Wheeler Peak Wilderness 1976

Wheeler Peak Wilderness, NM – 1976

I had submitted applications for the 1976 season and had decided not to reapply to the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. I loved the land, but maybe too much. It was becoming too personal to me. I would return to an area after four days off and immediately recognize a tree that had been cut down for firewood, found newly created firerings in an area closed to camping, or fresh erosion scars where hikers had cut switchbacks on a trail.

After the run-in I had with the couple at Conundrum Hot Springs in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness the previous summer, I had a bad taste in my mouth. Plus Missy and I were now engaged and we needed someplace she could live with me and also get a job.

Questa District Ranger George Edwards called me and gave me most of the answers I wanted to hear. It was a job offer as a wilderness ranger in the Wheeler Peak Wilderness Area of the Carson National Forest. He said I’d be a GS-05.  He said I could bring Smokii with me. He said I could keep my beard. He said that I had a place to live. Now I asked what I thought would be the most difficult question.

“Would my fiancee be able to live with me?” I asked.

There was no hesitation in George’s answer, “Of course it’d be all right. So will you take the job?”

In May 1976, Missy, Smokii, and I drove to the “Land of Enchantment” and I began patrolling one of the smallest designated wilderness areas in the system. Although it was small, I found the area interesting, beautiful, and filled with a variety of experiences.

Wheeler Peak, at 13,161 feet, is the highest point in New Mexico and part of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains; a portion of the Rocky Mountains. The wilderness seemed bigger than it actually was as it bordered the Taos Pueblo lands. Across the valley one looked out over the immense Philmont Boy Scout Ranch dominated by Baldy Mountain.

The Wheeler Peak Wilderness was not craggy, steep and imposing like the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, but one with more rounded slopes. It was a wilderness that was easier to become more intimate with over time.

While I was a wilderness ranger there, there were four lakes; Lost, Horseshoe, Williams, and Bear Lakes. Although a geological occurrence could not remove a lake from the wilderness, a political decision would.

The Taos Pueblo considered Bear Lake sacred much as they did Blue Lake, which had been returned to them in 1970. Every summer for one week, the Forest Service closed all visitation to Bear Lake except for members of the Taos Pueblo. A rifle-carrying tribal member of Taos Pueblo Indians stood guard at the top of the trail leading down to Bear Lake.

I respected the pueblo people but like everywhere, some were spiritual and some were not. One afternoon at Horseshoe Lake, I talked with a group of younger men from the pueblo who felt the land should be open to commercial logging. They said the elders were living in the past. Jobs needed to come first.

My first visit to Bear Lake was when the snow melted enough to become accessible. As I hiked closer, it appeared to be a most beautiful lake. Then I reached the campsites. I picked up fresh litter. Beenie Weenie, Vienna Sausages, and other cans. Bait bottles. The evidence was fresh horse tracks leading not from the mountain pass I had come over, but back down to the pueblo. I thought back to the course I took in college on American Indian religion which worshiped the earth and sky. I thought back to my time reading “Black Elk Speaks” in the Sierra Nevada ; of vision quests and the love of the natural world. Now I was looking at trash and freshly cut green tree boughs. At that moment I had a real conflict in my mind. How could a “spiritual” place be treated like this? Was it sacred or did they just want the land? I was torn at that moment. All that I knew for sure was that my spiritual beliefs were still embedded in the wilderness.

Because the wilderness was relatively small, I was on a five day schedule that covered all the weekends and holidays. On one of my patrols, my friends from Tennessee, Lisa and Steve Pate and Bruce Davis, came out to hike with me.

We backpacked into Horseshoe Lake and spent one night before heading to the summit of Wheeler Peak. Just short of the top, in the lee of the wind, we stopped to eat lunch.

A red-tailed hawk soared above us and hovered in one spot. It would use just a twitch of its tail or wing feathers to adjust and keep it fairly stationary. As we watched the hawk, two jet-black ravens whizzed over the top of Wheeler and blew past the bird of prey. As the ravens passed, they started cawing to each other and circled back. For the next half hour we watched an aerial display that F-15 fighter pilots would envy.

One raven would aim straight at the hawk and dive towards it. The red-tail would rotate on its side, never leaving its place in the air, and the raven would speed on by. Then the second raven would try to hit the hawk. The hawk would quickly flip over in the other direction and remain unscathed, with the raven narrowly missing.

We kept watching these amazing aerobatics. You could tell the ravens were playing and having a great time. After they missed they would caw to each other and dive again.

Finally the two ravens, maybe getting bored, quit their harassment of the red-tail and started circling Wheeler Peak. They started cawing in a much more raucous manner and much louder.

