For Whom the Maroon Bells Toll

You ever have a trip that turns out to be nothing like what you worked so hard to make it be? Even when you didn't really work that hard? Then you know what I'm talking about.

The original plan: leave early Saturday for the 26.something mile 4-pass schlep around the Maroon Bells. Arrive at trailhead, hoist on packs, and go--hopefully at least getting over West Maroon by the end of the day. Day 2 and 3 more of the same until back at the car, whence glorious shedding of stinky trail clothes and plans for post-trail beer and pizza commence. Drive home full of delicious beer and pizza, take showers, take naps, procrastinate cleaning gear as long as possible.

Well. Blink. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong--this was an awesome trip! Just, different.

It began the night before Day 1 when that nigori I split with Quinn over dinner made me too sleepy-drunk to drive home and James had to instead. Plus getting home and remembering that we still had to write out recipe instructions and prep/repackage all our food and pack since we got back too late from climbing the 5th to do it before dinner. James wanted to do some of it at night, but I made sad puppy eyes at him and flopped on my bed, practically falling asleep instantly.

We got up at 6 and did all that, had almost left the house just after 9 when we realized all kinds of stuff, like ZOMG we forgot the wine AND the platypus to put it in, we still had to stop off at the Crushery for coffee and breakfast, etc. I think it was more like 10 when we finally got on the 25. Once there decent time was made--I loved the red convertible with a couple in Cat in a Hat hats, all decked out for the 4th. It seemed like forever until we got to Glenwood, but we did.

Then, we had to stop at the gear shop because James needed a shirt and I needed a rain jacket (except I didn't, since my old one was hiding in the deepest darkest corner of James' pack unbeknownst to us until we shook everything down in camp later that night). Ah well, you can never have too many jackets, right? Then Safeway for a pot scrubber and pouch of smoked salmon and inferior deli sammiches, and finally we were on our way down to Aspen.

As we drove up the road to the trailhead, a road easel informed us that auto travel was restricted up to the Bells and we would have to take a bus. Crap. Or not, depending. We circled around, found parking, tried to find info in the people-forsaken visitors center (nice touch, Aspen Highlands!) and finally figured out from a guy working down in a gear rental shop that overnighters could in fact drive up and park. So up we went.

We pulled up to the ranger booth at the entrance. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We're here to start a 3 day backpack trip.
Ranger: You have to go back down and take the bus.
Me: But there's no overnight parking down there--what are we supposed to do?
Ranger: Oh, you're overnight? Oh! Well ok. $10. When are you leaving? Oh, let me write you a different pass then.
James: Here's $10.
Ranger: You'll also want to take some chicken wire to wrap around your car for porcupines 'cuz they--oh, you know?
Me: Boy howdy, I do--I've had a car eaten by marmots in the Sierras more than once.

Etc. As she talked I noticed a list of annual passes taped to the window, and that my National Parks pass looked a lot like one of them, so I asked. Turns out, it did. So she took back our pass, and threw a couple rolls of chicken wire into the back seat, but didn't give us back James' $10. When we asked, she replied, "I don't remember you giving me a $20... but..."

Sheesh.

So we get up to the trail head, and realize we don't have the pass it sounded like we needed to put in the window, so after gulping down the inferior sandwiches (I was powerful cranky by now, and it was raining--yay!) we drove back down, only to be informed by a different ranger that putting up our annual pass would be just dandy, thanks so much. So, back up again. Changing into trail clothes in the rain, getting organized in the rain, etc. We toyed briefly with either trying to find a campsite or hotel room in Aspen, but then laughed at ourselves for thinking such a thing on the 4th of July. Suck it up and at least hike to Crater Lake, and then reassess. We even considered driving back down the road the the place in Snowmass where James took me and Jamie last year.

By the time all of this was done and we were on the trail, it was about 3:45 and the sun was back out. No excuses now! We quickly slalomed through the day trippers around Maroon Lake and headed up the Crater Lake trail. Such a relief to finally be out! After about an hour it started raining again, even though it was still sunny and no clouds overhead. Bloody weather. Soon enough we got to the lake, and were pleased to discover that hardly anyone was there--even backpackers. We found our camp at #4 (the best one is #6, but that's what you get for not finding enough beta beforehand I guess) and set up. James took an awesome shot of his tent pitched in front of a dark, wet clearing that, along with the reflection from his camera flash on the guy-lines, made it look like the tent was hovering above the ground, suspended by lasers. I set about setting out the kitchen to make quiche, WEA-style. No cotton gloves for stove operation though--oops!

