It is a little over a mile to Dripping Spring, which is at
about five thousand four hundred and ninety-three feet elevation.
The trail
descends easily at first through a beautiful wooded canyoncito, where it is
completely hidden and embowered in foliage. Then it winds its way down and
around the cherty limestone, to the top of the cross-bedded sandstone, down
which zigzags and steps lead one to the spring itself. This is located in a
picturesque spot. Picture a great, overhanging wall at the very bottom of
the cross-bedded sandstone, from twelve to fifty and more feet high, the
recess being perhaps thirty or forty feet back. From the rocks above, with
a drop of about fifteen feet, seeping through a green cluster of maidenhair
ferns, the pure water of the spring drips into a stone trough placed to
receive it. Day and night, winter and summer, fair weather or foul, it
seldom varies its quick, tinkling, merry drip, drip into the receptacle
below. Below the trough, a natural cavity in the rocks receives the
overflow, and here, within the pool and on its edges, aquatic and other
plants grow in profusion. By the side of this ever-flowing water, Louis
Boucher, the builder of the trail, has his simple home camp. Two tents,
placed end to end, rest against the wall, well protected from sun and rain,
though the morning's sun shines in freely. Below is a corral for horses,
mules and burros used on the trail.
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