05-OCT-C-2
THE HIGHLY EVENTFUL TRIP FORWARD FROM SAN ANTONIO TO DENVER, AND ON INTO CRYSTAL COLORADO, AND THE SNOWY MAROON BELLS FOR THE SPECTACULAR
ELK HUNT—2005,
WHILE I AM OUT OF CELL PHONE CONTACT DURING
DONALD’S BIG AND EVENTFUL DAY WHEN HE IS HAVING HIS AORTIC VALVE REPLACED IN GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA
Oct. 12—20, 2005
What a wonderful week! How can it begin any better than by playing with twin Grand Sons in San Antonio, proceed on to a spectacular and successful elk hunt in the stunning wilderness scenery of the Maroon Bells among the snow-capped Colorado Fourteeners exploring high alpine basins with herds of wily elk from our horse pack-in camp and concludes with the good news of a successful big operation for Donald’s aortic valve replacement as I am thinking of him from the summit of “Mount Donald!”
While I was in San Antonio in the warm sun swinging two four year-olds in the schoolyard playground, or in the hot tub in their back yard, I had heard of a big “early” snowstorm in Colorado which had stranded scores of people and caused a number of deaths (see 05-OCT-C-3). I was later to see both the fore end of our trip into the snowy mountains, but much more intimately the back end, as I got very acquainted with mountain snow storms as the tent came down on us weighted heavily by the fast-falling wet snow of autumn at 13,000 feet. But, in between, the weather was admirable and the scenery beyond spectacular—you should get the complete CD of stunning photos to absorb a small part of the surroundings of this Colorado High!
We always have last minute glitches, and numerous hassles and the inevitable rodeos when dealing with the ornery beasts which are our packstock, particularly if a couple are stubborn mules. We had them all, but we are getting better at handling them, so that any permanent disasters were averted and our kit of added gear items keeps improving as we re-enforce the stock of our camp for the high country. But, the icing to the “alpine cake” this time was not simply the spectacular success of the early season----my official elk hunt started at 7:00 AM on Opening Day, and was over at 8:17 AM, with a full-time job for the next four days just to get the heavy hauling in and out from the early success---but the spectacular setting and company. The highly coveted position of the specially chosen guest for the next year will be going to one very special individual who was celebrated at the camp, and especially on a mountain peak on a very special day: on the anniversary of his big operation, Donald will be able to look forward to the position of the added guest for next year’s elk hunt in this setting. He will love it, and I put a good deal of the photojournalism of this hunt together for him, so that when I visit with him right after the special marathon for me and following the ELDP busy session in the first week of November, I will be able to show him what he has to look forward to in the complete recovery from this week’s big event for him, in celebration of health and in fulfillment of a long-held pledge of this kind of adventure which we have been meaning to share. As Reg pointed out, an event of this sort—and we also reminded by Bo’s absence for a similar procedure, points out that one cannot postpone this sort of special event indefinitely.
ARRIVAL AND SCRAMBLE THROUGH DENVER
RENTING A DURANGO SUV AND STOCKING UP FOR
HIGH COUNTRY CAMP--WITH A STOP AT GENE’S OFFICE AND HOME, BUT AN EARLY DEPARTURE FOR VAIL
My departure from SAT was uneventful. I had said goodbye to Judy as she got up with Michael at 5:00 AM for my pre-dawn departure, and without awakening the cherubic kids, I was already airborne before dawn, and typed up the descriptions of my Columbus Day visit with them enroute to Denver. On touch down at Denver things changed. Both my arrival and departure from DIA were complicated by unusual events. When I picked up my heavy duffel bag and dragged it behind me to also get the rifle case, I dragged it behind me to where I had been directed for the courtesy car pickup for Advantage rental car. After shivering in the cool temperature—quite a contrast from the San Antonio summer temperature—I could not find the rental pickup. After I had asked, I was told to go to the “other side.” After I had heard that advice twice, I dragged the bag all the way through the airport terminal and struggled out to the other side. I saw an Advantage pickup limo, but they were not allowed to stop at the curb reserved for Alamo, and I had to wait at the far end where their usual drop off curb is. Only later did I learn that the whole “pickup side” of the terminal had been closed down since the nine inches of snow had caused a collapse of the fiberglass canopies which are the signature of the new DIA.
Schlepping the heavy bag to Advantage, I upgraded from the Jeep Cherokee that Bo had reserved to the Durango for the higher wheel base clearance in order to get up the steep Cliffside rocky road I already knew would await me at Marble CO. I had several options for insurance—minimal at $18 per day, intermediate for coverage of the vehicle at $39 per day or comprehensive at $50 per day. Wait a minute! Isn’t that rate what the entire car rental should cost? No, and the gas is pre-paid at $89 per thankful. With the surcharges and taxes of all sorts along with the up grade to a bigger SUV, the cost of the contract was nearly a thousand dollars for the duration---making this almost as expensive as the horse rentals. But, I know we need the capacity, and a rugged vehicle that will take the heavy climb several times—and I would certainly not want my own $45,000 new SUV to go up the Crystal cliff—or take the chance of rolling off from it.
