TRAVEL Twin Peaks

In just one day you can climb one of the tallest mountains in Texas, eat lunch at the summit and hike down in time to catch a spectacular sunset and a plane home.

Guadalupe Peak, in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, offers everything a flatlander armed with a weekend, a day pack and a hankering for altitude needs.

It’s easy to get to-only an hour and a half east of El Paso-and easy to climb. The hike to the summit will take you about three or four hours. You can drive to the mountains, but if you’re strapped for time, do what we did after work one Friday last fall: Hop aboard a Southwest Airlines jet to El Paso, rent a car and spend the night in town. The next morning, head for Guadalupe Peak and a glorious sunrise.

The drive is almost as nice as the climb. Just follow U.S. Highway 62/180 Southwest toward the jagged outline of the Hueco Mountains, 15 minutes away. On the other side of these mountains, the highway slices through the desert grasslands where creosote bushes, sage and prickly pear grow. Small herds of fawn-colored pronghorn antelope graze a few hundred feet from the side of the road and along deep arroyos that have been gouged into the hard ground by coursing floodwaters.

The Guadalupe Mountains first appear on the eastern horizon like an enormous southbound ship with the precipitous cliffs of El Capitan (the highest point in Texas) at its prow.

From these ancient limestone cliffs, you can tell something of the origins of the mountains. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, a shallow, tropical sea covered much of West Texas, now known as the Permian Basin. El Capitan-and Guadalupe Peak to the north-were at the edge of a horseshoe-shaped fossil reef 350 to 400 miles long. The mountains are made up mostly of the contents of this ancient reef-fossilized carcasses of sponges, lime-secreting algae and coral.

A mile above the desert floor, the peaks and ridges of the Guadalupes shelter lush valleys of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir. big-tooth maple, gray oak and little-leaf walnut. These relics of more than a hundred million years ago, when West Texas was blanketed with forests, have been protected from the encroaching desert by steep canyon walls. Many of the trees in the park are Rocky Mountain species. In fact, the Guadalupes are the southernmost tip of the U.S. Rockies and once looked much like the Colorado Rockies do today. For now, the mountains are a desert oasis for elk, mule deer, mountain lions, bobcats and a few black bears. But maybe not for long. Experts say the Guadalupes may be gradually drying up because of years of low rainfall. Within the next century, creosote bushes and cactus could replace pine and fir, and the larger mammals may die out.

The climb up Guadalupe Peak along Guadalupe Peak Trail is more a matter of determination than skill. The trail follows a dry creek bed for a mile, then begins a steady series of rocky, sometimes narrow switchbacks to the top.

The rewards for your efforts are often right on the trail: A collared lizard basks in the sun on the reptilian bark of an alligator juniper; wavy, tubelike fossils of seaweed or algae are frozen in rock beneath your feet; 20 feet ahead, an indigo snake lazily slithers off the trail into the brush. Although sightings of bobcats or ring-tailed cats are relatively rare, these felines often mark their territories with fresh “spray’1 or clumps of “scat.”

The terrain changes gradually as you climb from desert to evergreen and deciduous woodlands to, on the upper shaded slopes, coniferous forest.

Agave, or mescalero, grows just about everywhere on Guadalupe Peak. The Mescalero Apache often climbed the peaks in search of this spiky, thick-leafed plant, which they roasted and ate. Their roasting pits are still found in parts of the park.

Keep an eye out for the Texas madrono, a strange, beautiful tree that grows only in arid, mountainous places in the Southwest. It is a small tree, with a thin, yellowish bark that peels away, revealing smooth, maroon or orange skin underneath. There are at least a half-dozen along the trail to Guadalupe Peak, but madronos are an endangered species and these are expected to be among the last generation.

You’ll know you’re getting close to the summit when the trail begins to wind through clusters of pine and other forest vegetation. About a mile from the top. stop for a snack at a Guadalupe Peak designated campsite and glimpse some of what the rest of the park offers: below, the steep canyon walls of Devil’s Hall; toward the north, the sleep trail going up to “The Bowl,” a large depression in the mountain filled with pine and fir; and beyond that. McKittrick Canyon, where a crystalline trout stream flows through groves of maple, oak and ash.

At 8,749 feet, the summit will give you a knee-buckling rush and an unmatched view of the Chihuahuan Desert below. On a clear day you can see as far as the Davis Mountains. 125 miles to the southeast. In the fall, red-tailed hawks, golden eagles and several species of falcons make their southward journey right over the top of Guadalupe Peak.

The descent is comparatively quick and easy, and you’ll drive back to the airport toward a spectacular West Texas sunset and a plane ride home that takes you back over the top of Guadalupe Peak.