| |
"We can pay you two now..., plus seventeen when we reach Alderan"
"Seventeen...? OK, you guys got yourselves a deal."
Can you guess what movie that is from? When I was coming down off Sherman yesterday, I once again had to think for a minute or two to compute the current tally. Maybe it's because I only do one or two of these a month that I have trouble keeping the current figure in my head. I'm glad there are plenty of you out there who are keeping the trip reports coming. The next best thing to going on a fourteener adventure is reading about one.
Anyway, when I realized the tally was seventeen (if you count North Eolus) and I heard the word seventeen in my head, I was immediately transported back to the smoky cantina on Mos Eisley (spelling?). I'm giving too much away. Why is it that this movie was so great to me and the kids of my age? I think I was about 10 or 12 when it came out.
So back to the business at hand. My wife and I left the house in Espanola NM Thursday morning and drove the 4 hours north up 285 to Salida. On the way we picked up a couple blaze orange hunting vests and caps at the Alamosa K-mart. Coming up from the south on the alien watchtower on route 17, we noticed the alien by the roadside had an orange vest too! It was hilarious! I guess he didn't want to get shot either.
Yesterday morning I awoke to the 3am alarm and promptly reset for another hour. The forecast was for clearing skies, so I felt it was only reasonable to give them another hour to clear. At 5am I headed out from the Salida Super 8. I experimented with the new motorola "2 mile" walkie talkies but lost my wife after only about a half mile. Maybe it was because I was in the car.
I made it to the Fourmile Creek trailhead at 7 am, on the east side of Sherman. The road is in pretty good shape (for a Colorado dirt road) and no snow on it yesterday. In fact I probably could have driven the civic all the way up to a gate they have just before the first mine ruins at what looks like about 12,000 feet on my map. I did drive a little further than the trailhead and parked at about 11,600.
Upon opening the door I was hit with an icy blast. I decided to try the new astronaut gear. REI had kindly shipped me a balaclava and a pair of ski goggles the week before in exchange for some vital statistics on my credit card. So I was soon transformed into a modern day gore-tex warrior (Yes, Mike Hobbins, I love that phrase so I'm stealing it!).
Walking up the four wheel drive road I was plagued by dark thoughts. My addiction of these beautiful fourteeners, combined with an introversion bordering on pathologic lead me to this point. The comforting sun was coming up by now, but it was not enough to take away the unsettling feelings crawling just beneath my skin. The barren, icy landscape was giving me the heebie-jeebies. All sorts of doubts crowded my thoughts. The cold rocks themselves seemed to exude an evil force. The landscape felt as populated and as welcoming as the moon. The saddle I was worried about earlier was as I expected covered with a cornice of snow hanging over the route. Then I saw an elk. She was eyeing me from above the trees and bounded off when I got closer. I thought, "what a smart elk staying away from the hunters up here above the trees". For some reason I forgot about my worries and set about the work of getting to the saddle.
The road was in good shape with just a dusting of snow all the way to the base of the saddle up above the ruined mines. There were some drifts but nothing major. At the small basin above the mines at the base of the saddle, I switched the orange hunting cap for the climbing helmet and got out the ice axe. I felt the fear coming back, but I told myself I would just try a few paces away from underneath that cornice and see how it goes. A few paces turned into a few more and pretty soon I was right up to the cornice on it's northern edge- the saddle runs north to south. It did not look nearly so big up close. The snow too was reassuring. I was mostly on snow covered rocks and when there was snow it was only 2 feet or so with no layer of slippery ice underneath. So stepping with hiking boots (no crampons) felt really pretty darn solid. Before I knew it I had skirted the northern edge of the cornice and was on the saddle! That moment for me was the trip highpoint, because I knew I could make it from there.
The rest of the journey followed on snow dusted rocks- nothing very hard except for the wind. The wind was so hard, in fact, that it immediately froze the moisture in my ski goggles as soon as I crested the saddle. So, much of the ridge looked like I was viewing it through an aquarium, but it was still pretty straightforward (class 1-2).
At the summit (at 10:30am) I hudled on the leeward side of a snowbank and had a quick sandwich and water. The sun actually started poking throuth the clouds at this point, making conditions a bit more sane. The views off to Elbert and Massive and up to the tenmile range were spectacular. There was that layer of clouds, but they formed a roof that was just above the tips of the peaks, so you could still see pretty well.
On the way down I looked at the thermometer for the first time. It was 12degrees in the sun so it was probably colder than that earlier.
When I reached the cornice it again looked smaller than the abominable snowman it had appeared from below. I would say it was about 6-10 feet wide at its widest and 6 to 10 feet deep at its deepest. Saying it like that does make it seem like a lot of snow, especially if it all came crashing down on you. But for whatever reason it did not seem to be going anywhere. I skirted the edge again and tried some glissading, but both feet and butt slid only a few feet before stopping. Probably more evidence that that cornice was not going to budge. Still, I would not want to come up right through the middle of it. The edge seemed like a better choice
Back to the car by 1:30pm.
Does anybody know how to prevent goggle ice?
How do you people do this in winter? This trip was frigid enough and it is only October. Still, I'm thinking of doing Quandry in a few weeks. That I think will be the last of the season. |
|