The XTX runs between Orange and El Paso, passing parks, historic sites, and cultural highlights along the way. Gandy recommends traveling it from East to West, to take advantage of prevailing winds. It gains 56,000 feet of cumulative elevation as it crosses the state, and the route gives trail users a taste of the state’s diversity, from the thickly forested Piney Woods to the flat and open Gulf Coast, the rolling terrain of the Hill Country, and, finally, the desert. It passes through leafy tree tunnels in East Texas; meanders into Gruene, home of a historic dance hall, in Central Texas; and dives into the prickly, parched Chihuahuan Desert in the far west. Traveling it allows adventurers to tap into Texas traditions like barbecue in LaGrange, sweet tea from most any small town diner, two-stepping at Gruene Hall outside New Braunfels, Shiner Bock beer, and longhorns— whether you choose to pedal, horseback, or plod on two feet.
“For some, it’s a pilgrimage and for some it’s an athletic endeavor,” Gandy says. “For all, it’s an adventure. It’s a long trek that maps a variety of natural terrain and the history of Texas settlements, and avoids big cities. It’s remote, and therefore irresistibly romantic.” As the trail evolves over coming years, it will shift off busier roadways and onto designated dirt paths as right-of-way is acquired, Gandy says. He is also working to record information about local history (including Indigenous people who lived along the trail) at some of the stops.
“The trail exists and now we’re working to improve it,” he says, adding that detailed online maps should be available by next winter (in the meantime, reference this map on the XTX webpage). Gandy, who grew up in Texas but now lives in Poulsbo, Washington, hopes that the XTX project will be his lasting legacy.
Inside the canyon
Back in Santa Elena Canyon, Gandy and I sit on boulders and swish our dirty shoes in a pool of water, trying to clean off the sticky mud. It’s a sunny day in April, and I’ve come to the Big Bend from Austin for a week to catch up with friends and let Gandy show me this alternate stretch of the trail. For the hardy hikers who brave the dirt and water of this secondary path (cyclists and equestrians won’t be able to take it), the rewards will be huge: An ever-changing palette of color, towering cliffs, and quiet that’s broken only by bird song. Two miles up, we reach a side canyon where we scamper over boulders the size of automobiles and shimmy into fern-lined crevices.
“It’s a geological cathedral,” Gandy says of this stretch of the trail, between 1,000-foot cliff walls. We agree this section, about three miles upstream of the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon, must be the prettiest part of the entire XTX.
“The light show, when the sun comes up and changes everything hourly, is spiritual,” he says, and I agree. We started our walk as the sun was rising, casting an orange-gold glow over the sheer cliff walls and turning the ribbon of water into molten metal. But now, in the late afternoon sun, all I see is the blue of the sky, the brown of the mud, and the green of the reeds. “There’s not a bad view in here.”
It’s par for the course, Gandy says, on a trail that gives people a glimpse of a state known for its brash independence and wide-open landscapes. “The XTX is a chance to discover true, untamed Texas.”