I drove to Denver Health to see if Gene were at work. He was not. The reason he was not, I learned from one of the sub-secretaries I had not met before, was that he had been operating on a four hundred pounder who had been shot five times with a .44 magnum, with lots of holes through his gut and lungs, as he had similarly had twenty years before. So, I woke Gene up as he had just got home to bed. I drove over to the house and we compared notes. I learned that I would be preparing dinners for five people for five or six days depending on when we could arrange to get in. Gene went back to bed as I went to the Safeway store and without a list in hand or in head, but on instinct, and within an hour, I bought the entire outfitting in two large grocery carts. I had asked for citrus boxes top and bottom, but when I had completed filing the carts the boxes had disappeared. I went back to the stock boy and asked him for the boxes that bananas came in. They are recycled and he is given fifty cents apiece for them. I told him where I am planning to go and he was keen on my experience with the Fourteeners of Colorado and the Himalayas—and he showed me he had ten banana boxes with top and bottom covers; and he parted with them for ten dollars. So, now with the Durango packed with the quickest $360 grocery purchase, I made a stop at the liquor store and bought many cases of beer, and the on single glass bottle that I had allowed as a luxury—a glass vodka bottle. Why? Since there is one vodka that comes in plastic, but it is the cheapest variety, and I knew I could be forgiven lots of errors of omission in the food department but would not be forgiven by Reg if I bought a cheaper than premium vodka with which to celebrate any success!
With the Durango completely packed with the groceries beer and my gear, I drove back to Gene’s house and found he had already got up and had gone back into work. Tommy Thomas and he were planning to come in to Crystal at 8:00 AM after starting from Denver at Four AM the day preceding the Opening Day of elk season assuming we had struggled up the mountain with the horses and the whole of the camp gear and groceries as well as horse feed---an assumption of close calls we make each year after assuring each other that next year we will get an earlier start to put in the camp and get a chance to scout before the hunt beings—and never ever have!
I called Reg, and he had a high school friend from Barrie Massachusetts who would be this year’s guest as a fifty year birthday present form his wife who had arranged it with Reg—the first time he had ever been to Colorado and the first ever he had hunted elk although he had hunted deer. He had not previously been on a horse however and Reg was concerned that he should take the four wheel driving up the mountain while Reg and I struggled with the stubborn animals—four horses and two mules. But Reg was in a tizzy over another problem, since he had taken out his 30/06 rifle and could not hit a four foot square target with two boxes of shells despite moving it back to fifty feet form the rifle. So, he was going to a gunsmith at Glenwood Springs to have it fixed. He was touring around Vail, and had Greg with him as Sue was preparing to visit the bridesmaid I had remembered from her wedding, who was now dissolving with breast cancer metastases, and was taking little Emily back to Pittsburgh environment to make family visits while Reg was out. Reg is hoping for many adventures of the usual sort we enjoy like a return to McKinley with the Moores, but has encountered the problems of trying to mix those kinds of playtimes with the “Bean” a small toddling girl. They are trying to sell their duplex house in Vail and already have in mind a house with a fenced yard about three blocks higher on the mountain, and the realtor would be showing off the house as each were absent—meaning that a move would be coming soon, and most of their outdoor gear may already be packed I boxes. Both Reg and Sue were concerned about Donald, but there seems no way we can get a satellite phone to have with us in the mountains where we will be totally incommunicado. So Reg urged that I come up as soon as I could, while I had loaded all of Tommy’s gear and that of Gene which were packed and ready in Gene’s garage. Reg had not yet packed, and Sue had ordered in pizzas, so she could get ready with Emily for her trip in the morning as Reg and Greg and I would get going some time after her departure to try to rendezvous with the horse trailer that would deliver our stock at Beaver lake above Marble, CO.
So, with a cold front coming in, although Sarah had made up a big lasagna dinner and Gene had hoped I would spend the night there in Denver with them and convoy up in the morning, I started up the Route 70 west over the Front Range and over to Vail, having remembered where it was that they lived and having reached it in under two hours from Denver while there was still residual daylight. So, I was sitting at Reg’s dining area table with the wolf Cody at my feet drinking his beer and taking pictures of giggling Emily as Sue was packing her off to bed.
DEPARTURE FROM VAIL THROUGH A SPECTACULAR SUNNY DAY DRIVE TRHOUGH GLENWOOD CANYON OVER THE COLORADO RIVER, TO CARBONDALE AND GUNSMITH,
THEN ON THROUGH REDSTONE TO RENDEZVOUS WITH ROB VAN PELT’S HORSES AND WRANGLERS TOM AND DUSTIN,
THEN THROUGH MARBLE TO BEAVER LAKE AND CRYSTAL
The drive through the Glenwood Canyon in daylight was spectacular. I shot multiple pictures, since I am almost always driving through in the pre-dawn on the way up and after dark on the way back. When we went through the town of Glenwood Springs to the Gunsmith near Mount Sopris we stopped to admire the scenery while the gunsmith bore sighted Reg’s rifle—which he had never used in any event. We rendezvoused at the Feed Store next to the Crack and Rack under the shadow of snow-capped Mount Sopris which I had always been threatening to climb some summer time. We then drove along the North Fork AND Crystal rivers as they enter into such streams as the Frying Pan and on their way to join the Colorado. The golden hue of spectacular aspens ahead of the snow cone of Sopris was a calendar shot. We drove past the fire station in Marble and around the pretty church with the white steeple against the golden aspen to Beaver Lake which mirrored the same stunning scenery. But, for us, it was already late. Reg got the tack out on the horses as I made the first run up the mountain with all the kit we could. I got us stuck in the snow on a steep climb toward Lead King Canyon, the “over the top” limb of the rocky “road.” We shoveled our way out of that and then drove up near the river along the route I remembered and stopped for the breath taking view of the Crystal Mill. It was last February as I was operating on a fellow with von Recklinghousen’s neurofibromatosis who had a large retroperitoneal neurofibrosarcoma that I had glanced up at the wall in Leyte Baptist Hospital and saw a religious poem inscribed on the wall over the neurofibrosarcoma patient’s bed---superimposed on a photo of the Crystal River Mill! Here was the most photographed sight in all of Colorado, in this remote wilderness place linking me to the remote Leyte Island of the Philippines, last heard of when Mac Arthur “returned.”
