Month: August 2024

Instead of my usual musings on life here at home, I thought I’d share a photo essay of our recent backpack trip into the South San Juans.

I won’t give too many details about where we went, as I believe that half the fun of backpacking is in the discovery and planning and so want to leave that to anyone who might be curious enough to figure it out themselves.

This was a rather sudden decision to head up and cool off in the high country. We put together our gear, with a few new items: a Nemo tent that weighed half of our other tent, water filters (both our main system and its back-up failed on our last trip), a more comfy sleeping pad for me, and a very cool new dog pack for Zane.

We started up the trail around 11 am. It was a pretty short hike for that first day, only a few miles and about 1000′ up, which is great when your pack is at its heaviest. Alan and I are slow hikers, taking our time to look around, take plenty of breaks, and explore things we see. We’d never make it as long-distance hikers, grinding out 25 miles a day!

We arrived at our destination around 1pm, overlooking a large, natural lake and set up camp pretty quickly. I had taken a hard tumble coming down to the lake, and had a few scrapes and bruises to tend to. I am a believer that it is good for women to fall regularly as we age, to keep our bones strong, and practice that habit frequently!

Immediately after getting the tent up, the skies opened and it poured, and continued to pour well into the night, with a few breaks just long enough to putter around doing chores. During one of the lulls, Alan took a hike around the lake, probably a bit more than a mile. I wandered about, checking out the surroundings, filtering water and taking a short nap. Later, during another lull, we cooked a meal (dehydrated Peak Energy Sweet Pork and Rice) and had some tea and played cards before crashing early. It continued to rain hard until 1am.

The next morning was Alan’s birthday. We woke to picture perfect bluebird skies and cool temperatures. We realized that we have spent many of his birthdays camping in the mountains, and doing it is his #1 birthday wish. However, a Snickers birthday surprise is always a treat with morning tea.

After breakfast (dehydrated Mango Sticky Rice), we decided to move camp to a more secluded spot further from the trail. We hadn’t seen anyone, but knew that people would start arriving as the weekend approached. The dogs can get barky with strangers passing by, and we like to be a bit away to deter that behavior. And this is where we realized our goof. Every backpacking trip entails at least one error, goof, forgotten item or malfunction. It wouldn’t be backpacking without something needing to be rearranged, jury-rigged, or shifted around. One year, Alan forgot his hiking boots, and we had to drive 60 miles home to get them. Another time I brought the wrong sleeping pad, one that leaked, so had to sleep flat on the ground for 5 nights. Our last trip, as I mentioned, all our water filtering systems quit on us, forcing us to boil our water, thus using up our fuel so quickly we had to leave a day early. It’s always something.

This trip, we planned a shuttle hike, leaving 1 vehicle at the end of the trail, and driving to our starting point in another. We did this, but forgot to bring the first vehicle’s key with us. It was safely tucked away in the second truck. Oops. This meant that the trip would be an “in-and-out”, starting and ending at the same trailhead. Not a huge deal, but it changed our itinerary.

Once we moved camp, above a hourglass-shaped pond that was home to a family of muskrats, we went on a day hike up and across the tundra. This was an adventure in route finding, as there was no trail, just huge cairns, few and far between, and built for people on horseback to see from a distance, but not hikers. I used my Gaia GPS app to create a route, and it mostly worked, as we wandered hither and yon, checking out the dozens of tarns and ponds that dot the area. Zane spooked a huge buck that ran off faster than he could react. Then he rolled in some fresh elk poop and smelled horrible. We had to give him a bath, which we do by throwing a stick in a pond a few times. There was no one around, and the place was huge, stretching in all directions toward higher peaks. We were at 12,000′. After a few hours, we turned around and headed back to camp, using my Gaia route to help find our way. We took naps in the shade and read books.

At dusk, I wandered down by the lake and sat on a rock. An egret was circling several hundred feet overhead, looking for fish. Suddenly it folded its wings and plummeted down into the lake so fast I could barely follow it with my eyes, much less take a photo. It hit like a cannonball, and disappeared for a few seconds underwater, emerging and struggling with a small trout in its talons. It became airborne but at about 20′ the bird dropped the fish. The egret then flew over to a tree and sat for a bit, preening its feathers, before taking back to the skies. As I watched it dove again, in the same pot, the splash again sounding like a gunshot. This time the egret reemerged with a huge trout, I’d guess at least 16″, and successfully climbed back into the air to fly up the lake to what looked like a nest. I lost sight of it at that point. What a wonderful end to a great day.

That night we ate dehydrated Chicken Coconut Curry, and went to bed early. Alan thought it was a great birthday.

