- Difficulty: Moderate
- Elevation Gain: 344 feet
- Length: Just over 5 miles round trip
We visited as a day trip from Austin. We hiked the Loop Trail around the rock but part of it was temporarily closed due to a washout so we detoured at Base Trail and then took Turkey Pass to meet up with loop again.
There’s an amazing diversity of rocks. The bottom two photos below are different views of the same rock.
The loop trail itself was wide and gravel.
You get lots of good angles on the central rock domes plus the surrounding countryside.
You can climb to the summit of the rock. We chose not to.
From some vantage points you can see where it looks like the shell or crust of rock is breaking and sliding down the slope.
The other trails were narrower and Turkey Pass involved some walking on rocks; no real scrambling. Some tall steps to pick your way through. A couple of stream crossings involved stepping stones or jumping. Turkey Pass has great rock views.
As we rejoined the loop trail the terrain flattened out and there were some small ponds.
We saw many small birds and some fighting black squirrels. Also cow patties and prints on the trail and lots of hikers with dogs. Almost hit a roadrunner driving through the park. It took us about 2.5 hours with lots of photo stops.