By the time we had shuttled the second run with the twenty plus bags of fifty pounds s each of horse feed it was dark, and Reg and I road up the canyon roadway on one horse each as he led tow horses and I led the tow mules. We got them unsaddled and tethered and all the gear under tarps in moonlight at the end of the road at Crystal and rolled a tarp out under a pine tree, and covered our sleeping bags with a second tarp as we went to sleep under the cold tars in a full moon night that was “Crystal clear.”
It is a cold and remote start with lots of cluster potential for the livestock running amok, as well as weather changes to affect our plans, so we were concerned to hear the engine sound of Gene’s Suburban in four wheel drive rolling up the road at eight after we had already saddled up each of the stock.
And, sure enough, they came chugging up the road at just the right time to get the sorting of food (for us) and feed, for the stock, into the saddle panniers. This complex operation took until almost noon from our early frosty start before the sun came up over the mountains and warmed out fingers to the point we could cinch the saddles to hold the heavy packs, of about 180--240 pounds each tandem set.
PACKING IN UP THE North Fork TRAIL
TOWARD HASLEY BASIN TO SET UP CAMP IN THE DARK,
AFTER SHOVELING SNOW FROM OUR WALL TENT CAMP SITE
The scenery may have been spectacular, but I was distracted to watching my feet and my backside as I struggled up the mountain trail leading two very ornery mules fully loaded with our own camp including the big wall tent, as well as our food and their feed for six hungry packstock. The one mule had an especially unpleasant habit of butting with his head held low, then tossing it upright like a porpoise tossing a ball at the aquarium—meaning that I was lifted off my feet as I was hauling a backpack a rifle slung across my back and holding two lead ropes. Many times during the week, I remembered the way that the conquistadores handled miscreant Indians in the Plaza de Armas in the central square of Cusco, Peru. They would take the annoying Indian who had offended them and tie each of four extremities to a sturdy horse and then swat the horses to be plunging off in opposing directions, which would pull the Indian apart. That sure did teach him a lesson! I had that same lesson inflicted regularly by hauling lunging packstock along in train with each hand tied up in a lead rope quite regardless of the direction of the mulish bearer. As we got further up slope, we got higher, passing the waterfalls, and spectacular valleys, closing in on the fingers of “dark timber” that would yield to the higher country above timber line, and into snow, the residual of the big blizzard that had preceded us by a couple of days. We did not miss the next one of the season’s “early snowfalls.”
We passed the area of beaver dams and ponds and reached the area known as Love’s Cabin, a beautiful site in the valley where a bygone couple named Love had built a cabin, no longer present, but with a flowing North Fork Crystal River as the “Front Yard” and “Dark Timber” as the back yard with the Halsey Basin hanging above in the Maroon Bells range, edged by Snowmass and Capital Peak. We used to hunt on the other side of these Fourteeners in Charity Basin, and this side is even more spectacular. I cannot wait until I can show this area to Donald.
After a dozen years in the exclusive elk hunt group, and as a regular contributor to the “kit” of gear we stash for this purpose, I am finally allowed to suggest one guest for the hunt, a highly coveted position. By acclamation from all concerned members of this coveted club, the next year’s guest will be Donald Geelhoed—on the anniversary of his operation.
We saw two groups camped at the Love’s Cabin site. One was a spike camp of some young cowboys from Wyoming who were rather sullen about our appearance and worried about our plans for where we anticipated hunting. Second were a threesome consisting of one outfitter and a married couple, each of whom, we would learn later, were wonderful, and made a habit of rescuing us amateur wranglers at the times we needed it most. The fellow from Oklahoma was a Greyhound Race Hound raiser named Tom McKee, and the couple, we learned later, was Rick and Dee Denton, who were each sheriffs in Lincoln County Oklahoma. They were experienced riders and shooters but had never been to Colorado and never after elk—but they are promising to be here next year after one look at the heavenly surroundings. We would meet them again in our hours of need—and they were coming up soon and often.
I was ahead of the string, and kept climbing through the dark timber on the trail which was barely discernible to the point much later when it opened up in the valley that led out of the two basins, the Fevrett and Halsey Basins. It is wild country and the only tracks we crossed were elk tracks---a LOT of elk tracks.
I kept struggling to the top where I knew I would find the camp site and when I finally reached it, it was dark. I got the stock unpacked and began that two-hour process of trying to pitch the large wall tent, which first involved the shoveling of a twenty by twelve foot patch of grass of about eight inches of residual snow. While doing this, I noted that Reg had not come in, and his friend Greg went back down trail to find him. He found him almost at the foot of the trail back near Love’s Cabin, where the horse Reg was leading had thrown the pack. Reg has just sat there contemplating that this was definitely a “team sport” since there was nothing he could do alone until help arrived to re-pack the horse. Since we had mastered the “Diamond Hitch” last year, this was the first major pack loss we had suffered this year, whereas in previous years, we would lose a load or two every five hundred yards or so. It is a cold, hard difficult task, and it is not made easier in the dark, with stiff fingers and frozen leather tack.
Meanwhile, Tommy Gene and I struggled to get the packs unpacked, and the tent erected and weather sealed, with tarp floors and the large rain fly over the top. It hardly seemed necessary in the full moon light of a clear sky to be worrying about a large tarp for a fly over the tent, but we knew from prior experience that the fly would be needed for a change in the weather and that this was likely in any period of encampment as long as the first elk rifle season during which we had planned to be up here. That fly, once again, saved our bacon on our final night in the mountains.
