Coming Home to a Place I’d Never Been before

Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, CO – 1973

I had saved a little money when I bought my Landcruiser by not getting the option of a car radio. What a mistake. It took Smokii and I three days to drive from El Toro, California to Aspen. First night we slept next to the vehicle outside Beaver, Utah. Second night was off a ranch exit somewhere near Cisco, Utah. This was before present day Interstate Highways so most of the roads were two lane. With an AM/FM radio, I discovered the following year, I could drive the same route in a day and a half.

We arrived in mid-May to clear blue skies, snow covered mountains, and bright yellow dandelions carpeting the meadows as we drove into Aspen. On the corner of West Hallam and Colorado Hwy 82, was the Aspen Ranger Station. District Ranger John Burns openly welcomed me and invited Smokii and I to dinner at his house where I met his family and Smokii met his German shepherd. Afterwards, he gave me directions to Difficult Campground and a key to the Forest Service gate as the campground hadn’t opened up yet. My home would be an old, small trailer. The toilet and water faucet, were outside. I loved it.

Next day I met Dick Cerise, recreation technician, who would be my boss for three years. Dick told me I’d be working the front country for a few weeks as they’d had a heavy snow year so the backcountry wasn’t really open yet.

I helped another seasonal for a while hauling trash from trashcans in the other campgrounds that were open and digging holes to install signs. Digging was not the right word. In the mountains, which were heavily glaciated, to “dig” a hole meant to pry out rocks with a pry bar (also called a bull prick). You could almost be sure on the first attempt using a shovel to hear and feel a rock. Usually it was one large rock. And after prying it out of the ground you had your hole. Of course most of the signs we put up had two posts. Could take a good hour to install one sign.

Then my job shifted. The previous year, two young women had driven their VW bug into a campsite at Maroon Campground. It was a windy day. Many of the aspen were diseased. Just as they parked, a large aspen blew over onto their car. Both were killed.

I became a sawyer. One who fells trees. After a short training where I learned how to sharpen a chainsaw, I went to work. Any diseased aspens I was to cut down in the campgrounds. I wore eye and ear protection and chainsaw chaps on my legs. Also wore steel-toed boots. I learned how to cut notches in the aspen so a tree would fall a certain direction. Yet at the same time I questioned in my mind, should all these trees be cut down?

One afternoon I was cutting trees as a couple in an adjacent campsite were eating their lunch. I went over to apologize for the noise and explained why I was doing the cutting. They were saddened about the two girls’ deaths, but smiled and said I wasn’t bothering them. They looked familiar to me. We talked a little more and they asked me questions about the mountains and my job. As I started to leave they thanked me and introduced themselves as Allen Ludden and Betty White.

At the end of the day, Cerise told me the good news. Next week I’d start my first ten day backcountry patrol into the wilderness. So next day I headed up to Difficult Campground to finish cutting a few more aspen trees. It was getting onto lunch time so I set my chainsaw down next to a large aspen I was planning on cutting after I ate.  As I sat at a picnic table a stiff breeze started up. I first heard a creaking like a groan and then a loud snap. Suddenly the tree I was going to cut had snapped off at the base and collapsed away from me. I sat there stunned. To see how little wind was needed and how quickly it happened; now I pictured what the two girls in the Volkswagen never saw coming. And where I had questioned cutting so many trees, now I knew it was needed.

My first patrol would be into the Conundrum Hot Springs area. Dick Cerise would backpack in with me for the first night and point out some of the problems in the Conundrum Valley. Dick had also surprised me earlier with another pleasant surprise. Unlike Ernie back in Lone Pine, I was told that hiking shorts were perfectly acceptable in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

Hiking shorts may not seem like a big thing. One day after a ten day patrol, in uniform shirt and hiking shorts, I stopped to buy a few items at Carl’s Pharmacy in Aspen. As I walked outside to my Landcruiser a man came running adfter me.

“You’re wearing shorts!” he cried out. “You’re wearing shorts!”

I looked down at my shorts, then looked at him a little perplexed, “Yes I am.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I work as a park ranger in Dinosaur National Monument. We have to wear long pants while hiking the trails. I’m going to apply for the Forest Service next year.”

So Dick Cerise and I, both in hiking shorts, got out of the Forest Service vehicle at the trailhead, which was about eight miles from the hot springs. There was a single log crossing Conundrum Creek which was running high and fast due to the snow melt.

