The appeal of dad & son adventures in the desert

My son, Tener, and I are adventure junkies.

Each year since 2018, we have ventured into other worlds to explore, seek meaning, adventure and purpose. My son, now 46, lives in Austin, Texas. We share explorers’ blood. Our pooled passions include sailing, exploring, backpacking, outdoor cooking, astronomy, physics, photography, geology, history, archeology and figuring out the best way to tackle difficult passages.

Our earliest expeditions took us to Big Bend National Park and its adjoining state park in Southwest Texas. They encompass well over 1 million acres of outrageous and explorable land: the Rio Grande Valley, Chisos Mountains and plenty of high desert. We travel in a modified 4X4 offroad SUV to hike and explore all possibilities. Our favorite areas are hard to access and there have been times when we saw no people for five days. Mexican black bears, mountain lions, coyotes, javelinas, ringtails, scorpions, free-range longhorn cattle and diamondback rattlesnakes are our close neighbors.

The weather at Big Bend is atrocious to all extremes. Though we went there either in April or October, temperatures ranged from 36°-105°F. We packed for winter and summer.

This area has the largest expanse of dark sky in North America, which makes stargazing out of this world. We can see the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn with just binoculars, but have taken a full-sized telescope to see amazing celestial bodies. The Milky Way is bright enough to cast shadows.

To branch out, our latest trip took us to the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce National Parks as well as many other off-the-beaten-path places.

Our discussions on long road trips cover everything from racing sailboat design to the off-the-grid phone apps for navigation and weather.

Mountain biking in the desert is fantastic. It’s so vastly different from riding on any other terrain. The ground works are not always flat either. The landscape is riddled with dry creek beds (arroyos), steep sedimentary layers of stair-step drops and climbs, and plenty of cactus landmines.

Our desert of choice is the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in North America. Tener and I chose this activity on two of our four adventure trips to the Big Bend parks.

A rider must constantly watch for the placement of the front wheel. If we’re not paying attention, we could run into a boulder the size of a hall closet or crash into a cactus. When we’re lucky, we might only sideswipe a creosote bush, which is one of the few green growing things that don’t have teeth and claws. Even with narrow clearances between spiky ocotillos and saw-toothed yuccas, our legs and arms usually looked like we came out in second place in a cat fight. Imagine the epic torture chamber where walls of sharp spikes close in on you.

But in spite of the dangers and hardships, the desert is extraordinarily beautiful and a free place to ride.

The rocky outcroppings, mesas, canyons and vistas combined with wildlife and blooming cacti are phenomenal. When riding treacherous single- or no-tracks, we had to watch carefully ahead and not leisurely swivel our heads to survey the beauty lurching past us and our aluminum ponies. Our field of vision is bracketed between several yards ahead to the space ahead of our front tires.

We noticed that when we got on old mining service roads, we could become tourists and gaze calmly at the bizarre scenery and mountain ranges framed by the Rio Grande and Chisos Mountains.

Precautions are necessary in all arid and hot expeditions. We needed water, and lots of it. We used full 2-liter hydration packs, spare water bottles and a camp-brewed iced tea mix to combat muscle cramps and dehydration. We had extra water in the vehicle to stop back and refill.

In the dry desert, we sweated without feeling sweaty. Perspiration evaporates instantly off your skin, so we had to drink constantly to replace lost moisture. Salt tablets and sport drinks also helped.

Tires were our next concern. We ran tubeless full of sealant. When we ran over the five-burred goathead seed thorns, our tires were oozing green slime but quickly sealed up and stopped bleeding while our human skin cactus scratches bled freely. There are so many pointed needles in the desert that getting through without getting stabbed is almost impossible. Kevlar soccer shin guards might be a good idea for mountain biking in the desert.

What is it that attracts us to the desert?

We debated the reasons and came up with the fact that we were raised in the lush green woodlands of Ohio. The desert offers us a space that is most different from anything we’ve experienced. Although I’ve visited the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Namib-Kalahari Deserts in Africa, the harshness and fight for survival for all living things is what draws us.

The sheer beauty and desperate desolation of the desert calls us to it year after year. It appears as a rugged impenetrable wilderness, but once we weave ourselves inside, it’s a magical wonderland that beckons us back time and again.

I feel so blessed to have a son that enjoys extreme outdoor sports and I’m sure he feels the same way about his old man.

---

Thanks for reading today, cycopaths.

Nelson Shogren is a retired bike mechanic (and fellow cycopath) who currently volunteers in a bike ministry to convert old and donated bikes for people needing reliable transportation. He has also volunteered in bike skills and education programs at Mansfield City Schools, an inner-city school district in Mansfield, Ohio. His favorite riding surfaces are snow, ice and deserts.

If you or someone you know would like to submit to Cycotherapy as a guest author, please read this page for instructions on how to do so. We’d love to hear your story. (And submissions, if accepted, are paid!)