As we were all cold, exhausted and hungry, and I had sorted out the purchases I had made and were further winnowed down by the morning’s packing, I had set up the kitchen with two banana boxes each of breakfast, lunch and dinner stuff. I fired up the new gas stove and said only that I would make a short-order hot dinner for us before we would all fall into our sleeping bags and try to get a brief sleep before opening day mooring rolled in on us too soon. I made “Mac and Cheese” which Reg called “Desperate Meals for Desperate Men.” I told them I was setting a low standard for which I would be making a continuous and dramatic improvement, and Reg kept reminding me of that on each successive dinner, how much better they each seemed to get as we progressed! So, we were minimally fortified, for our shivering brief night, before the four thirty alarm which most of us ignored.
OPENING DAY OF ELK RIFLE SEASON IN HASLEY BASIN:
OUR SPECTACULAR OPENING MORNING LASTS LESS THAN AN HOUR, IN AN ENCOUNTER WITH A VAST HERD OF ELK
We each tried to avoid getting out of the sleeping bags, and Reg never made it out at all. We slowly got up and put on several layers of foul cold weather gear, including the one new item I had brought along as insurance against ever getting cold feet again—my new Browning 2,000 gram insulated ankle fit scentless boots—almost one third of my total duffel weight. I figured I might not be able to hike twenty miles picking up over five pounds each boot, but if I were to sit and wait, my feet would not suffer fro that condition of being cold wet and uninsulated—which had curtailed last year’s deer hunting even in Maryland 10,000 feet lower. After the oatmeal breakfast, Tommy, Gene and I headed up the mountain across the brambles of the creek. Greg was distracted by all the elk tracks he had crossed in the snow and thought he would follow them toward the dark timber heading toward Fevrett Basin. Almost immediately after I had shown Tommy my Weatherby .340 Magnum with its muzzle brake covered in Duct tape, he got a stick of alder bush jammed in his muzzle at the stream crossing and had to search for a stick to serve as ramrod to clear the barrel. We kept looking with him but he insisted he would resolve it and we should go on.
Gene and I climbed the steep snow covered slope. WE had lashed our outer two layers to the outside of our backpacks, since I knew form all the hunts (and runs) the fundamental aphorism,” If you are comfortable at the start of an endurance event, you are over-dressed; you should be shivering at the start.” We worked up quite a few of those calories in the climb.
Gene was ahead of me when he stopped and I heard something to our left. Looking straight ahead a cow elk had stopped to stare in our direction. We were right for the wind, and we also had a cow tag. Gene and Tommy had bull tags as in-staters, but they were good only for private ranchland. So, we had a small dilemma—do we take this sure shot, and have venison at least for the start---which we failed to score on about half of our hunts over the decade. WE looked at each other. I whispered to Gene that she was dead meat, but that even though I could have dropped her with my twenty-two, she was an easy target at forty yards---and, as in previous years, I did not come to Colorado to shoot a cow. I had them milling all around me last year and elected not to trigger off, especially not on the opening day when we were not as yet desperate for meat.
Both Gene and I waved off, and watched the cow elk slowly move away, not spooked by either one of us. Tommy had come up at that point, at a time of 7:20 AM, and we moved further up hill after telling him about the cow elk. At 7:30AM, there was one shot from over where Greg had gone, and then eight shots from over toward Fevrett Basin where the Wyoming cowboys had gone. Gene, Tommy and I ran forward over to the favored log where I had sat last year when the herd of cows and spike bulls had run within a few yards of me as I had apparently split the herd which passed on either side of me, so close as to already be from-the-hip shootable, which I did not do.
I looked left as I arrived at my snow-covered log. Coming over the lip of the rim from Fevrett into Halsey Basin was an impressive herd of over one hundred elk, with seventy already in the Halsey Basin and moving in our direction. Two big bulls were in the lead on the run. I did not see the first one until I heard Gene shoot at a long range, but followed a second bull which ran faster after the shot. I swung on him at what I figured to be 375 yards, and touched off the big .340 Weatherby in an aim exactly at him, not compensating for the long distance, sine the ballistics of this fast magnum load are the same as the ballistics of the .270 which I have learned to aim right at almost anything I can still see, so as to avoid shooting over the top of anything I am trying to compensate for. At the sound of the shot, the bull stopped.
The bull I was watching just stood there, as I vaguely saw the bull Gene had shot at trying to lurch to his feet with paralyzed hindquarters. I aimed at the standing bull and shot again, and he got hit but did not go down. Both Gene and Tommy then shot at it, and I did once more simultaneous with Tommy and the bull went down. We stood there for a moment. The big herd had turned and had gone right up the canyon wall to leave Halsey Basin to return over the top into Fevrett. Two big bulls were down in front of us a long way off, the first still thrashing. Gene went to try again and missed, then with a much closer range shot, hit him on the third try in the chest and he was still.
And, now, the work begins in earnest. We hiked over to the first bull, which was 7 X 6 and a good bull. Gene immediately suggested it be caped fully for a shoulder mount, as he had seen me do with the big elk I had shot as the herd bull in Charity Basin about nine hunts ago—the one that is now mounted over the mantle in “Wapiti Lodge” to which he has given name in Steamboat Springs. As we later discussed, it will be in a bugling position with open mouth at the time we went to deliver him to taxidermist Tom Freitag. Later, with the closer viewing of the bull that I and Tommy had shot, he said he would think about it, but I said I would have him mounted if he did not, since the 5 X 5 bull has long tines in a perfectly symmetric rack. So, we had two hours each of careful skinning, decapitation, and field dressing to let all the body heat out of each of these two magnificent bulls, after which we packed up our respective kits and trekked back to camp, enjoying a vodka toast in addition to an elk steak dinner for each of us.
