Devil's Hall Trail - Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Location: Guadalupe Mountains NP (Texas)
Nearest City: Carlsbad, NM (55 miles)
Hike Type: Point to Point
Distance: 4.2 miles (round trip)
Net Elevation Gain: 500 feet
Date of Hike: July 1, 2010

This was our second day out to GMNP and it would turn out to be our final day at the park as a planned day hike through McKittrick Canyon the following day had to be cut out because of heavy rains that hit the area from the remnants of a tropical storm. The Devil’s Hall trail is considerably less taxing than the Guadalupe Peak trail we completed just two days earlier. This trail is about half the distance of the GP trail and is relatively flat with only 500 feet of net elevation gain. Nevertheless, it is still quite a scenic trail and well worth checking out.

View Devil's Hall in a larger map

The highlights of the trail are Devil’s Staircase and Devil’s Hallway.  The staircase is a natural rock staircase and the hallway is a narrow canyon probably 20-30 feet wide and 100 feet high.  Besides these highlights I found the views of the mountains towering above the relatively low elevation of this trail on each side to be a particularly scenic and provided an interesting perspective.

A view of the mountains to the north along the trail covered in fog

Devil's Hallway

Devil's Staircase

Be careful along the trail as the National Park Service says the 2nd mile of the trail is not maintained. We didn’t have any issues on the way out but on the way back we lost the trail and ended up hiking in what I think was a dry creek bed parallel to the trail just to the north. We eventually ran into the Tejas trail which is about a quarter of a mile north of the Devil’s Hall trail. These two trails split from each near the start of the trailhead. So all we had to do was follow the Tejas trail back to the trailhead and we were back where we started. We were probably off trail for a good mile or so and knew we were off trail. However, I knew we generally moving in easterly direction and that would eventually get us back to close to where we started. However, if you end up in the dry creek bed you are pretty much stuck there unless you back track since the banks on each side are probably 15-20 feet high and relatively steep. However, it is not too difficult walk through since it has pretty good layer of rocks to follow. One other thing to be aware of is that this trail can be very rocky at times (on or off trail) and can require some minor scrambling over rocks.

Climbing up the side of Devil's Hallway