In less than a minute, a whole unkindness of ravens flew over Wheeler Peak and began circling. And then like a squadron, several dived together at the hawk. This time the red-tail folded up its wings and went into a steep dive and disappeared from view.

All the ravens, we counted eighty, started circling again in a haphazard way. They then began to caw in a way that can only be described as laughing. They then flew to the backside of Wheeler Peak and landed on the tundra.

I have seen ravens at the top of Mt. Whitney; almost 14,500 feet, and in Death Valley, well below sea level. I’ve had them follow our rafts in the Grand Canyon and play aerial games over our heads in Moab and Santa Fe. They are an intelligent bird, monogamous and caring of their young, tricksters, a spiritual entity to many Native American tribes, and symbols of the wilderness I so love. And do they ever like to have fun! Author and environmentalist Edward Abbey said that after he died he wanted to come back as a vulture. Me, as a raven.

Ravens aren’t the only tricksters. As we got ready to start up on another trail I happened to glance over to see Steve Pate trying to sneak a large rock into my pack while we were taking a break. I walked over and talked to Lisa and Bruce, pretending I hadn’t seen a thing.

Steve, Bruce, and I all had cameras on the trip.

“Let’s have a contest,” I suggested. “We’ll all take a picture of the stream. After we get slides back we can decide who did best.”

That’s all it took to get Steve totally focused. He lay down on his belly. He tried a couple of different lenses. His total involvement allowed me to take the rock out of my backpack and hide it down in his pack.

We had a five mile hike with a few steep places along the trail. I noticed that Steve kept getting farther and farther behind. We reached our camp for the night, at least Bruce, Lisa, and I did. About twenty minutes later Steve arrived, dropped his pack, and plunked himself down on the ground.

After a while we started emptying our bags to get at our foods, cook pots, and sleeping gear. I set myself up so I could casually watch Steve as he dug into his pack. In the middle he stopped. He reached down and pulled out the rock. He slowly laid it down behind his pack and looked around.

I pretended to be busy with my equipment. Steve knew he’d been tricked, but his ego wouldn’t let him speak up. He never once mentioned the rock.

After our trip together, we said our goodbyes down at the ranger station. I shook Steve’s hand and then he climbed into the driver’s seat. I said goodbye and shook Bruce’s hand.

And then I gave Lisa a goodbye hug and whispered in her ear, “Ask your brother on the drive home if he always carries rocks in his backpack.”

The Wheeler Peak Wilderness did not have camping restrictions like I enforced in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. But a wilderness permit was required of all groups. They were free, but a party leader needed to have one. The Forest Service primarily used the permit to have a better idea on the usage and where that usage was concentrated.

I only wrote two tickets in 1976 for not having a wilderness permit. It was the first one that always stuck in my mind.

I ran into two young twenty-year-olds camped at Lost Lake. They were nice young men on their days off. Both worked for the Boy Scouts at the Philmont ranch.

When I asked to see their wilderness permit they said, “We don’t have one.”

One added, “I didn’t know you needed one.”

I asked them if they’d ever hiked in the Wheeler Peak Wilderness before. The one whom seemed to be the leader replied, “No. Neither of us has ever been here before.”

I told them I’d go ahead and issue them a permit. I explained how they could send for or pick up a permit at the ranger station. They thanked me and said they would do so in the future.

At the end of my patrol, I got picked up at the trailhead by another Forest Service seasonal employee and taken down to the ranger station. Call it a gut feeling, but I decided to go through previous wilderness permits we had issued. And there I found it. The same name of the Boy Scout who denied knowing a permit was required. He had been in the wilderness three weeks prior.

I mailed a citation with a $25.00 fine along with a note. I did not use the word lying, but instead the phrase “not being truthful”. I added that as long as the fine was paid, I would not contact the director of the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch. A week later, I received a letter of apology and a receipt of his check for $25.00.

Missy took a few days off from her job as a waitress in Red River and accompanied Smokii and me on one of my last wilderness patrols of the season. Since she wasn’t a Forest Service employee or volunteer, we took my Landcruiser and parked it near the Lost Lake Trailhead.

It started out as a great trip. We hiked up through a spruce forest for four miles until we came to a burned-over area of whitish-gray colored snags. A short way before reaching Lost Lake was the boundary sign for the Wheeler Peak Wilderness and the posted regulation stating no motorized vehicles. We spent our first night at the lake. Next afternoon we moved our camp up to Horseshoe Lake at treeline. The following morning we headed to the top of Wheeler Peak, enjoyed a lunch with a view, and then returned to Horseshoe. Our last full day we dropped back down to Lost Lake and set up camp.

Over the years I’ve had strong feelings. I don’t know if the word “premonition” is correct or it is some subconscious awareness. A heightened sense of something about to happen or to make a connection after death. One of those “somethings” was about to happen.