TWO FULL DAYS OF PACKING OUT VENISON
FROM HASLEY BASIN TO CAMP,
THEN FROM CAMP TO CRYSTAL WHERE THE VEHICLES REMAINED, AND HORSE FEED HAD BEEN STASHED
The morning after our opening day score, we had a leisurely breakfast as Greg again went out on his own, and Reg had stayed nearer camp. Greg had seen the herd on the move and had taken a long shot at a bull that had missed, but the group of the Wyoming cowboys had shot at and killed a four by four bull and were packing it out by horses and decamping. We had a morning to pack up the six beasts, and saddle three of the horses, with each of us riding one and leading one up the valley to do a significant descent then a long sloped climb. We arrived at the first bull about three hours later and saw in the far distance (and, to my surprise, I could hear their voices quite clearly in the still mountain air) the three members of the Oklahoma camp. We set to work in quartering the bull elk and stripping the back straps and clearing much of the meat that would be ground later for burger and sausage. It took about two hours for each bull, and y the time we had brought the packstock over to the second bull to load them up with the body bags and strap the heads and capes on top of the load, Tom McKee and Rick and Dee Denton came over on horseback. They waited a long time to accompany us down the mountain since I had asked for their help, saying we had gone wide around the slope to get into the basin and we wondered if we could ask their advice on a shorter more direct way to camp?
They stayed until dark so that they were put at a disadvantage by helping us. I insisted they take my headlamp, which they did, and we skidded down the slope each of Gen, Tommy and I leading one mount and one fully packed beast, back to our camp. Gene asked if they would stop in for a beer. “We are Christians and we don’t drink,” they had said. Well, I respect that even if I may be able to define Christians a bit more broadly, and I offered them a Barq’s root beer from my precious limited stock, which they eagerly accepted. We talked and I gave them my name as well as telling them about Donald and his forthcoming operation on Tuesday. They had said they would organize a prayer circle for him, and they looked forward to meeting him here next year. They had helped us by shaving off about two or more hours of return in the dark with fully loaded beasts down slope. We had unpacked our animals at camp and I made up a venison ragout supper which was acclaimed the best yet—starting at the low ebb of the now legendary desperate “Mac and Cheese.”
Our CAMP is 39* 04. 27 N, 107* 02. 33 W, 7.45 miles from MARB @ 258* bearing, 120 miles from GENE at bearing 56*, and 1,595 miles from HOME at bearing 69*, with an altitude within a few meters of 10, 500 feet.
The following morning, Reg and Greg went out hunting and Gene Tommy and I saddled up and loaded all the venison into three pack animals to be led out down to Crystal. We had agreed that we would all be decamping a day earlier than the season ends, so that we would pack out on Wednesday rather than Thursday, which would work well for me since I had a Thursday evening flight, and Reg had an ambulance crew meeting on Thursday, and each had a reason to be back sooner except Greg whose first ever elk hunt and first visit to Colorado would be shortened up by one day. But, we packed up and started off, with at least one of the animals developing a listing load on a loose saddle which was corrected by Tom McKee down at Love’s Cabin camp when we got there, and he showed us without making a lot of fuss about it, how to easily bridle a horse using the forearm to push the ears down.
I had with me a list of all the phone numbers through which I might reach the outfitter Rob Van Pelt or his principle cowboy who had dropped off the horses with us in the first place to call to tell them we would be ready to pack out and have him pick up the horses a day early on Wednesday evening instead of Thursday. I also packed Sarah’s and Klassina’s phone numbers as well as that o f Donald’s home and office phones and the phone numbers for Tom Martin in UF Gainesville Hospital who would be dong Donald’s operation on Tuesday morning. We arrived without incident at the vehicles in Crystal and Gene and Tommy set to work stashing the venison eight quarters and capes with heads as I got into the Durango and made a drive down to the town of Marble.
The trek out and the drive down were both breath-takingly beautiful. We were emerging in bright sunlight under a cover of golden aspens, with a breathtaking view of snow-covered mountains framed in the quaking gold of the aspen leaves. I was a busy beaver with my hands full both on reins for my mount and the stubborn mule’s lead rope, but I still managed to shoot a few shots of the waterfalls and the stunning valley as we entered in the filtered sunlight through the aspens. When I got to drop off the horses and get into the Durango, I got a recharge of a new battery for the digital camera and a new roll of film for the Fuji camera and indulged on the way down in passing the Crystal Mill in broad bright daylight and the whole valleys of aspen in the shimmering light. When I got to Lizard Lake, the whole mountains were reflected in the mirror of the lake, as they also were in Beaver Lake at Marble, so it was a photojournalist’s delight to make the return trip down mountain as a meat packer.
I had learned of a very interesting woman whom I had hoped to meet, named Connie, who had a cabin in Crystal, (39& 03. 24 N, 107* 05. 20 W, 4.70 statute miles form MARB at bearing 269*, 2.81 statute miles from CAMP at bearing 56*, 123 statute miles form GENE at bearing 56*, and 1,598 statute miles from HOME at bearing 69.*) Connie, being the only resident at this time, and I was planning to drop off some venison and our excess groceries for her, but no one was at home at the cabin I had learned she used from Dee Denton. That meant that my initial meeting with Connie was in circumstances still more colorful than the description I had originally been given. Connie is wonderful---she is also 90 years old.
I drove around Marble, a town that has produced a good deal of the monumental marble in capital buildings from Denver to Washington. I got to the hand operated push cart pump that is the emblem of their volunteer fire department next to which is the only pay phone we have been able to find in town, in which no coins or other means of making a call exist except to call the operator, give here the number attempted to be called twice, then reciting the credit card number to which you think that the charge should be sent by Quest, and repeat it along with the expiry date and your zip code three times. I had ten calls to make, so I had a quick memorization of the AmEx number. I left a message on Donald’s office phone (in which he reports “I will be on extended leave”) and home phones. I had a long talk with Sarah at her office, promising I would visit on the return trip, a shorter message to Klassina’s voice mail, and a quick communication with Tom who will rendezvous with us with the big horse trailer on Wednesday evening, and then talked with the answering service of Tom Martin in Gainesville, telling them all I was thinking of and praying for them all—that this call was made as a father and not as a colleague surgeon. Sarah had asked how it was I was calling? I explained that we would be coming out a day earlier, and she said I should tell Gene she loved him and give him a hug and a kiss. I replied that if I did all three he might be coming out several days earlier, and well ahead of me!
