You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Backpacking' category.
Photo by Kit Dunsmore
Last weekend, we intended to spend four nights camping in the Snowy Mountains near Medicine Bow Peak with friends. We picked an easy loop hike that would allow us to backpack in, camp for a few nights in one spot, and do interesting day hikes on side trails. One of the advantages of our choice was being able to start at high altitude, so that the hiking itself wasn’t all that strenuous. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned.
The hiking itself was as intended – exercise, but not the backbreaking slogging that can go with climbing endless trails with a pack when you’re not really in shape to begin with. However, the area we picked for our first camp spot turned out much wetter than we realized. (There was a little “marshland” symbol on the map, but none of us noticed that…!). We were attacked by swarms of mosquitoes that made cooking and eating dinner so unpleasant that the teenagers with us were happy to forgo dessert in order to retreat into their tent.
Molly and Sarah before the Bugs. (Photo by Dana Geary)
Photo by Dana Geary
We did have a net tent that we set up and used as a place to get a break from the mosquitoes. Even the dog learned the joy of being able to go into this shelter and get away from them.
The next morning wasn’t as bad, though it was still buggy. The girls did not want to stay out another night, so we packed up and hiked the rest of the loop to get back to the car. The day started well but it rained heavily all afternoon, making the last few hours of the hike cold and wet.
This picture of me only hints at how wet I was. I'm not wearing my hat because it was soaked through. (Photo by Dana Geary)
It's still raining, and one of the signs they are sitting by gave us the cheery news that we had almost 4 more miles to go. (Photo by Dana Geary)
Remarkably, the scenery was still gorgeous. If it hadn’t been raining so hard, I’d have taken endless pictures. There were some things (like flowers) that I just couldn’t resist.
Photo by Dana Geary
It was hard to get good pictures at all with the low light, but Dana got a couple that really captured the beauty of the place. I imagine the rainy part of our hike might be easily replicated in parts of Scotland (although I’m not so sure you would see snow…)
Photo by Dana Geary
We saw a little wildlife and lots of wildflowers.
A pine grosbeak that hung out with us in the parking lot. (Photo by Dana Geary)
Columbines (Photo by Kit Dunsmore)
Photo by Kit Dunsmore
I am dying to go back and stay longer, and I think we now have a better idea of which sections of the trail are likely to provide better camp sites. Maybe Kurt and I will head back up there before the year is out. He bought a Wyoming fishing license but didn’t get to use it.
More of my photos from this trip can be found on my Facebook page.
For the second half of our visit to Utah, we planned on taking a short backpacking trip. It took us quite a while to figure out just where we were going to go, but in the end we agreed on Pleasant Creek in Capitol Reef National Park, which is a glorious place that I had never heard of before.
Kit and Kelleen hiking along Pleasant Creek
Pleasant Creek runs through a canyon that is neither as high nor as wide as Horseshoe Canyon. This canyon felt more intimate and isolated. Even the trail we were hiking wasn’t a groomed trail. We wanted some back country time and this was it. We hiked along a clear, active stream, something we hadn’t seen much of in our end-of-summer travels.
Pleasant Creek
Unfortunately, we have very few pictures from this part of the trip. The creek, while pretty, turned out to be rather hazardous as well. The canyon’s narrowness meant that the meandering stream would butt right up against one canyon wall and then twist it’s way over to the other side. It was impossible to stay on one side of the creek for very long, and we began to cross the running water over and over again.
It seems silly now that I was so worried about getting my boots wet. Balancing on rocks with a pack on my back turned out to be a real trick. With each crossing, I seemed to have more trouble than less. When Kelleen fell into the creek and was pinned down by her pack, we all became more wary of the rocky path we were following. Except for a skinned hand and some bruises, Kelleen was all right. We had covered about two miles so, after a break, we went on.
Another accident happened at the next stream crossing. We had all made it safely across the water. Kurt had managed to scramble up the steep bank, but I was looking for an easier way out of the stream bed. Kelleen started to climb the bank which was at least five feet high. The rock under one of her feet gave way, and she shifted her weight only to have the ground under the other foot collapse as well. To keep from falling, she caught hold of a woody shrub just above her head with her right hand. The combined weight of her backpack and body yanked on her arm so hard that she dislocated her shoulder. Of course, none of us really knew what was wrong with her at first, but by the time we got to the park’s visitor center and dialed 911, we had guessed.