“When you cross the log make sure your hip belt is unfastened,” recommended Dick. “If you fall into the creek then you can get rid of your pack quickly.”

I looked at the log. Spray was splashing the middle but it looked crossable. Besides, I was young and had good balance. Young also means invincible. As I was figuring the best way to walk across, Smokii, with her dog pack on, jumped onto the log and ran straight across. Smart aleck dog!

I over confidently started across and did fine until I reached the wet portion of the log. Next thing I knew I was underwater with my pack holding me down. I thought of the waist belt I had stupidly fastened and now couldn’t find it to release it. Then I felt someone grab me. It was Dick. He jumped in and pulled me up onto the other side of the shore.

“You OK?” asked Dick.

“Yes. And feeling stupid right now,” I answered.

“Well, I’m already wet. Might as well get my pack and bring it across.”

So Dick waded across Conundrum, grabbed his pack, and came back over to me.

It is amazing when you have a burst of adrenaline, you cannot feel the icy cold of the snow melt creek. But now I did. So I began the process of drying out and warming up. I removed my sleeping bag and hung it out to dry as well as clothing and other items in my backpack. Then Dick and I climbed up the hillside, mainly from other hikers, and stripped down to our underwear and sat in the sunshine.

Dick, who often cracked jokes with a dry sense of humor commented with his “Cheshire Cat” smile, “Usually I like to take a bath after I’ve been out hiking several days, not in the first few minutes.”

Once dry we headed up the Conundrum Trail. The first part alternates between spruce and aspen and then opens up into occasional meadows. The wildflowers were coming out in all their glory, yet hadn’t yet come close to their peak. The trail began to climb and the Englemann spruce became more dense and the primary species. We reached a spot in the trail and posted a Forest Service regulatory sign on a tree.

NO CAMPING ALLOWED WITHIN ONE MILE OF CONUNDRUM HOT SPRINGS

He then suggested we hike up slope into a sunny spot and eat lunch. As Smokii lay on her belly and fell asleep, we ate our lunch and Dick told me about some of the reasons for the regulations in the Maroon Bells – Snowmass Wilderness.

He explained that the hot springs was a very popular spot for backpackers and was very fragile as it was in the subalpine zone just below timberline. The pools themselves had been “improved” in the early 1900’s so were concrete and rock with plastic pipe. He said they restricted the hot springs to day use otherwise people would erect their tents immediately among the hot springs. There was also a Forest Service cabin that we could use for administrative purposes.

As we ate we watched three backpackers, two men and a woman, hike up the trail and stop at the regulatory sign. One man with shoulder length hair glanced up and then down the trail.

“Watch this,” said Dick.

The man reached up to the nailed-in sign and began rocking it back and forth. I started to stand up and Dick put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me. He put his finger to his lips to shush me. The man pulled the sign off the tree then flung it off behind the trees. The three then continued to hike up the trail.

“Why did you stop me?” I asked.

“We know where they’re headed. There’s no hurry,” replied Dick, again with that smile of his.

After lunch we recovered the sign and re-installed it.  We continued on up the trail. In the darkest spot of the forest Dick pointed out a wooden post just off the trail.

DICK RENOLDS   JULY 9, 1881  REST

He had been killed and eaten by a grizzly bear. Every time I hiked by that grave marker I felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

Soon afterwards, we arrived at the Conundrum cabin and dropped off our backpacks.

“Let’s have some fun. Ready to see what’s in store for us at the hot springs?” Dick asked.

We hiked in to an absolutely beautiful spot for a hot springs to be located at 11,200 feet. The dark green of subalpine trees, the bright, freshness of willows, multi-colored wildflowers popping out where the snow patches had melted away, the reds and oranges of Electric Pass, and looming over us was 14,275 foot Castle Peak. And next to the hot springs were two tents. One tent had the opening so one could slide directly in and out of the hot spring. Soaking in the buff, were the two men and woman we had observed while eating lunch.

We were both wearing Forest Service uniform shirts so we didn’t need to announce ourselves, but Dick went ahead and introduced us to the threesome. He was again wearing that Cheshire cat smile.

“You know there’s no camping within one mile of the hot springs?” began Dick.

The woman answered, “We didn’t know that.”

The long haired man added, “Yeah. We didn’t see any signs or anything.”