I drove rapidly up the now familiar steep and rocky slash in the mountainside that passes for a “road” passing Lizard Lake and the Crystal Mill with only a glance instead of a long view with another photo in different light. I arrived at the “village” of Crystal (seven weathered houses and one sometimes present resident—Connie) with only one other resident up here and that is the man they call “Crazy Paul.” He was the driver of the vehicle I could see and photograph at the bottom of the Crystal River Gulch far below the treacherous road I had just climbed for the third time this trip. He had once slipped off that road over twenty five years ago, with his girlfriend in the vehicle, and she did not survive the fall. He has not left the canyon since then, and is said to be crazy—and that part of his name got hyphenated into “Paul.” We later met two state troopers form Kentucky coming in early to scout for the second season who were also told this legend and actually went to see Paul in his Lead King house which flies the US flag. They found him quite same and understandably lonely, so they moved in with him that last year, and this year did not even bother to bring along a tent since he invited them to come back and to stay this hunting season. So, I had once seen Paul and waved to him as I passed on a horse, but never stopped to talk with him. I would not make that same mistake this time with the legend who is Connie.
With a flurry of effort in resaddling the horses and loading up the packstock with the next ten bags of feed for the stock, with only a few additional groceries form our excess stock, and leaving a full case of beer behind as excess, we started up on horseback, each leading a pack animal. It was beautiful as we climbed the ridge, and this time we were lighter, and faster. We had anticipated the trip taking us at least four hours barring additional time for any “rodeos” or spilled packs, but we made it very quickly riding in while it was still light and celebrating with a big elk dinner—a two hour transit—twice as fast as any prior record of ours!
THE QUIET AND CONTEMPLATIVE DAY,
ATOP “MOUNT DONALD” AS I THINK OF MY SON
A THOUSAND MILES AND TWO TIME ZONES AWAY,
AND WATCH THE TOTEMIC EMBLEM ALIGHT ATOP HIS MOUNTAIN, AS I RETURN TO A NIGHT OF FALLING SNOW
I had brought my .340 Weatherby rifle in a scabbard down the mountain when I had gone to Crystal to deliver the venison to the four wheel drive vehicles, and I was unarmed for the following day when I would be going off alone and climbing a mountain to remember Donald in a special way on his big day. I had also hoped that if I got high enough over the Maroon Bells on a special mountain I could see between Frevert and Halsey Basins I might be able to get cell phone coverage from Aspen—which I could not. But, I did carry the GPS and cameras, and stripped down to a single layer of shirt, though I did wear the big Browning insulated rubber boots---if not ideal in climbing sharp rocks, certainly perfect for plowing through deep snow drifts and wading icy mountain streams. I stopped half way up the mountain to drink and to look out with the Zeiss glasses and saw our friends Tom McKee and the Denton’s riding out to stand about where we had been last year when I had the elk herd split around me. I hoped that I might drive any elk I may have spotted toward them. I waved and they spotted my blaze orange figure even at that distance—they are good people, great neighbors, and appreciate the same kind of things about the hunt as I, not in any way jealous that we had packed out two big bulls and they had not fired a shot—but enjoying the spectacular solitude and scenery.
While we had been standing at camp yesterday I saw something moving in the dark timber, and I said out loud to all---“that looks like an oversize house cat!” “Yeah, right!” Tommy said, “It’s probably an oversize housecat.” Later that day as we were packing down the mountain Reg had gone up where I had been looking and for the first time any of us has reported he encountered a long tailed cat---a mountain lion! At first he had thought it was a coyote, since they had been in a chorus of yelping and howling as we came back after dark with the loads of venison we had pulled back with the help of Tom McKee as our guide—the first that Dee Denton had heard of this chorus. But, Reg had spotted and confirmed the cougar, and I was keeping my eyes and Zeiss glasses out to see if I could find him. I did make an unusual spotting later, but not of the cougar, but another “first” for us.
I had been following up the mountain amid a myriad of elk tracks and had seen what appeared to be a fresh mule deer track. When I had driven up the second time to Crystal I had stopped to photography tow mule deer –the last deer I had seen on this trip. I kept looking for something that might be moving in front of me, particularly when I carefully crested the ridge, and avoided being “Sky lined” as I scanned the virtual cattle stockyard of elk tracks below me in Fevrette Basin. Gene had taken off on this day also, and had climbed the Maroon Bells red rock wall and looked into the far end of Fevrette. I had spotted the last of a few dozen elk crossing out of the Fevrette Basin they had so heavily scuffed up as they left over the ridge into Scofield. Gene had seen them earlier than I and had counted in excess of two hundred elk. We had not made a very big dent in that isolated population of these magnificent creatures in their spectacular setting.
