Santa Elena Canyon is one of the three major canyons through which the Rio Grande River flows in Big Bend National Park.

You can see the large gash that is Santa Elena Canyon for at least a dozen miles on a clear day as you drive south in Big Bend National Park toward the Rio Grande River.

The cliff on the left of Santa Elena Canyon is the Sierra Ponce, which rises straight up 1500 feet above the Rio Grande and represents the northern border of Mexico.

The cliff on the right of the canyon is Mesa de Anguila, which dominates the southwestern section of Big Bend National Park in the United States.

The Sierra Ponce cliff wall towers above the Rio Grand for over a mile and is quite an impressive sight.  There is no U.S. Border Patrol here, and for good reason.  If any Mexican is brave enough to climb down the sheer third-mile high cliff — and manages to survive — then they probably deserve to enter the home of the brave and land of the free. 

Theresa walks along the soft sandy banks of the Terlingua Creek drainage into the Rio Grande.

You have to cross the Terlingua Creek drainage to reach an amazing trail that hikes into Santa Elena Canyon above the Rio Grande.  Unfortunately, the drainage was too deep and muddy for us to cross on this day.

A man sits in a lounge chair reading a book on the banks of the Rio Grande river.

Theresa is trying to figure out how we can cross this muddy creek.  The soft bottom tried to swallow our boots like quicksand.

Santa Elena Canyon is so narrow, and its walls are so sheer that sunlight enters the canyon for only a few minutes each day.  Some sections of the canyon are less than 30 feet wide, and hence the Rio Grande never receives any direct sunlight in these areas.

Photographs cannot quite capture the immensity of the Sierra Ponce cliffs.

Theresa walks back to shore after cleaning her muddy boots in the warm Rio Grande.

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