THE CHALLENGE OF THE TRAILS

     The Wind River Mountains of Wyoming straddle the Continental Divide and are replete with permanent glaciers, 13,000 foot peaks and 12,000 foot passes. The country is forested to about 11,000 feet, starkly beautiful and ultimately rugged. There are hundreds of lakes and abundant water cascading, crystal and ice cold through alpine canyons. Where the water flows more slowly there are willows along the banks. Among the willows there are moose grazing and occasionally you will see beaver gathering twigs. Up on the snowy peaks there are mountain sheep and goats. A little further down furry marmots and shrill whistling, pika scurry among the rocky debris. In the forests there are elk, deer, bear, mountain lions and the usual variety of forest creatures. To be a mountain man, all alone, wandering that country as it was in 1830; it must have been an incredible existence. 
     I have a profound aversion to sleeping in tents and the thought of lugging seventy pounds of gear all over the mountains 
leaves me cold, but yet I long to experience this splendid landscape. I started by taking short runs on the trails.  As my curiosity about what lay beyond the next mountain grew and my love of the country set in, these runs of a few hours became all day adventures covering 40 to 50 miles.
 

My trail runs are casual efforts punctuated by lengthy rests. While resting above the tree line, I can savor broad vistas including pristine peaks and glaciers plunging into turquoise lakes surrounded by tundra grass and patches of melting snow. Resting in the forest, I might be seated on a log next to a roaring cataract. Sometimes, high above, a flock of ravens are shouting back and forth loudly. These breaks provide a gentle respite from tortuous travel over rugged terrain.       Adventure runs provide an excellent way of exploring the country while experiencing the wilderness first hand. I start early in the morning when columns of sunlight slip between evergreen boughs giving pine needle paths a mystical hue.  In the early afternoon I am scrambling over rocky peeks. The sky is powder blue and white clouds, like fairy ships, drift softly overhead.  All around are wild flowers poking through the snow. Late in the day the trees cast lengthening shadows, a solitary deer in a meadow stops, mid chew, to watch me go by.

     The western horizon is orange as I collapse, exhausted in my car. Sometimes I supplement my runs with some local history. I like to do this to get a feel for how the early trappers and miners must have felt when they wandered the same trails. 
     I used this method in Creede last September.  Creede is located near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River in southwestern Colorado's high San Juan mountains.  Today it is home to less than 500 people, but in 1889, when silver was discovered nearby, the population was nearly 10,000.  According to ”A QUICK HISTORY OF CREEDE, •by Leland Feitz, "By 1892, $1,000,000 worth of ore was being shipped out of Creede every month...and the town was home to such notorious souls as Jessie's brother, Frank James, Bat Masterson, Poker Alice and Calamity Jane...Bob Ford, killer of Jessie James, was shot in the back and killed in his own Creede saloon, the Exchange, by Ed O'Kelly, one time Bachelor City town marshal." 
     I can remember so well my last afternoon when I ran up Rat Creek; it was so cold and the snow was falling. I located the now desolate Bachelor ghost town. On a southwestern slopping hill nearby, I located a cemetery over grown with Aspens. Massive trunks towering from grave mounds, over turning markers, fancy borders and stylish mausoleums alike.  In 1890, Bachelor, a silver boom town like Creede, boasted another 10,000 hearty souls, but now there are only a few uprooted and overturned markers to remind us that someone has passed before. In the midst of death and its remembrance, new life bursts through. 
     It was a wonderful day. The dark clouds, the chill, the lonely forests, the wind rattling dead leaves and the awesome mountains, these all combined to thrill me like nothing in the sterile city can. And in that moment, I was, hair standing on end, goose flesh on the arms, intensely alive. 

