On the Road in the Rockies - Part 2

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3-  ASPEN TALES AND TRAILS

The town of Aspen has an intriguing history that dates back to 1879 when a group of dogged prospectors, defying a Ute uprising, struck silver and turned a grubby miner’s camp into a thriving town of thousands in a few short years.  Within a decade, there were several banks in town, a hospital, two theaters, an opera house and a hydroelectric plant that generated electricity.  Then the Sherman Act was repealed and the price of silver tanked.  The mines started closing; businesses went bust; people moved away.  By 1900, most of the buildings in town were shuttered.  Only a few hundred residents remained, scratching a living by raising cattle and growing sweet potatoes.  One of my grandmother’s uncles had a ranch here during this period.  But he lost it during the Great Depression when he couldn’t pay the taxes.

After WW2, a group of entrepreneurs had a crazy idea to build a ski resort in Aspen.  “Where the hell is Aspen,” investors asked.  It was deep in the Rockies, in the middle of nowhere, but still they pitched their money into the project and the rest is history.  Its heavenly locale in the Roaring Fork River Valley was the attraction.  The first to arrive were the avid skiers and outdoorsmen; a few movie actors; artists; poets.  Hollywood celebrities came next in the ‘70s.  Then the rock stars.  Then the CEOs of Corporate America.

With a median home price of $5 million, Aspen is too self important to allow a campground or RV park, and thus we found ourselves camping in the woods five miles outside the city limits, next to the Roaring Fork River, with lush meadows where deer and elk grazed in the evenings.  And this suited us fine.

The campground is called Difficult for some reason, though setting up camp was no sweat.  We used the shower for the first time and it worked terrific.  Then it began to sprinkle and we cooked supper and celebrated inside with a bottle of pinot noir.  At one point, while preparing our meal, I knocked over my wine glass and almost immediately the carbon monoxide alarm sounded.  How were we to know that it was also an intoxication alarm?  It certainly made a racket.  We tinkered and fiddled, trying to turn it off, and eventually it did turn off—though I’m not sure it was because of our fiddling.  Nevertheless, we monitored our alcohol consumption after that.

Come morning, my jaw felt 100 percent again and the skies were sapphire blue.  Time to go biking!  We broke camp after breakfast and drove to Snowmass for a day of downhill riding, stopping at a market in Aspen on the way.  One thing we noticed right away about the people of Aspen: Everybody is thin.  And I mean everybody.  Terry commented on it first, and then I concurred that, yes, she was right.  We saw plenty of people riding bicycles around town.  Maybe that had something to do with it?  Or possibly it’s because there are no fast food joints in town?  Or maybe there’s a disproportionate share of trust-fund kids with a coke habit?  But I digress.

At Snowmass Mountain, one can buy an all-day lift ticket and ride the gondola up to 11,000 feet, and then barrel down the singletracks to your heart’s content, through evergreen forests, aspen groves and alpine meadows.  Since it was a Monday, business was slow: rarely did we come across other riders.  The easiest trail is aptly called Easy Rider.  It was fast and challenging, with banked, compact turns and even some high-speed whoops for added excitement—not your average “beginner” trail, even though that was the Snowmass rating for it.  Even the kid in the resort’s bike shop confessed it was sandbagged, and that a number of novice riders had been complaining.  We rated it “not-your-typical-beginner” and gave it two thumbs up.

We ate lunch at a restaurant at the base of the mountain, sitting outside on the near-deserted patio.  The place had a serene ambiance to it, with only a few people milling about the plaza: enough people so that the resort didn’t feel deserted.  After our meal, we took the gondola back up to sample another trail: Valhalla.  This one is an advanced trail, a black diamond, much more technical than Easy Rider.  It was a fun ride, but we skipped the committing switchbacks that plunged down a wooded ridgeline.  It was over our heads (or I’m just getting older and wiser).  However, we did ride a segment of Government Trail, a Colorado cross-country classic that runs through Snowmass.