I paused again to have a lunch of nuts and fruit as I scanned the red rims of the basin. I kept hearing rocks fall—not at all unusual, as I had always heard that regular phenomenon when I was parked in Charity Basin and the rising sun on the wall over the snow had differentially heated the rocks and they might sometimes roll of their own accord in response to the steep slope’s gravity and releasing that potential energy they had stored up. But, this seemed different. About every fifteen seconds I would hear a bouncing rock roll down slope. I scanned every meter of the red rimmed rock to see what might be causing this and saw nothing moving. The sound is tricky since it is not always very directional, so I had hoped to spot a bouncing rock and then follow it up slope from where it might have been dislodged to see if there was a cause. No luck. I then turned away to sling my water bottle and saw a distant patch of white move. I quickly zeroed in on it, a long way form where the sounds seem to have originated, and there it was----a mountain goat! I had lived among them in Glacier National park at Sperry Glacier where I had taken both Donald and Michael when we all went to Alaska together. I had cautioned them then to be ware that the goats craved salt and would eat backpack straps or boots for it, but it was Michael who proved the ultimate “Hunger for salt”. One night he went out of the tent to pee, and a big Billy goat was there ready to push him aside to gather up this precious commodity of salt we ingest in such excess as to have enough to deposit in their own personal “salt mines.” I got a transient look at this goat before it turned the corner in the Maroon Bells, and although I could hear the falling rocks, I did not see it again. Their single biggest cause of death, notwithstanding their sure-footedness in this habitat—is falls, and their second biggest cause of death is the cougar, which Reg had spotted yesterday confirming my glimpse. We had heard from Tom McKee later, who has come here since the late eighties that he had spotted groups of mountain goats on this same mountain range I was now climbing.
I thought of the timing as I went up mountain since it was about nine o’clock, making it about seven o’clock on Tuesday morning in Shands Hospital in UF, Gainesville. This was about the hour my first born son would be going into the OR to have his sternum split and the biggest vessel in his body dismembered and the main valve in the body replaced as his heart was stopped. I had been there too often to take it lightly as a routine. I reached the summit at about the time of their incision.
The peak on which I sat in contemplation of Donald’s birth and his 39 years is 13, 184 feet tall. It is at 39* 03. 00 N and 107* 02. 09 W. This makes this spot 1,525 statute miles from Donald just now at bearing 96* I turned to that direction and uttered a prayer out loud for his safety and restoration to health, adding that I hoped we might summit this same peak on the anniversary of his operation.
I thought of all the events in Donald’s life and mine—like the proud day I had come over from the Delivery Room in UMMC Ann Arbor and had chalked in letters four feet high on the chalkboard behind the projection screen of our major sophomore medical school classroom “IT’S A BOY!” with his name and weight. The pathology lecture in progress later that morning was stopped when the screen was raised after several slides had been shown, and the professor had moved to the chalkboard to write something when the sign was uncovered and the whole class burst into a standing ovation for their classmates—and one new one who had taken the ride through much of the sophomore year with us. And, now, a vital part of Donald is being delivered to a similar pathology department as he is getting the advantage of a much more efficient process of open heart surgery than when his father was doing it regularly a few years after his birth. But, the stopping of one’s heart is never thought to be a good omen for life, and I was perched on the mountain peak throughout that period of cardiac stillness, thinking of him and in prayer for him.
I left a few hours later. It tuned out later to be about the same time he left the OR 1,525 miles away from where I was facing, and he was extubated in the Recovery Room. As that was happening, I had seen a golden eagle hovering above me earlier. When I re-entered the less-snow covered zone with some scarce scrub, I heard a flurry nearby, and looked, hoping to see a grouse. It was not a grouse but a small pine squirrel. Suddenly, a swooping shadow covered me, and I looked up. It was a raptor at close range—not the golden eagle I had seen earlier, but a beautiful red-tail hawk, searching for the same rustle I had heard—he soared above me on the thermals that had made the last moments rather breezy for me at the peak, and he alighted on the summit, just as I turned to descend----and just as Donald was breathing on hi sown, two time zones and a thousand and a half miles southeast/ I knew then, as was confirmed later, that Donald was, and would be, all right. Thanks be to God!
IN A “WHITE NIGHT”
A BLANKET COMES DOWN, THE TENT COLLAPSES,
AND WE PACK UP TO PACK OUT
After a big pasta and elk venison dinner, we all turned in as a bit of sleet turned to a more silent and steadier snowstorm on the tent fly. In the tent many of us were getting our first real sleep with our toes finally toasted by the propane heater. I heard what sounded like little squirrels chasing over the tent roof. About two o’clock, I decided to go out to inspect, and incidentally pee while I was out there. Within a few seconds outside, I was covered with big white adherent snowflakes, and the tent had about three inches of snow sliding on the fly cover. I ducked back in and Tommy who was awake asked “What’s it like out there?” “Four inches and falling fast!” “Oh!”
About three o’clock, I heard a bowstring “Twang.” It was followed soon by another, then a third. Then there was a sequential “Zippering” as one by one the tent pegs snapped from the increasing weight of the fly and the tent fell in. We each got out our headlamps (mine being a new Petzl back up lamp since I had given my usual one to Dee Denton) and bundled up for some tent repair work after slapping the tent roof from the underside to shuffle off the snow load. Outside the tent it was a winter wonderland scene even if the calendar said mid-October. In two weeks or less I will be running 26.2 miles in shorts and singlet through the monuments of Washington DC for the 100th go at that distance—but that is a world away, and a very different “micro-climate” than this heavy wet flaked snowstorm here, which has to be dealt with not just in re-securing the tent, but in the ominous striking of the camp and loading the heavier camp gear onto six packstock, now standing sleepily in a line along the picket rope made of our pack cinch. It is good we are decamping a day early, since we will need all of this day and more.
We ate breakfast as I packed up the extra groceries and avoided burning any food as we had in prior years, packing them instead for the phantom 90-year-old named Connie. We got all of the stuff packed out onto a tarp in the deeper snow, and then went through the cumbersome process of collapsing the tent and trying to bag it in such a way that we could load it over the panniers and pack saddle of the cantankerous mule. It took the usual four hours for our packing up the camp, and the exercise of the diamond hitches on each of the packstock, but we made it all thanks to the earlier ride down mountain in delivering the venison and picking up the extra horse feed, now running down to zero. If we had shot a third elk, we simply could not have accommodated it. It was a good thing that I did not shoot the cow, and an even better thing that I signified my intent as a non-hunter upon return by leaving my rifle locked in the case inside the Durango. We loaded the horses in this winter wonderland that I decided to commemorate as the ONLY photographer of the group and I loaded a B & W roll of film for the starkly beautiful scenes around me, to compare with the golden aspen on the prior trip down mountain. The trek out was stunning in a visual treat of another kind than the colorful one of our last descent, and we made good time---I, once again, being pulled apart by two mules.
