Friday, June 2, 2017

Real snow

May 31
There's nowhere to get a good hearty breakfast in Questa, but there is a gas station where a surly old man will give you a guilt trip for taking the last breakfast burrito in the warmer, and isn't that just as good? I sat at a veteran's memorial and munched my burrito, pondering all the men from Questa who'd died in Vietnam. It was a very good place, Questa, but it was nota large or affluent-seeming village. Many of the houses were falling down, and there were cattle grazing in several fields within the town. What a cost it must have been, I thought, to lose those members of the community.
The route out of town was the road out of town, Highway 38. I pounded down the pavement through a light drizzle. The weather just wouldn't cooperate. This is supposed to be a dry time of year, but I'd either gotten or been threatened by moisture pretty much every day. I stopped at a campground and had a cup of coffee, using supplies sent to me by Liz "Snorkel" Thomas, a long-distance hiker, writer, and friend. (She's doing a piece on coffee while camping, and I'm her field reviewer.) After making coffee, drinking it, and writing a fiercely negative review, I moved down the road.
It took a long, long time. I passed several signs of the closed molybdenum mine, including a creepy tower perched on the side of the canyon.
 
Haunted castle, anyone?
I finally reached the trailhead for the Columbine trail, and started up a beautiful canyon. 
Different ranges have different feels, a different sense of what for lack of a better term I guess I would call terroir. Yes, that sounds really stuck up. But the mix of air temperature, soil, vegetation and elevation I creates a distinct feeling in every mountain range I have ever been in. This range felt like the Trinity Alpa, my all-time favorite range. Couldn't tell you just why. But it was beautiful. The creek rushed by, the aspen's fresh leaves, and little pocket meadows brightened the forest. 
Then the snow started. First isolated snow banks, the snow coverage on most of the ground, then I was just walking in snow. It was slow going, and steep. I got out my crampons and strapped them on; half an hour later, I had to use my ice axe during a sketchy traverse. 
Huh, this is real snow, I thought. I tried not to think about what that meant for the rest of my hike, which will frequently get above 12,000 feet.It took me forever, but I finally topped out on a pass between the Columbine and Gavilan drainages. Downhill was easier, as I could plunge-step my way down the banks. Still, it was twilight when I finally landed back on the road. I hiked down the road into the Taos Ski Village, and realized that my whole day of hiking had only gotten me around 15 miles. That's not so auspicious, I thought.
But the Loco Moco at the ski village was great, and I got an absurdly nice room for what seemed an absurdly low rate in a hotel at the village. Like there's-a-candleholder-in-the-jacuzzi-bathtub nice. It was all kind of lost on me, though, as I passed out to a dead exhausted sleep.

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