3 Days in Snowmass

6-16-08

In Ft. Collins now, waiting for lunch to arrive. Now I’m confused, because so far I really like this place too. I’m also fairly certain that when I visit Bend I will like it, and if I go to Utah to hang with Jamie in October I will find that agreeable too. I have a distinct pain about leaving California too. I just handed over my driver’s license to get a beer (Skinny Dip from New Belgium, simply divine!) and thought that if I move here I will have to give it up and get a Colorado one. Which shouldn’t be giving me this much anxiety because all I have to do is return to California and apply for one and I’m a Cali girl again. Totally silly. I think too about what if I stayed in northern Cal, and while part of me really wants to, another part of me would feel like I was missing out, settling for the comfortable and the known rather than seize this opportunity to start over in every sense of the phrase and explore part of the world I have never before seen. It is clear that that would be the best thing for my adventuring…I would pretty much have to learn how to climb and backcountry ski to live here, and I’ve wanted to do that for years so what is my problem exactly? Separation anxiety, I suppose. And because I really do love California with all my heart and soul, it is a hard place to leave. But opportunity is deafening…

So I’m going to wander about the town and see what’s here today, and then have dinner with Jen’s mum who apparently makes a mean basil pesto. More on Ft. Collins later.

The backpacking though! Just wow. Eye-popping, jaw-dropping beautiful those Elk Mountain are! The driven-too-hard-for-my-own-good part of me is a wee titch disappointed that we didn’t get all the way to the top, but most of me is just slap-happy I got to see what I saw. And I got to meet Jamie’s friend James who is seriously good people and might even take me up Rainier in August after my boards!! It deserves some exclamation points—if I get to do Shasta with Craig in August and the JMT in September this is going to be the best year of adventure I’ve had in a long, long time. And that’s not even considering canyoneering in Utah in October with Jamie…

So, we got to the trailhead around 1, after lunch in Glenwood Springs and finding Jamie an Ensolite pad at a local army surplus store. Even without the polarized glasses, everything looks riotously green and blooming and…the prodigal summer, I guess. Get it while you can, ‘cuz life (or at least the growing season) is kinda short. My new pack is awesome btw—totally comfortable. And while I will always love cooking in the backcountry, I may have made at least a partial conversion to dried food that cooks in a bag from Mary Jane’s Farm, especially for days of long hiking when all you want to do is eat and not wait half an hour for dinner to be ready. Anyway.

Everything was going swimmingly until we hit our first creek crossing. We could scooch across a log over a very cold and fast-moving snowmelt runoff, or find a better ford. We opted for the ford and hiked back downstream a ways, nearly got attacked by a mean dog belonging to some douche who was camped WAY too close to the creek, and found a spur trail leading down to…the best place to cross. Which wasn’t great, but…James went first, and toward the far side stepped in some holes up above his knees (he’s 6’1”). Jamie and I cast side-long glances at each other and I set out, trying to position myself so my knees wouldn’t get buckled by the current, and was quickly in so much pain from the frigid water I just crashed through to the other side as fast as possible. James and I surveyed the wet hems of our shorts and ruefully joked that we had wet our pants. Jamie made it across, and we prepped feet and changed back to hiking shoes, and soon encountered another trib that wasn’t as easy to cross as James had remembered. We hopped across rivulets and threaded our way upstream, and finally decided to build a bridge from some deadfall. They said it was an easy crossing, but it looked sketchy so I opted to go back down and wade. After that the bushwhacking along an intermittent game trail into our Camp 1. It wasn’t the traditional Camp 1, but we were tired and it was getting late. We found reasonably flat spots with good access to Snowmass Creek and a relatively bare spot for a camp fire. James was a champ and volunteered to pump water both nights (about 7 liters at a time!). Jamie and I set about trying to find firewood.

We discovered that even though it hadn’t been super warm, the marshmellows had glued themselves together in a morass of sugary, bleached goo. The chocolate shattered like glass. The graham crackers weren’t much better off, but we made due and they were delicious. The temperature also dropped precipitously, and I was grateful to be able to dry out my shoes and socks (too bad one sock got a little too close to the heat and burned…at least it was an old pair). I slept ridiculously well, considering it was my first night out. I think I finally crawled out of my tent at 8:30, about 2 hours after I normally get up. The sun was melting off all the ice crystals from the leaves on the ground, and as soon as the sun came up it was HOT.

More creek crossings and cow path scouting awaited us. James found a bunch of vertebrae in the debris of a slide area. The trees were bent over at a steep angle to the slope and the uprooted fir trees were obviously from much higher up. I discovered the joy (and by joy I mean ouch) of stinging nettles that, while not too high were stingy enough if you dragged your flesh through them just right. We reached the traditional Camp 2, had lunch, then set down packs to cross the talus slope toward the waterfall. I wanted to try to get all the way to Pierre Lakes at the top, but the trail was anything but clear after we came to another snow-covered slide, and we opted to turn around there after taking some awesome pics of Jamie frolicking. Jamie added that she wanted to try to hike back to trad Camp 1 in the interest of less trail time the next day, and we had a lot of daylight left so off we went.

We found tent sites that were a bit downhill. Jamie said the next day if the tent door hadn’t stopped her she would have slid down into the creek. We woke up to the most amazing vista right outside the door. Have I mentioned that Mary Jane’s Farm is the best? We made short work back to the car—the slowest part was opting to scooch across the creek on a log that was a LOT rougher on actual contact than it looked from the shore. Foolishly, I opted not to don pants. James says he got some pretty great shots of me making painful grimaces as scraped my tender inner thighs along that damned tree.

The next few hours were a most wonderful sightseeing tour of Colorado. We headed toward Aspen for lunch, and then drove up Independence Pass where, upon getting out of the car we were accosted by a woman who wanted to know if we had “any beers for sale” that she could purchase to take the sting out of waiting for someone to come and tow/fix her car so she could get home to Leadville. It was chilly and windy at 12-something thousand feet, and I reflected that I shouldn’t be wearing sandals until I saw the woman ahead of us hobbling through the slush in wedge-heel sandals and gave her the award instead. We did the obligatory pictures at the vista deck, and spotted two really hot guys and skis getting ready to head up to where a few people on snow mobiles were already towing skiers. Jamie swears one of them was Bear Grylls. God I love this state!

After that we sped through Leadville and on to Idaho Springs, where we sat in an expensive and over-chlorinated hot spring tub that wasn’t nearly as nice as Avila but felt good all the same. Then, on to Beaujay’s for pizza and beer. I had a Skinny Dip (summer offering from New Belgium) and Odells 90 Shilling (do click through on the link and read the side bar where you can actually take classes in brewing science and the best master's project in the world), both awesomely delicious. We even got back to Boulder in time to upload pictures and watch The Flying Scotsman with Agnes draped over the top of the teevee. The pack, btw, performed brilliantly--light and so comfy--I can't wait to add ultralight bag, shelter, and cookset to the mix for the JMT in September. What a brilliant trip!