Southwestern Colorado is a hostile environment; it leaves little room for mistakes. Not far from the Bachelor town site, Colonel John C. Fremont lost eleven men to frostbite and starvation while trying to find a southern route through the rockies in January 1849. Who could know about these hardships today?  I caught a glimpse of such a life that afternoon.       I've glimpsed it before on my solitary runs through the Wind River Range in Wyoming. It's a beautiful day and you are 20 miles from your car when suddenly the clouds close in, a cold wind whips up and then it's storming furiously. You are all alone, it's freezing cold, you are soaking wet and you have got to make home on your own. There's no room for excuses; you either make it, or you don't.       That is part of the fascination of these adventure runs, although you are quite safe, there is an ever present element of risk; not a great risk like standing in the middle of a freeway or jumping from a skyscraper window, but an ever present, slightly hidden risk.  When you venture into the wilderness, clothed only in nylon shorts, a t-shirt and wearing a pair of running shoes, you are more vulnerable to nature than you can sometimes imagine. The sun may be shining and you may be the happiest person in the world, but as the Bible says, "In the midst of life, we are in death."

     The winter of 1985-86 brought unusually heavy snows to the Wind Rivers, while trying to traverse a trail I had run in former years, I found my way blocked by a snow field that cascaded down the mountain, across my trail, and continued to the valley a few hundred feet below. Not wanting to turn back, I decided to cross the snow instead. 
     Soft running shoes, with their rounded edges, do not gain easy footholds in frozen snow. As I walked out onto the field the slant of the snow became steeper and steeper until I began to lose my footing. Unable to turn around for fear of tumbling to the rocks below, I inched along cutting footholds with a flat stone. My bare leg pressed hard against the snow on my left began to burn from the cold, my hands now wet with the melting ice chips were stinging. Perspiration rolled into my eyes and I started to feel lightheaded as the slope got even steeper. 
     What at first appeared to be a casual lope across a field of snow, had become a nightmare. Soon I was clinging to an icy cliff, unable to go forward and unable to turn around.  Afraid to look even right or left for fear of losing my balance, I started to edge my way up the side.  I progressed slowly at first, but going up proved easier than sideways.  I stole a glance upward. A great rock face, a vertical wall of stone, stared back at me some twenty yards ahead. My heart sank until I noticed the snow had melted away from the wall and left a gap of perhaps two feet. I imagined that between the rock face and the snow there must be a narrow ledge of stone I could walk on. With the cliff to my left and the snow on my right, I could work my way along to a spot about 25 yards to my right where the snow field was not so steep and from there I could ease back to the trail that lay dry and snow free another fifty yards further. 
     With renewed spirit I made great haste to the crest of the snow and peered over the edge. My heart sank, there was no ledge in sight, only a vertical drop of 40 or 50 feet to darkness. My heart was pounding, there was a ringing in my ears and a dull pressure, pain at the back of my head and base of my skull. 
     Clinging to the sharp edge of the snow cornice, my feet started to slip from under my legs. Casting a furtive glance to the rear, great boulders knifing from the snow a few hundred feet below, a desperate pull and lunge upward, I managed to throw my left leg over the sharp edge of the snow. Laying on my stomach with my right leg pressed against the icy snow and my left leg dangling in the space between the cliff and the cornice, I used the flat stone I still carried to carve notches in the sharp edge of ice. Pushing with my right leg and pulling with the aid of the notches, I gradually worked my way up and around the rock face to a place where the snow field was less steep. From that point it was easier and I made haste to the dry rocks beyond. I have never been so thankful to place my feet on firm ground as I was that August morning. Fortunately, I didn't encounter another field like that the rest of the day. 
     When I got back to the trail-head, I stopped to talk to a forest ranger. He told me of another runner, who encountered similar situation on the Gannett Glacier only two days before. That runner was not so lucky, he lost his footing and plunged down the side of the snow breaking both his legs in the process. Luckily for him, he was with a friend who wrapped him in some extra clothing and went for help. Running twenty five miles to the nearest trail head, he guided a helicopter back to airlift his friend out. 
     I was all alone on my run and didn't see another soul for miles on either side of my snowfield. If I had fallen, I would have frozen to death before anyone would have found me. That experience gave me a new respect for the casual hazards of trail running and especially for running in mountainous areas where sub freezing temperatures are normal at night. 

 

For more great trail running adventure visit: Running In the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, by Scott McKenzie Hardrock 100 Mile Endurance Run Right: Scott McKenzie Enters  Michigan Bluff Aid Station - 55.8 mile at The Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run

Copyright © 2001 by John Loeschhorn - Mail to:mtnrnr@pacbell.net March 2, 2001