We sat by the creek for half an hour, waiting to see if Kelleen would start to feel better, and trying to decide what to do. In the end, Kurt took Kelleen’s pack and his own and hightailed it back to the car (he got quite a workout). We rigged up a sling using Kurt’s long-sleeved shirt, and Kelleen and I took our time retracing our steps.
With one arm strapped to her side, Kelleen felt unsteady and was cautious. On our way back, we just waded through the stream at the lowest point we could find – to heck with keeping our feet dry. Kelleen expressed the hope that whatever was wrong with her would be something serious, so she wouldn’t have to feel like she wimped out and cost us our backpacking trip over nothing. She has since recanted. Weeks in a sling is trying her patience and learning that she has at least 6 months of healing and therapy before she’ll be fully recovered didn’t help any.
We were extremely lucky that the nearest clinic had an experienced and confident staff. After letting some Demerol relax Kelleen’s muscles, the nurse and Kurt worked together and got Kelleen’s arm back where it belonged. The relief Kelleen felt was instantaneous. She’d been really uncomfortable for several hours at that point but hadn’t complained once. The nurse strapped her arm to her side and told us what we needed to know to take care of her, and we found ourselves a hotel for the night.
The next day we set out on a driving tour that had been recommended by the nurse. While it wasn’t the trip we had planned, we still had a wonderful time and saw mind-blowing things. On our first day, we drove about ten miles down the Burr Trail Road and stopped for a picnic lunch at what turned out to be a lonely but scenic spot.
Kelleen with sling, and Kurt
The view from our picnic perch
Another example of the scenery at our picnic site
The scenery for the rest of the day was just as beautiful, and we wound up at Arches National Park just before sunset, but I’ll leave that for another entry.
Our backpacking trip was beautiful on many levels. The big picture views were stunning – mountains, lakes, meadows, sky — but things were just as delightful when looked at the scene up close. I was surprised by the number and variety of wildflowers growing everywhere – in the meadow, along the streams, in the cracks of rocks, and on the slopes above Lake Emmaline. Naturally, I took a ton of flower pictures. (A ton of pictures translates to 50 or 100. My total photo count for this 48-hour trip was over 300…) It’s hard to pare them down, but I want to share a few of the more extraordinary ones.
The Colorado state flower is the Colorado columbine. While the name has taken on unfortunate negative connotations, the flower itself is stunning. I was delighted to see several examples on our hikes, including a little patch of them on the slope facing Emmaline lake.
Colorado Columbine
Tucked between some rocks nearby, Kurt spotted a tiny pink flower that I’ve identified as moss campion. I put a pocket knife in the frame for scale.
Moss Campion
Kurt also found a little garden of red, blue, and yellow flowers (which I have yet to identify). You couldn’t see them until you were standing in the space between two boulders.
As we hiked back down from the lake to the meadow, I noticed this plucky little flower growing inches from the edge of a receding snow bank. The tenacity of some of these flowers is inspiring.
Before going up to the lake, Kurt and I took a short hike around the meadow and saw several different wildflowers along the way. The first was this parry primrose growing right on the edge of the stream.
Parry Primrose
The Rydberg penstemon was in a sunny space along the trail. I took a lot of unsatisfactory pictures of this flower, but finally got one that was clear.
Rydberg Penstemon
We saw scarlet paintbrush all along the trail from the car to the meadow.
Scarlet Paintbrush
This patch of narrow-leaved penstemon gives you a sense of the abundance of the flowers during our hikes. All the shots I tried to take of banks of wildflowers were disappointing at best. The flowers are so small, they disappear in photos taken from a distance.
Narrow-leaved Penstemon
I came home from the trip to Emmaline Lake with a slew of botanical photos. The wildflowers were booming thanks to the ample run-off from this winter’s snows, but I want to look some of them up before I post a few. So today’s post is going to be some art shots I took of trees we encountered. (Note: I haven’t bothered to look any of these up, so maybe I don’t need to know what the wildflowers are either…) The most interesting trees were on the peaks surrounding Emmaline Lake (approx. 11000 feet).
