Should I be doing this alone?
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Flowers in a mine shaft.
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When I arrived at the highway near Minturn, I put my thumb out to get a ride to Edwards. Before long a guy pulls over. I get in and say,” I’m going to Edwards." He doesn't reply immediately. Then he asks,” How much you pay me if I drive you all the way there?" I tell him I won't pay him. He says he'll take me anyway.
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Then he starts telling me a story, I guess to break the ice. He says, "We was all watchin' baseball yesterday at my store. My buddy went into the bathroom in the back and took a crap. He smelled it up so bad. The back door was open, but the smell still came up into the store and smelled the whole store up. Oooooeee! It was real bad!" I laughed.
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He was from Red Cliff, lived there for 40 years and owns the liquor store there. He had a thick Mexican cowboy accent and it was hard to understand what he said sometimes. I think he closed up shop because he was bored to death--he'd only sold one bottle all day. He thought he'd go for a drive and see what he'd find.
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As we passed through Minturn he picked up a teenage girl trying to get to Vail. She was bored too. He dropped her off at I-70.
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He told me how he bummed his knee up running down from Gilman to Red Cliff every morning when he was younger. He said how back when he moved here Red Cliff was on the main route from Denver to the Western Slope. The highway came up the Arkansas Valley and over Tennessee Pass. Vail Pass was just a trail. He told me hunting stories. He got an antelope last year, near Mebel. His son got one too. He used to shoot deer above Avon, but now there are too many houses. When he moved here Avon had 8 houses and Edwards twenty.
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I described to him where I'd been hiking. He told me of an old fat guy who broke his foot up there and had to get flown out by a helicopter. He told me he used to go hiking with a woman. She was very nice. They'd take their dogs. Before they knew it they'd walk three miles. He said I should find a girl to hike with me. I said it's hard to find a girl who likes to take hikes like I do. He said I'd find one if I looked hard enough.
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He dropped me off in Edwards. I thanked him and told him I'd stop in his store next time I drove by Red Cliff to check out his hunting trophy collection. He smiled.
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Man is Edwards a messed up town!--its all new buildings cheaply done to look like they are old, and painted in blinding colors. I felt like Wyatt Erp and someone has slipped peyote into my canteen. Small businesses by individuals with freedom give a place character. It cannot be dreamed up and created by a developer.
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I got some groceries, had lunch at a brew pub and read for a while.
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On my way out of town I passed a couple of kids. They were probably brothers, maybe 6 and 10 years old. The older one was on a skate board and the younger one on a BMX. They were practicing jumping off the curb. I encouraged them and offered a few tips. I'd spent many a summer afternoon as a kid doing the same thing. The younger one asked me, "Why do you have a sleeping bag?” referring to my pack. I said I was going hiking and pointed up to the mountains. "All alone?” he asked. "Yes", I replied. He gave me a puzzled look. I had a 6 and a sixty year old question what I was doing today. Hmmm...,
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At the edge of town I got a ride from a young guy going home after mowing lawns. He grew up here and was home for the summer from college in Greeley. His seven month old beagle puppy rode on my lap. I kept a firm grip on him so he didn't jump out my window. The guy took me the few extra miles past his folk’s house up to the trailhead. I thanked him and got on my way.
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I hiked up a steep trail through aspens and then traversed over to East Lake Creek. Thimbleberries covered the forest floor here. Tasty to snack on, but a little dry and seedy this year. Not enough rain. I found some "raisinized" seedless service berries too.
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I set up camp next to a giant fir tree on the edge of a meadow and made some tea, which I drank with the entire box of raspberry spritzer cookies I'd bought in town. I read from the Mountain Gazette I'd picked up in town. It was so nice to have something interesting to read--I'd been struggling through James Michener’s "Return to Paradise."
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As I drifted off to sleep I was making beeping flying saucer noises in my head. It was an odd but soothing and seductive entrance into unconsciousness. Then, as I was just about to fall off, a real UFO noise pierced the night. I froze. Was this really happening? Was I hallucinating?
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Soon I heard distant voices. Then the crackle of a radio. Then there were flickers from flashlights. It was three men looking for something. They fired up their noisemaker (what I thought was a UFO). One guy came wandering down by my camp. I was now getting pissed off, being scared and disturbed. Was this a few guys looking to catch up with the rest of their group, camped out up here somewhere, using those annoying little radios to find them?
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I turned on my headlamp. The guy came up to my tarp and asked a series of stupid questions to ascertain what I was doing there. I was legally camped in the wilderness. Why was I being interrogated? Eventually he let on that he was looking for a couple who had failed to return from a day hike. I was appalled! What a lack of tact! Why didn't he first introduce himself and identify himself as a member of Search and Rescue and tell me what he was up to? Had I been addressed differently, I would have offered to help. I wanted to help. Heck, some day these guys could be out looking for me! They headed on their way and eventually came back by with the lost couple.