In retrospect, as I sat trying to cut the butter into the pastry mixture with a tiny plastic spatula and the titanium spork for which James had finally found a use (did I mention he mentioned this was his first trip not eating freeze-dried meals in pouches?) I reflected that really, this step could probably have been done at home. Also, a couple pairs of vinyl gloves are way better than the unwieldy used ziplock bags for handling the dough and keeping your hands from becoming a gooey, clubby mess.

The quiche poofed up beautifully, and unfortunately settled a bit too much as it cooled. However, it WAS very filling, which is a nice feature of backpacking food. And the flavor was good, although some dried herbs would have worked wonders. Next time, I suppose. The brownies turned out much, much better. And all the same, it was all good enough to attract the biggest, most fatty-boom-balatty porcupine I've ever seen (ok, it was the only one I'd ever seen, but zie was so big and fat zie could barely waddle away after grunting at James for trying to get a closeup pic).

At night, it stormed well--bright bursts of lightning and deafening cacophonies of thunder. Most of it was 1-2 miles away, but it came from the west and disappeared off to the east, right overhead. The morning dawned cool and overcast, and so we decided to leave camp where it was and just range out as far as we could on day hikes. We headed out toward West Maroon Pass with the leftover quiche for brunch, and got a couple more miles up the trail before we ran into our neighbor from the next camp coming the other way. He reported he'd gotten to the first major stream crossing (and we could see the stream from where we were, and it was fairly major) and turned around since he was just out for fun and didn't feel like changing out of his boots. His dog was ecstatically wet and muddy though.

After sitting down to eat and watching the weather come in around 11AM, we reached the same conclusion--no sense climbing higher out of the trees if it was going to be electrical. We donned raingear and headed back, made it almost to camp before it really started raining and a huge clap of thunder sent 3 dayhikers scurrying for tree cover along the shore of Crater Lake.

What else to do but take a nap? So we did. And it was nice, since neither of us slept well the night before. Woke up to still cloudy and a little drizzly, but lightening. We pulled out the packs and headed up the Buckskin Pass trail around 2:45 and the sun was already blazing.

Buckskin turned out to be a pretty cool trail, and amazingly beautiful. Fairly steady climbing but nothing rude, and flowers everywhere--columbine, avalanche lily, shooting star, Indian paintbrush, alpine strawberry, and lots of others I don't know. Lots of avalanche slides down that gulch, some of them pretty recent judging by the bits of still-green fir branches that littered the ground. We came on a guy in a good mountaineering tent camped in the most idyllic spot, except for being totally exposed in an open meadow to storms. Hrmm.

At last we were able to see the top of the pass, totally blocked by a gigantic cornice. As we got closer, we could see another trail that swung way out to the left of it to clamber over a much shallower wedge of it, but alas, no time. And no axes anyway. We turned around at the trail junction with Willow Pass and headed back down to camp.

The pizza with sundried tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts came together nicely in spite of not having a big enough plastic to roll it out on (and I don't trust my throwing skills enough to not land our only bit of dough in the dirt). We were pleased as well that we had wine left in the platypus. The storm that looked like it was brewing seemed to swing north of us and pile up in the east, where it looked dark and angry.

Around the last of the sunset James spied a tiny wedge of alpenglow on the peak behind us, so we grabbed cameras and wine bottle and headed down to the lake. There we saw our 2nd porcupine, although not nearly as fat as the first. There were some deer too. I love twilight.

The rain chased us back up the hill and into the tent, where we stayed for the rest of the night. Of course, we awoke to bluebird skies. Breakfast of pancakes with butter and boysenberry jam, because really--why carry it on your back when it can go in your belly? On our way out we gave lots of beta to people coming in, and got reports that the weather was supposed to dry up for a few days. Nice timing, eh? Oh well. It was still amazing.

Once back at the car we were pleased to discover it unmolested by porcupines, marmots or other varmints with sharp nasty teeth. We also decided not to head back out down the East Maroon trail. The bag of fresh car clothes was so seductive, as were my chacos...

The drive home was a little sad, as it always is. I would love to go back again when the weather is more accomodating--thinking about what's on the other side of those passes is driving me nutz.