The following morning, after delicious dehydrated Blueberry Peach Crisp, we made a slow and lazy start to venture further afield, attempting to reach the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) several miles cross-country. It had been on our original shuttle hike itinerary, but now it would simply be a day hike. We retraced our steps from the day before, but went past even more tarns and cairns and hillocks of wind-scoured spruce trees. There was a massive marsh, over a mile across, with innumerable rivulets, hidden sink holes that we had to navigate around.

Occasionally Alan would shout out something like “What news from the Mark, Riders of Rohan?” at the top of his lungs. This was a sign that he was happy. I was humming the opening of Beethoven’s 6th symphony over and over. Our feet got wet, but the day was a perfect temperature, the air smelled lovely, and the land was nearly level. What more could hikers wish for? We found the CDT junction, which is a well-worn path, and continued north on it for another hour, stopping for a long rest in the shade and saying hello to a couple of long-distance backpackers.

On our way back to camp, we managed to follow the wrong cairn and start down the wrong drainage. We discovered the mistake quickly, but it took 30 minutes to figure out where we were. We were rather lost. The Gaia app, using the route I created earlier, was sending us in literal circles and was useless. We eventually had to rely on old skills, as Alan pulled out his compass and we climbed to a high point, found magnetic North, and lined up the landmarks we had made mental note of earlier (a distinguished cliff face and a saddle between 2 mountains). We were then able to get an accurate line of travel. I don’t use our phone app often for that very reason. While wonderful when it works, allowing you to map routes and track distances, when it doesn’t work, or the battery dies, you are up a creek. I feel for hikers who haven’t learned the art of orienteering: using a compass and map, or triangulation. They will not be able to navigate if not on a well-traveled trail.

Eventually we got back to camp, after having to negotiate any number of stunning tarns and marshes, but always going in the right direction. One was big enough (2 acres, maybe) to have a large rock island in the middle so we took a long break there and ate the last of our snacks: mini beef sticks, tuna, Gorp, Luna bars, and rather soggy M&Ms. (We’ll never put our snacks in Clair’s pack again.)

We were tired but quite satisfied at our success. Getting lost in the woods is something everyone should try sometime. I wrung out my wet socks and hung them out to dry on a branch. We had tea and dinner (dehydrated Butternut Dal Bhat) and hung up the food on our bear rope. After playing a few hands of cards, we fell asleep. Later we were awakened by Zane growling, and when I unzipped the door to the tent to look, he leapt out and ran off, barking madly across the little marsh by the hourglass pond, toward some lights he saw in the distance. Newly arrived campers were setting up a tent in the dark using their flashlights, but I think Zane thought it was a Monster Bear with shiny white eyes, because he was in an absolute frenzy. I had to chase after him, yelling at him to “come home, Zane!”, sloshing through the marsh, and literally grab him and carry him back to the tent before he finally quit struggling. I felt embarrassed by the havoc we created, probably scaring those campers, although setting up a tent in the dark in a remote area is sort of asking for something to happen.

After that adrenaline rush, we all got back into our beds and promptly slept like logs.

The following morning was our last, and we needed to pack up and head down the mountain toward home. We ate some dehydrated Cliffside Coconut Berry Granola. It was another perfect periwinkle day, so first we took a stroll around the lake, finding an 8′ waterfall tumbling through the willow and flowers. I hope you can open the video I took of this musical little stream.

Then it was time to go. We took our time hiking out, enjoying the sound of the wind in the grass and looking for side trails with their half-hidden cairns. We passed a number of day hikers and backpackers coming up for the weekend.

Then, finally and with some sadness, we got back to the truck and threw all our gear in the back. The dogs jumped in and were snoring within seconds. We turned the truck toward home, with a stop for homemade ice cream at a little camp store nearby, and then burgers and fries in Chama (neither were dehydrated).

In the words of my favorite YouTubers:

Get outside! Find your Wild!

( thanks to Wander Women Kristy & Annette)

Now it is August, and I am full of angst of how quickly summer is already disappearing into fall. The meadow is turning brown, the sunflowers are in full bloom and there is still so much to do before welcoming cold weather. The ripening of the garden vegetables was the first clue: after waiting for 6 weeks, suddenly there’s so much food to harvest, eat, and freeze for winter, but I also noticed the seemingly instant changes in the landscape: greens shifting to gold, the sun now peeking through the south-facing windows, where they had been blocked by the eaves for 2 months during the hottest days. This summer has been very hot, although not as terrible as in many other places. I think our hottest day so far was 94. We often worked in the mornings and hid from the heat in the afternoons and this became such a routine that we felt it would last forever.

We’ve had intermittent rains all summer, fortunately, and are currently in another monsoon period, those days that start with brilliant blue skies, morphing to afternoon thunderstorms and downpours that occur when the moist air from the Gulf of California crashes into the dry, hot air in the higher altitudes of the Southwest. When the clouds roll in, they offer a wonderful relief from the heat, and I can watch the wilted squash plants soak the raindrops up and spring back to life. I cannot keep enough water on these plants, two gallons each morning and 2 more in the afternoon still isn’t enough to stop the squash leaves from drooping with heat exhaustion. Rather like me. We splurged on a new weather station, and now can watch how the heat index, humidity level, and barometer work together to bring the much-needed cool air and moisture.

