Skyline Trail in the La Garita Wilderness

(A Friday in September)

What actually led me to the Skyline Trail in the La Garita Wilderness Area, I do not know. A feeling? An intriguing peak? Maybe some landmark I recognized while I was in the Powderhorn area near Lake City, Colorado, and looked over to the La Garitas. No matter. For here I am.

I am headed to Creede. Now a small town, but in 1892, was once was home to 10,000 people, seeking their fortune in silver mining. Or others such as store owners, saloon keepers, gamblers, con men, and madams; seeking their fortune from the silver miners. My grandfather, Thomas S. Jones, had come there to open up the Diamond Shoe Store. Shortly thereafter, Colorado Governor Waite appointed him the first sheriff of Mineral County (following which he was elected two times). I still have his badge. So I will be heading to the county courthouse in Creede, to look up old records, during the weekday when it will be open. It is now the weekend. So why not hike.

I write these words this evening under candlelight. My dog Smokii and I hiked in from the trailhead at Cebolla Creek, about two and one-half miles, along Tumble Creek. It is a pretty valley so I could not see camping next to my car. Better to hike in and be away from the dirt road.

Tumble Creek. A fitting name. Maybe too fitting. Shouldn’t nearly every creek in the mountains be named Tumble? It is small but beautiful and will lead us into the Rough Creek basin tomorrow and into the high country. The alpine tundra.

What is it that I love so much about the land of the tundra? The views one cannot ignore. But it is the spaciousness of solitude; the vastness of the land, that makes up my appreciation of the view. I like the starkness and simplicity. No, the tundra is a complex and extremely diverse, ecologic life community. But it’s form is simple. It allows me to breath and let my soul run free. It just feels right.

While I hike today I keep thinking of the old Creede. The Creede of my grandfather’s day. How I wish I could enter the town on the narrow gauge railroad as he first did. What had he heard that drew him there? Was it opportunity or the adventure? Maybe both?

The narrow gauge no longer enters Creede. So as a transition from my home in Montrose, Colorado, I decide I need to spend some time with my thoughts and with the land in the La Garitas. I’m drawn here, so here I am. There always seems to be a reason, though one doesn’t always immediately find an answer to their question. And sometimes, the reason brings up more questions. And then you must continue your search.

The moon is just now starting to come up over the ridge. It is but a glow through the spruce forest, but as it rises, it will illuminate all of this valley with a radiance of light.

Moonlight on the landscape is so special to me. It gives me an entirely different perspective of the world. The light of the moon creates a feeling of softness. As a wilderness ranger in the Sierra Nevada in the early 1970’s, I used to hike across the large, light-colored granite basins under the brightness of a full, or sometimes even a quarter moon. The barren, brightly lit rock walls seemed to soak up the night light and glow in happiness.

(Saturday)

Today I travel to the headwaters of Rough Creek. Actually, to one of the headwaters of the Pacific Ocean. Or as a Tennessean I once heard call it, “The Great PIE-siff-ick Ocean”.

The ridge above me is the Continental Divide, separating the rain waters into either traveling to the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. Although my topo map doesn’t stretch that far, I know that Rough Creek mixes with other waters until it joins the Colorado River, temporarily slowed by Glen Canyon Dam, and tries to work it’s way into the Gulf of California and into the Pacific. It makes me kind of want to piss.

At a small saddle between Rough Creek and Tumble Creek, lie two hunters in wait for elk. I wave my red bandanna and they wave their rifles. I feel the cold chills at a moment like that. I know as I hike off, they’re watching me through their rifle scopes, probably imaging what a backpacker would look like, above their fireplace mantle at home. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much if I knew they’d use me for food, my sinews for their bow strings, and tan my hide so the old lady can keep the kiddies feet in shoes this winter. Why these thoughts?

Not far from here, a few miles to the west, Alferd Packer killed and ate his five companions in the winter of 1874. Colorado’s most infamous cannibal. I think of this, and my chills on the back of my neck just increased.

But I just can’t see myself as a trophy. Not yet. Why not just let me grow old with dignity, and put me out to pasture as a stud? (I stole that line from an old TV show in the 1970’s starring Richard Boone called “Hec Ramsey”).

No longer can I see the orange caps of the hunters. Before me and below me, lies the trail to the pass. A key word lies hidden in that last sentence. The word “below”. I hate to gain altitude, only to abruptly lose it, so that I may climb upward once again.

So to the Gunnison National Forest, to the trail builders of America, to all the Boy Scouts trying to earn a merit badge for trail construction, I say goodbye and I leave the Skyline Trail (today part of the Continental Divide Trail). I would much rather climb a ridge or traverse a talus slope made of shale, than I would to descend, only to climb again.

So now I am in a basin, at the headwaters of the PIE-siff-ick, working my way along the 12,000 foot contour line; if one is following me on a map. The basin is full of elk droppings, elk tracks, and elk trails. Smokii is a Norwegian elkhound. Her nose is going overtime.

We camp in a small depression on a dry grassy mesa. It is safer here in case of lightning. The creek, lined with willows, we are close enough to hear, but we have avoided the fragile, damp meadow vegetation. I fill up my 2 1/2  gallon water container, so I won’t be making repeated trips to the stream, which tends to beat down a trail.