One of the things that fascinates me about the plants in the mountains is their tenacity; they grow in the most unlikely places. I saw wildflowers blooming just inches from the edge of snow drifts, trees reaching out from steep, rocky slopes, and stunted trees permanently bent by the winds that blow over the ridge they are growing on. But the all time winner was this plant below. I don’t know if it’s a tree or not, but it is growing out of an old tree stump that is right in the middle of a rushing river.
After that, the trees that interested me the most tended to be dead already – smooth or gnarled with twisted trunks and branches. Both of these were up near Emmaline Lake
These exposed tree roots were hanging out from under a clump of scrubby bushes on the slope we climbed to get to Emmaline Lake. (Note: Kurt and I did not approach the Lake on the official trail. In skirting a snow field, we wound up blazing our own trail on a slope nearby.)
There were also beautiful dead and dying trees down in Cirque Meadow and in the woods on the Emmaline Lake trail. Here are the ones I thought were interesting.
Cora is an eleven year old German Shepherd with the energy level and mannerisms of an eleven month old puppy. I adopted her from the SPCA in Ithaca, NY. She’s been with me for nine years now.
Cora loves hiking, walking, catching frisbees, and chasing rabbits. She is easily distracted (I think she has doggy ADD) and most of her misbehavior occurs when she stops paying attention to us because something more interesting has come into view.
Cora was great on our backpacking trip. To begin with, she was a total trooper about the backpack. It wasn’t easy to get it on her; every time I tried to slip the pack on over her head, she would drop her chin. I eventually outsmarted her. I put her in a down so she couldn’t get away from me. The amazing thing is that she didn’t do anything to try and get it off once I got it on. During the hike in, she was her usual, bouncy self, keeping an eye on all five people in our party as good shepherd should. She acted as if she were completely unaware of the pack.
Instead of looking at the camera, Cora is looking down the trail that Dana and the girls have taken
On Friday, she went up to Emmaline Lake with us. Since it was just a day hike, she did it without a backpack, but she took a real beating anyway. The hike from the meadow to the lake is reported as two miles but was actually much longer. The trail hasn’t been cleared out yet this year, and there are lots of fallen trees that have to be climbed over or around. Cora likes to jump onto or over these. As the trail got steeper, it also got rougher. The rocks got bigger so that we went from hiking to climbing. Cora did a lot of jumping and scrambling to get up the rocks. Being strong-willed, she repeatedly headed off in the wrong direction and had to back track to get onto the proper trail. I think she may have covered twice the distance the rest of us did. Fortunately, the destination was worth the trip.
Adventure Dog on the rocks overlooking Emmaline Lake
On the way back to camp, she perked up some and I realized she had been struggling at the top due to altitude sickness. Her breathing had been much more rapid than usual, and she began to be reluctant to do anything that required going up. As we went back to 9800 from 11000 feet, she became more spry and less recalcitrant. She did, however, take advantage of every rest break she could get.
Whenever we had our food out to cook, we never had to worry about the chipmunks coming into camp and stealing it. Cora was always there, sharp eyes glued to their smallest movements. She would stand up whenever she saw a chipmunk near our camp, and the tiny squirrels would take one look at her and head back the way they had come.
Cora guards our camp
Cora slept in the vestibule of our tent at night. She rarely moved all night long.
Cora in the vestibule, as seen through the tent's netting
After we broke down our camp for the journey home, I put Cora’s backpack on her and we started down the trail. We realized Cora was in trouble in just a few steps. Her hind quarters were shaking and sinking as she tried to walk. She was so tired and sore from the mountain climb the day before that she couldn’t handle the extra weight. So Kurt added her pack to his. Unencumbered, she did fine on the two-plus mile hike back to the car. But when we got there, she had to be lifted into it. She’s been sleeping a lot over the last two days. Still, I’m sure it won’t be long before the question “Do you want to go for a hike?” gets the usual excited response from her. I know I’m raring to go!
