We out here

May 21

The morning dawned clear and bright. Three packets of grits and a pint of black tea later, I was climbing up along muddy jeep trails through stands of aspen and pine. The trail was climbing, but slowly, a d I got to spend a good amount of time at around 9,000 feet in elevation. That's where spring was that day -- below there, it was already hot and felt like summer, and above, the snowy state of winter still ruled. But as I passed Harris Bear Spring, it was nature in full-on party mode: Grass everywhere, aspen leaves budding, water gurgling, birdcall constant. I even saw two beetles engaged in beetle-love. The air smelled damp, bright, and fragrant. I passed a tiny private ranch inholding within the national forest, and stopped to admire the trim little barn and twenty or so cattle. Now that's a workplace, I thought. 

 

But the trail kept climbing, as they are wont to do, and pretty soon there was snow in patches among the trees. As I crossed a large open ridge, I saw a couple guys who had ridden ATVs up.

"Wow," I said. "You guys are pretty far out here."

"Us?" one of them responded with a smile and a distinctive New Mexico accent. "We was saying the same thing about you!" 

He had a point; they could be home by supper, after all. But I didn't feel like this was, for me, so much "out there" as "down home."

We traded notes on navigation, in the course of which I settled a long-running bet they'd had ("I told you you could get to Ghost Ranch from here!"). They thought my trip sounded cool and told me not to worry about bears, "they're real chill around here." My kind of locals!

The ridge tailed off and I climbed along more roads to Canjilion Lakes campground. The campground looked like a tornado had hit -- aspens downed by the hundreds littered the ground. Some looked awfully like they had been cut down, which I am at a loss to understand. 

The trail climbed gently after the campground, following Canjilion Creek. The road created a ridge to the east at around 10,000 feet, and I was suddenly confronted with a meadow completely blanketed in snow.

 

Huh, I thought. I really AM out there! 

Well, there was nothing to do but take a bearing and start walking. There was zero trail sign, so it was pretty much flying by instruments (in my case my trusty old Garmin GPS). 

My chief concern now was to get below snow line to camp. I can set up and then get snowed on, that's not so bad. But actually setting up ON snow is something for which I am not prepared. Luckily, the route obliged, taking me down to a roaring fury of a stream (listed in my guide as a "small creeklet -- don't count on it." One thing about heavy snow years, there's plenty of water to drink. I stopped to make dinner, during which I lost the last daylight, then hiked by headlamp another mile or so to put some distance between myself and the smell of my meal. At 9, I finally pulled over, kind of flung the tarp up, and crashed.