My brief rest is brief. Not even a real rest. The tent is erected. The day pack is packed. And an energetic dog leads me up an alpine vegetated slope towards Baldy Cinco, a 13,383 foot peak. As we climb, I remember now all my past curses and threats. Every trip, I threaten never to take “the dog” with me into the mountains again. For as I climb, switchbacking my way up, Smokii takes the direct route straight up. And when I stop to rest and catch my breath, which is often today, she runs back down to join me unabashedly. She is older than I am in dog years, and doesn’t even look tired. Demoralizing.

At the base of a small cliff wall, I stop to explore the world of the miniature. And it is here I find an old mountain hiker’s friend; the alpine or mountain sorrel. I select a few of the greenest leaves off varying plants, and taste the tartness as the Vitamin C enters my body, giving me encouragement to travel onward.

As I look up, getting what I perceive is renewed vision from the sorrel, I notice rock outcrops framing the surrounding mountains and valleys. The little pikas scurry about, busily collecting grass and flower stalks, making their “hay piles” before winter arrives. The marmots are hushed, however, already in hibernation.

Here a small snow patch remains, and just above me is the peak of Baldy Cinco. I walk on. As I stand on the summit, I see the two orange caps below in the distance. One on horse, one on foot, as they head down Tumble Creek without their elk. I do not feel sorry for them. (On my hike out on my last day, I stopped where the hunters had waited for elk. I found beer cans and food wrappers, all of which I packed out. I left a message on their truck’s windshield at the trailhead)

Ravens and hawks, and even a golden eagle, soar along the steep eastern slope of the mountain and basin. To the northwest is the Powderhorn country, where I had been backpacking just last week. And to the south is Snow Mesa and Table Mountain, two large, flat alpine plateaus, with small lakes randomly placed on their landforms.

Lakes in the Rocky Mountains, always seem to be an oddity to me. Back in my Sierra Nevada ranger days, every basin or ledge in those predominantly granite mountains, seemed to hold a pond or lake. But in the southern Rockies, in these areas of sedimentary, metamorphic, and volcanic rock, lakes are the exception rather than the rule. Now when I hike and see a side basin, my guess is it’ll always be a meadow. The basin in which I camp, the glacier didn’t carve out a depression in the bedrock, so a small beaver family tried where geologic nature failed. But like old homesteads of the dust bowl days, the beaver dam lays abandoned, and the stream flows through.

From Baldy Cinco, I traverse the Continental Divide. Smokii stops, looks at me, and piddles on the divide. I swear she can read my mind. We head from the west to the eastern side of our basin. Much volcanic and conglomerate rock create rock gardens and fantastic fantasy spires that appear unworldly. While the northern side of the divide is steep and in places near vertical, the southern exposure gradually slopes off into Snow Mesa. And beyond lies Creede.

Did Tom Jones and my grand uncle Harry Van Horn come up into these mountains together to fish or hunt? The two families had homes side-by-side in Creede. Harry had been the mine superintendent of the Commodore Mine in Creede, and later the Ocean Wave Mine outside Lake City. My grandfather had to travel occasionally to and from Lake City with prisoners. So undoubtedly, both traveled below me, where I now stand looking out upon. It is a nice feeling.

Superlatives, cannot fully describe my traverse along the Continental Divide. Uncompahgre Peak, the highest fourteener on the western slope, looms upward, its summit standing well above its neighbors, off in the distance to the west. To the east, I catch a glimpse of San Luis Peak, the only fourteener in the La Garitas. It is only in Colorado, where the Rocky Mountains reach altitudes of 14,000 feet. And it happens 54 times!

The peaks and slopes within the basin are pastels of purples, reds, greens, browns, creams, and greys. Small white snow patches, hidden in the narrow rock chutes, dot the cliff wall upon which I stand and gaze.

As I start down, a mosquito circles my head, and I soon return her (females are the ones who bite and make the noise) to the soil of the wilderness, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.

I once hiked with a very pretty lady for ten days, when I was a wilderness ranger in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness near Aspen. Denise had just returned from a Christian study center in Switzerland named L’Abri. She had a very strong and beautiful personal belief in God and Jesus. About halfway through our trip, I noticed my Cutter’s insect repellent was empty. Denise had used it all up on her legs, arms, neck, and face. With the repellent gone, she literally swatted those little buggers into oblivion. I’m surprised mosquitoes aren’t extinct.  I asked her how could such a deeply believing Christian, justify killing mosquitoes without mercy?

Her answer was, “There are certain animals, which have fallen from the grace of God. They are fallen angels so to speak. Mosquitoes are one of those animals along with ticks”.

Thank you (slap) Denise for the (slap) justification I (slap) needed.

Smokii and I stop at a small saddle, which if tracks are an indication, this seems to be a main elk thoroughfare. We eat lunch. I cut the cheddar cheese with my knife, and Smokii gathers up what crumbs I leave behind. “Take only pictures, leave only pawprints”. We drop back into the basin following the steeply descending elk trail. At one point the trail goes between two eskers, geologic stream features left after the passing of the glacier.

Grey clouds have been overhead all day long, but as yet no rain has fallen. It is but fifty yards from our camp to where I have a complete view looking down the Rough Creek valley. With a little bit of sunlight through the clouds, the sunset could be exceptional. The day has already been incredible.

The sunset never materialized. I’ll give it another day to try again tomorrow. I’m generous.