This summer we have celebrated growing a garden small enough to feed Alan and I, but big enough to put plenty in the freezer for winter. Not too big to require hours of weeding. Small enough to protect from critters, using row cover to deter grasshoppers. (See the sheets of row cover hanging about the garden, above.) Already, I’ve filled 2 dozen vacuum-packed freezer bags of zucchinis, peas, and spinach to enjoy in smoothies and stews in January. Broccoli, beans, and celery follow. We’ve got enough root crops to store all winter. We’re eating all the usual summer veggies every day, grilling them outside to keep the house cool. While mostly still green, there are hundreds of tomatoes ready to ripen, and, of course, there’s plenty of winter squashes. Nothing is more satisfying than knowing you have food for the future. I believe it is one of the greatest pleasures of living this lifestyle and well worth the effort we put into it.

But, as summer lumbers on inexorably toward its end, not all the projects we were so excited to start in May are finished, and now fall, with freezing temps and shorter days, is right in front of us. How did it happen so quickly? Can we get everything done? Is it time to shift to stacking firewood and think about frost protection in the garden? I’m 70 years old and still feel ambushed by every change of season: that first blush of green in March welcoming spring, the dry winds of June telling me that summer is right on their heels, and now, the golden haze of August in the meadows, hinting of autumn. Finally, the cold, gray skies promising a dusting of snow in late October will warn me to get the warm clothes out and find my snowshoes, buried in a shed since March.

Inevitably, our thoughts turn to firewood. For many years when I was a young back-to-the-land hippie in Idaho, starting in August, we got permits and logged our own firewood from Kaniksu National Forest. The kid’s dad and I had multiple chainsaws, peaveys, rope and pulleys, wedges, axes and a big 1967 International Harvester 1-ton beast of a truck able to haul 2 cords home. I loved the crisp early fall days, wearing flannel shirts and leather gloves, climbing high on the old logging roads to search for dead, standing, Tamarack and Spruce trees on the uphill slopes. The kids played in a safe spot and had a picnic. We took turns taking the tree down: putting in the notch and back cuts and using felling wedges to fine tune the drop, carefully watching it fall from a safe distance, then limbing and bucking it into 16” rounds. The lovely spiral shape of the Tamarack and the smell of the Spruce were intoxicating. Rolling the rounds down the slope to the roadbed near the truck was dicey work. One of us stood on the road with the peavey bar to stop the rounds from escaping us and go bouncing and charging down the hill, crashing through the underbrush. Not for the faint of heart, but one of my favorite chores.
Today, the chainsaws stay in the shed, and the peaveys are long gone. Alan and I tamely buy our 4 cords of pinon, cedar and pine already split and delivered to the woodshed. Our only chore is to stack it up and burn it. I admire and am a bit jealous of those who still get their firewood from the source and remember those times with great fondness.

Recently, a bull elk has discovered our yard and is visiting every night and early morning.  He’s nearly tall enough to step over the 4’ fence. The dogs growl from their beds, but don’t bark at him.  Those huge antlers make them very cautious.  He drinks from my bird bath (knocking it over every night) and munches on our apple tree (until Alan got it surrounded with a wire cage), but mostly just grazes and looks longingly at the (fenced) garden.  I’m sure he could jump in and demolish it all, so I have put blinking fairy lights around the top, and that seems to work as a deterrent.  Of course, there’s another month to go and he might change his mind as the meadow grasses thin and the veggies ripen.  Interestingly, he avoids the bee-garden, not liking those plants, lavender, bee bright, bee balm and lilacs, at all. 

Other projects we have completed: a drinking water faucet at the kitchen sink, a slightly improved drain line (although we might still need to rebuild the whole thing next spring), improved debris catchers for the cisterns, more Zydyck dams, and painting the house. We are doing this by hand, with brushes, so it will take a while, but the non-toxic Milk Paint is awesome, goes on well over the rough stucco finish, and we should have it done by winter.

We recently had a marvelous backpack trip into the South San Juan Wilderness with a friend. I was glad to know I could still hoist a pack and hike uphill all day without trouble, and we had a great time, although all three (!) of our water filters quit on the first day, forcing us to boil all our water. As a result, we ran out of fuel on the third day and had to hike out. Needless to say, Alan and I have bought several new filter systems along with some new lightweight gear and a pack for Zane. We’ve decided to head out on another trip next week, hopefully covering a section of the Continental Divide Trail, if weather permits.

After all, this is why we live here: to enjoy everything the Southwest has to offer!