Dark, foreboding clouds amassed as the afternoon progressed, and occasionally a rouge raindrop would smack me in the face.  We retrieved the windbreakers from our Camelbacks and kept riding, though the sprinkles turned out to be a hollow threat, nothing to worry about.  The end of the day found us back on Easy Rider, where I found the romps through the Hobbit-like forest especially cool.  When the lifts closed at 4 o’clock, we were tuckered out and content.  In all, we covered about sixteen miles, descending 7,000 feet. It had been a good day.

4-  THE GHOST OF HUNTER

In the heart of Aspen, at the corner of Main and Mill Streets, stands the Hotel Jerome.  Though it was built long ago, during the glory days of the Colorado Silver Boom, it still retains its Victorian splendor, meticulously refurbished and operated as a five-star hotel.  It wasn’t always this swanky, however: during the “bust years”, you could rent a room for $15 a month.  And it was still a modest establishment when my grandparents stayed here on their wedding night in 1930.

Our vacation was to be primarily a “camping trip.”  But there are always exceptions to the rule.  A few weeks before our departure, I reserved a room at the Jerome for one night: an early-anniversary treat for my darling wife (it was 17 days away).  The fact that my grandparents had spent their wedding night here made it even more special.

Hotel guests of the Jerome don’t park their cars: you simply pull up to the street curb, where attendants in crisp green uniforms handle it from there.  It was late afternoon when we rolled up.  We had just come off the mountain at Snowmass, grimy and disheveled and in need of showers.  A valet came out to greet us and waited patiently while we sorted through the baggage, trying to decide what to take up to the room.  I had to hand it to the guy: he didn’t bat an eye at our condition, or our dusty ol’ van with the grungy mountain bikes hanging off the back, or the carnage of gear piled inside, or the carbon monoxide alarm that was virtually possessed.

From the outside, the Jerome looks stately and functional: a brick, three-story building that serves a purpose.  But on the inside, it is thoroughly opulent, with Victorian-era furnishings, flawless décor, and service that was impeccable.  We checked in; got cleaned up.  Terry wore a chic but casual ensemble she had packed for the occasion (and all I had was a Hawaiian shirt—oops).  The concierge down in the lobby presented an assortment of dinner choices, and we ended up at Steak House 316 on Hopkins Avenue—which came highly recommended—sitting out front on the patio, under the stars.  The atmosphere was romantic, the wine was top drawer, the food was excellent… and the service was awful.

We strolled back to the Jerome after dinner, taking a circuitous route past art galleries and swanky boutiques (there’s a lot of bling in this town), and landed at the J-Bar for a few nightcaps.  The J-Bar is a hotel saloon with a rich history.  Nineteenth-century silver miners bellied up to the bar here.  So did lumberjacks and trappers; ski bums; cowboys; jet-set celebrities; authors and poets—heck, it’s possible my grandparents had a nip of moonshine here on their wedding night.  I also knew that the late great Hunter S. Thompson had frequented the J-Bar in his day, and that alone, I felt, was reason to pay homage.  A photograph of the legendary gonzo journalist hangs on the wall at the end of the bar, alongside a framed “Thompson for Sheriff” poster, and the pen and ink illustration used for the cover of his immortal Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

It was a Monday night, only a few patrons in the bar.  We were on our second round when Sean, the bar manager, came by to share some history of the establishment.  He nodded to the end of the bar, where Hunter Thompson would perch every the afternoon to sort through his mail.  Thompson also ran his 1970 election campaign for County Sherriff from the J-Bar.  The sheriff at the time had vowed to rid Aspen of all the long-haired hippies, so Thompson shaved his head and referred to the incumbent as his the “long-haired opponent”.  He also promised to decriminalize pot and peyote if elected—and he almost won.  Then there was the time when he bound his good friend, Bill Murray, to a chase lounge and tossed him into the hotel pool.  Those were the rollicking Seventies and Eighties, when celebrity locals like Jack Nicolson, Don Johnson or Don Henley might drop in with Hunter.