We had almost reached lead King and could almost see Crazy Paul’s flagpole ahead when we came upon a dog wearing a red pannier pack. The dog’s name, it turns out, is “Trooper.” Under a pine, waiting for us to pass, was a wizened person of undetermined gender in a plaid shirt and authentic looking woolen pants sporting a backpack with a waffle foam sleeping pad and a new, small yellow backpack tent. When she spoke, I knew who she must be. “Might I guess as to your name?” Go, ahead! “Might you be Connie?”
She was out in the snow, since she had acquired this new 3 ½ pound backpacking tent and she wanted to see how it did in the snow fall. (It shed s the snow very well, she reported.) “You had better pass me, since I am slow!” she said—the proceeded with her two ski pole walking sticks to beat us all out, even I who was trying to restrain two over-eager mules by holding both halters. She passed us in a flash and headed down toward Crystal. I had talked with her at length about how she came to be here and what she did. “I live here; I just camp anywhere else” she had said. She likes to be here in early Spring and late fall when few people are and she would like me to help agitate for getting some native trout stocked up high on the Crystal River, since the aerator truck tanker is afraid to try the steep and treacherous road. She had looked at Tommy Thomas after we reported that we had got two elk: “Good! Where?” We told her Halsey Basin. She said to Tommy: “My husband hunted Halsey Basin before you were born;” she then paused and looked at my snowy white beard “Nut probably NOT before you were born!” I laughed and told her that she was who I hoped to be in a few more years that she had on me. She chuckled. I said I was delivering some groceries to her so she would not need a re-supply any time soon. At first she declined, but when I added that I had an elk steak and some fine venison burger, she asked “Could you get me a kidney and some heart?” I told her we ate the heart the night before last, but had left the kidneys in the field which she might hear about as the coyotes were enjoying them now. She asked me to stop by her cabin and collect on a cup of hot chocolate. I agreed, saying I had enough chocolate to resupply her for what other few guests might be stopping by. And she took off beating us back.
RETURN FROM CRYSTAL THROUGH MARBLE,
WITH A STOP AT CONNIE’S CABIN, AND VAIL,
TO DRIVE TO DENVER FULLY LOADED WITH
HEADS FOR TAXIDERMY AND VENISON FOR MEATPACKERS
After offloading the packstock and re-loading the Durango with all eight elk quarters and heads, I drove down to Crystal in what had now turned to sleet. There I stopped in at Connie’s cabin to meet Tom McKee and the Dentons. There was Connie with her hurricane lamps which need a special form of jet A kerosene, and a marvelous wood burning stove. She got the stove out of an old railroad caboose! Connie Erhard has an immaculate kitchen in her cabin and suspended bunks, over a table on which she wrote her name and address at Parachute Co where she receives mail, saying she would especially like to receive cards with exotic stamps, such as from Africa---Dee Denton had told her about me. Tom McKee pulled up a trapdoor, and there, eight feet down, was a root cellar. There were home-canned veggies and good things like honey “Put By” and a rope along the side with loops in it every few feet. “How do you get down there?” I asked. “I climb down!” replied the 90-year old.
I saw a photo of her husband, and told her I was taking a picture of her with me, so that I could send it to her, along with the promised exotic stamps. She is wonderful, and I would love to introduce her to special people in my life—and we may have that chance. It might be that I could get there in summer and try to catch a few of those native trout she was telling me about up high above the Crystal Mill, I would know I could get a cup of hot chocolate for them along the way.
Reg and Greg took off down the steep trail with the horses, a big and exciting moment for Greg since he had never really been on a horse before. Reg said I might need to swap and ride the horses down and have him drive the Durango since he was having troubles starting up. But, I hung back, and they both had little trouble once under way without excess lead rope for the horses to get tangled in and to rear up and try to jump. I came down the steep slope in a rapid drive and made it to the Beaver lake jut as Tom was pulling in the horse trailer eager to see the elk heads in the back of the Durango. The horses and mules were delivered shortly thereafter and we all settled up the horse rental bills, as Tommy carried along the expenses I had paid such as the groceries, beer and rental SUV. I promised to drive to Denver straightaway, with the windows cracked and no heater on, to refrigerate the eight quarters of elk venison I am packing along, with a brief stop at Vail to pick up the “civilian” pack I had left at Reg’s house being shown by realtors for sale as they hope to move within the month. As soon as I got to Vail, I tried my cell phone and reached Cathy after she had gone to bed, and learned that Donald had a three and a half hour uneventful operation and was currently in the CICU awaiting a bed to transfer to in a regular hospital unit. The timings of each of the events were eerily close to the exact times I had been on the mountaintop. When I had come down, I asked each who might know, “What is the name of that mountain?” “I don’t know if it has a name.”
In the year 2,000, I climbed a mountain in the Brooks Range right after the birth of my first an only granddaughter, Kacie Elizabeth, whom I talked to tonight. I had carefully measured it and marked it on the GPS and sent the data to the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, with the name “Mount Geelhoed” in her honor. Some day I might be able to show her “her mountain “ in the Brooks Range. Today, I have packaged up the data for the peak in the Maroon Bells between Halsey and Fevrett Basins, which may be officially from this point on, or at least unofficially for me and for Donald, “Mount Donald.” I hope to climb it soon with him on an anniversary of some significance to him—and to me.