I could feel that Dick was really enjoying himself and was taking his time getting to the punch line. “Well, there is a sign posted on the trail that states there is no camping within one mile of the hot springs. Didn’t you see it?”

The long haired man looked towards his friends and asked them, “Did you guys see any signs?”

They both shook their heads no and the man said, No. We didn’t see any.”

Dick turned to me and asked, “Jon, you remember seeing the sign don’t you?”

Dick and I became Abbott and Costello, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, bad cop good cop.

“I remember you holding up the sign when I nailed it to the tree this morning,” I said. “Then I remember it was still on the tree when we climbed up the hillslope and ate our lunch.”

Dick turned and stared “long hair” right in the eyes. “You remember the sign now don’t you? It was the one you pulled off the tree after looking up and down the trail, then flung if off into the brush.”

“Long hair” turned pale. His two friends just looked down at their feet in the water of the hot spring.

“Jon, why don’t you go ahead and issue them a ticket. I’ll just watch them as they pack up all their camping gear, ” said Dick.

He turned to me and smiled, “Welcome to Conundrum Hot Springs. This is what it’s like.”

The word conundrum means a confusing or difficult problem or question. Percolating up immediately adjacent to the hot spring was a cold spring. One natural conundrum. The other conundrum involved wilderness management. How does one manage a portion of the wilderness that draws concentrated use that’s not totally wilderness oriented?

My patrols all through 1973 through 1975, ones which included Conundrum Hot Springs, became one of my least favorite spots. Some late afternoons I’d sit at the springs and talk with various users. Here was an incredibly beautiful spot and I would overhear conversations that turned my stomach every visit.

“Wow. Too bad we didn’t brings drugs up here with us.”

“Wish I had some LSD.”

“Where are all the naked girls you said would be up here?”

My biggest confrontation in the wilderness would take place here. But that hadn’t happened yet. That would be in 1975.

But this was 1973 and my first ten patrol of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. Cerise left to hike out the next morning and I continued to get drenched. Not from stream crossings but from rain. The next thirteen days it rained day and night. This was becoming very different from my experiences in the Sierra Nevada.

In the Sierras, if clouds build up from the west, I would expect afternoon thundershowers followed by a clear, star-lite night. But if I detected clouds starting to form in the late afternoon from the east, I’d set up my tent and expect rain that night. The Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness was much wetter and as yet unpredictable to me.

When I finally hiked out on my last day from Conundrum, I went out via East Maroon Valley. My rain protection was a poncho. With only a poncho my legs were soaked. My Lowa Alpspitz boot soles, which I had myself resoled that spring, started to come off of both boots. I tied cord around my boot and boot soles to hold them together. My Camp Trails backpack shed some water but I did not have a pack cover. I was cold, miserable, and tripping over my boots when the cord would wear through. The trails were wet and muddy. I crossed a stream and gave up trying to keep my socks dry. I just found myself getting into a plod step letting my mind go blank. Even Smokii’s curly tail started to straighten out with all the rain.

Catching my Forest Service ride at the trailhead, I picked up my paycheck at the ranger station, took a hot shower, and went on a shopping spree on my four days off. The shops in Aspen were very supportive of the wilderness and the seasonal rangers. I was given a twenty percent discount at all the backpack/climbing stores.

For rain protection I purchased The North Face cagoule and rain chaps in dark forest green. I bought a new pair of boots. Galibier Vercours. The Galibier Super Guides had full steel shanks.  While the Vercours had a lesser steel shank so flexed for hiking. I never had a break-in problem with them. John Burns let me purchase an excellent backpacker tent, Trailwise Fitzroy, that kept me dry those three seasons in the wilderness.

There was one other item I purchased that would later become part of a story. An ice axe. The snow was still piled on the mountain passes so one reason was for safety. But I soon found I used it as a walking stick and to prop my backpack up whenever I took off my back.

And then I fell in love. I saw a Kelty Serac. This was the largest Kelty backpack made. An external frame pack, it was the same as the Tioga but included a lower large pouch for a sleeping bag. It too was dark green. I believed in using muted colors in the wilderness. And I thought the best way to educate other users was to “practice what I preached”.

I looked at the price tag. $75! I was making maybe $3.50 an hour. They threw in a Kelty rain cover and I walked out of the store with a new pack.  I was ready for my next ten day patrol and the next few seasons patrolling as a wilderness ranger. Forty-one years later I still have that pack.