust that formed the Rockies through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and finally the Big Bend area of Texas. What happened next set the stage for the next big geologic episode in Big Bend.After the Farallon plate stopped moving east under the North America Plate, it started to slowly sink into the lower crust and mantle. This sinking is what initiated the pulling apart along and west of the Laramide thrust. As the western North America plate was being fractured and pulled apart, the melting Pacific Farallon plate started to produce lots of hot buoyant magma which began to rise up along the cracks caused by the pulling apart. The Christmas Mountains just north of the Park are the result of those first volcanoes that were caused by the eruption of the magma produced by the sinking Farallon plate. The eruptions there are about 45 million years old. For the next 20 million years, Big Bend was transformed into the land of fire.Goat Mountain which we saw the back of at the Sotol Vista Overlook photograph (2nd photo back in this photostream), has been sliced in half and lets us see the internal structure of a volcano when we look at it from the west. The deep vee at its crest is the throat of the volcano and we can see several eruptive events in cross section. The light yellow and green layer at the bottom of the mountain is the Wasp Spring Surge deposit. You would not have wanted to be around then. “Surge” doesn’t sound so bad but think huge explosion with a tidal wave of hot rock flowing and racing away from the source being mixed with red hot debris falling from the sky. The volcano exploded because there was a lot of water in the magma which, as it travels up, explodes like a just-opened, shaken, cola. The water tends to be at the top of the magma blob coming up because it is lighter and will rise faster. Once the magma with water has exploded and erupted, a thicker viscous lava can flow out in slow moving rivers instead of violent explosions. The two reddish layers on top of the Wasp Spring Surge deposit are rhyolite lava flows that were erupted next out of the volcano. The line between them represents a period of time maybe 100 to 1000 years when the volcano was quiet.I was very lucky and the clouds that were swirling around the Chisos Mountains (just behind Goat Mountain) lined up perfectly and made it look like the eruption was starting all over again!</span>
Terlingua Abaja on Terlingua Creek, Big Bend, Texas - <span>This started life as an infrared panorama shot on a hill overlooking Terlingua Abaja on Terlingua Creek. Hancolored with some wild soft and oil pastels, then re-fried in the digital darkroom.Historic marker for this spot:
www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=53958</span>
Black Bear - <span>On lost mine trail.</span>
sotol vista sunset
mountain lion kill
desert sunrise
sotol vista sunset
desert view
Desert
Big Bend.
Big Bend!
Poke Me.
The Window - Big Bend
Fandango Trip-3 (28 of 119)
Fandango Trip-3 (72 of 119)
The Tornillo Creek
Emory Peak Trail
Century Plant Blossoms
Sunset on Casa Grande
Sunset at The Window
Badland
Badland
Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive
Tuff Canyon Trail
Sotol Vista sunset
desert
Sotol Vista
santa elena canyon



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