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I awoke to a soupy sky. I headed on up into the primeval forest. It was hard to cover much ground as hard rain came and went several times. I took shelter next to giant trees to sit out a couple of hail storms.
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The air is so nice to breathe in this old growth forest. Humid, fresh, nourishing. Two hundred foot trees with trunks 6 feet in diameter towered over me. Rotting trunks of fallen giants crisscrossed the valley floor. Well spaced smaller trees of all sizes pointed up to the gaps in the canopy to someday take their place there. No sigh of drought here. The valley floor is continuously fed by springs from the 13,000+ foot peaks on either side, and the ground is a spongy carpet of moss, ferns, and rotting needles and wood. It felt a bit claustrophobic in there though, especially with all of the rain, mist and clouds.
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As I reached the upper end of the valley the trail became faint--not many people come here it seems. I lost the trail eventually and found a mossy perch above a waterfall for camp. I felt very lonesome and remote, perhaps more so than I ever did last summer. I hoped for decent weather and planed to get up early the next morning to hike the 20 or so miles out to curly. I curled up in my bag and made dinner while it poured rain and hail and lightning flashed and thunder clapped all around me.
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I went to bed worried. The next morning I had to cross a precarious pass where it seems no one ever goes. I'd have to be careful. I felt unsure about my relationship with Leah. I felt out of touch with my friends. I was unemployed. This running around in the wilderness was all I had now it seemed. I did love it. And it didn't come without its rewards. But it had become hard not to feel its downside--the loneliness and the risk of a lonely death.
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I woke up in the night and peed under a starry sky.
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The dawn was clear and crisp. Raindrops had frozen on my tarp. I packed up quickly and pushed on up into a hanging valley. It was pretty steep but I managed to find routes around the cliffs. Finally above tree line I headed up a wet, grassy valley. Things got more difficult as I neared the pass. I navigated some grassy ledges on a steep slope and then traversed a band of broken rock to a point on the ridge above the pass. I took a break to look across the four miles of high adjoining basins I would walk across to a pass at the head of Cross Creek. Clouds were beginning to build and I hoped to make it across before the storms hit.
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I descended some rocky ledges and then dropped into a scree gully down into the high basin at 12,200 feet. I made good time across the grassy steppe, slowed only a couple of times to traverse rocky slopes above intruding forested valleys.
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I passed a group of three, a couple and their grey haired 70+ year old mother! They were up exploring the tundra from their camp below Blodgett Lake.
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I traversed on to Blodgett Lake and on over into the Carter Creek Valley. I beat the storms! I descended polished granite slabs between pockets of grassy meadow and small lakes of trapped water. Further down and into the forest I came to a water diversion perched on top of a waterfall on the creek. A concrete and steel structure was poised over the stream bed to divert spring runoff into a tunnel to Turquoise Reservoir. Crazy! No roads came up here. To construct the structure they must have flow it in by helicopter, or driven it through the tunnel. A carefree brown ermine swam across the creek and darted in and out amongst the rocks.
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Down some more down the steep valley to the road. The roads here sure are wide!--wider than the paved road further down the valley. A fifty foot mobile home could easily pass a tractor trailer with a pre-fab double wide on the back. Why?
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The road ended at another diversion tunnel on Mormon Creek. I headed up the beautiful valley of tall trees and meadows cleared by winter avalanches. I pushed up the final steep pitch to the bench where Mormon Lake is perched. Here I caught a trail and traversed high around toward Lyle Lake.
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A big thunderstorm finally caught up with me. I took cover in the densest patch of stunted spruce I could find below a mountain of cracked rock. Lots of lightning, thunder and marble-sized hail. I ate heartily. I hadn't eaten much all day, trying to keep up a good pace.
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I was thinking happy birthday wishes to my sister Marci. Today is her 40th! I hoped I could make it out to give her a call.
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The storm moved on quickly and I followed the now white trail, covered with an inch of hail, on over a pass and down to Lyle Lake. I traversed on up to the continental divide and hiked south along it, backtracking the same route I followed when I left my truck several days ago. A storm to the east stuck a finger in my path and it snowed on me there at 12,000 feet. I saw a hawk riding the steady wind over The Divide in the same place I saw one on the way in. White hail filled pockets between clumps of rusty vegetation and ancient pink and white stones covered with black and green lichens.
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I ran much of the last mile and a half to the truck as the storm that hailed on me earlier had looped back and was bearing down on me fast. I made it! I threw my pack in the back, fired up my truck, bounced down to Leadville, called my sister and ordered a large Mexican combo dinner.
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Aspens.
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Heading into the forest.
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Who said there's a drought?
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Upper East Lake Creek.
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Looking south. My route followed the high bench to the left of the ridgeline.
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Carter Creek abduction. 10,100 feet.
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An ermine slips through a sieve of rocks at the diversion.
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Hail on the trail.
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The storm that chased me the last mile and a half back to Hagerman Pass.
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