“But things have mellowed out over the years,” Sean asserted, almost sadly.  From his age (35?), I knew that he didn’t bear witness to those Glory Days.  And from the pining expression on his face, I got the feeling that to be able to say you partied at the J-Bar during that time would be like saying you were at Woodstock.

I commented on the antique back bar, which was a gorgeous, floor-to-ceiling work of fine craftsmanship, asking Sean if it was the original.  He nodded.  Then he said: “Let me show you something that very few people have seen.”  He went over to the back bar, pulled out a large drawer and brought it to our table.  It was empty.  He explained that he was cleaning out all of the cabinets and drawers, and in this particular drawer, we’d be able to see the signatures of those who had tended bar here since its founding.  And sure enough, etched into the sides and bottom of the drawer, inside and out, were scores of names.  Sean pointed to one which was clearly dated 1894.

While Ter and I marveled at all the names and dates, Sean suggested we stop by the following night: all drinks would be only a dollar.  We declined, as we’d be pressing deeper into the Rockies the next day, but I asked him what the special occasion was.

“We’re closing down,” he said.

What?!!

Not forever, he assured me.  But the entire hotel would be undergoing a major renovation.  Gone would be the Victorian motif, replaced with a stylish, Western theme from an Ed Weston photograph, or some story like that.  The plan was to re-open in December, before the jet-setters arrived for the holidays.

We finished our drinks and retired to our room soon after, and on the way upstairs, I found myself dwelling on the renovation plans again: out with the old, in with the new.  Would the hotel lose its connection to the rich times of yore?  They say it is haunted, and though I’m not one for ghost-hunting antics, I do know one thing.  When Hunter Thompson tragically took his life in 2005, his beloved friends packed the Jerome for the memorial service, by far the largest gathering the hotel had ever seen.  This place was his home away from home (his ranch is out on Woody Creek).  And the J-Bar would’ve been especially sacred.  That said, heaven help us if the ghost of Hunter doesn’t like the remodel.

5-  FEAR & LOATHING ON INDEPENDENCE PASS

My wife exceeds her fair share behind the wheel on road trips.  She says it’s because I spend so much time driving to work each day, she just wants to give me break from it.  And this is fine by me: driving isn’t what it used to be.  But honestly, when it comes to driving the Sportsmobile, she’s in road hog heaven.  She is all smiles and glowing, rolling down the highway wearing her cowboy hat, Tom Petty on the stereo.  Once she’s in the groove, she can go for miles.

Naturally this gives me opportune time to sightsee and take a cat nap if the mood presents.  I make a good DJ, too: keeping those groovy tunes coming.  I’m also a navigator of the first order, and I can serve my sweetie an iced mocha coffee on demand.  In short, we are the supreme Road Trip team (except when we take a wrong turn, then the finger-pointing starts).

So there was nothing unusual that morning at the Jerome when Terry offered to drive.  Sure, honey, sounds great.  But first, we took the shuttle bus up Maroon Creek, past Jack Nicolson’s hidden compound, and hiked around Maroon Lake, soaking up those stunning vistas of the Bells.  When we got back to the van, it was early afternoon.  Ter got behind the wheel; started the engine; adjusted the mirrors.  I slid into the passenger seat; searched for the road map; couldn’t find it.  Then we departed tony Aspen and headed up Highway 82, towards Independence Pass.

Straddling the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet, Independence Pass is one of the few natural east-west passages through the Colorado Rockies.  The Utes in the Roaring Fork Valley had used it for generations before the white man arrived.  And when the white man did arrive, it became the line of demarcation that separated the two.  That demarcation was short-lived, however—once silver was discovered in Aspen, prospectors stampeded over it in droves.  This led to the construction of a wagon road, chipped and carved out of the steep mountainside, a desperate but crucial endeavor to haul supplies into Aspen, and silver ore out of Aspen.  With copious amounts of dynamite, the present alignment of Highway 82 was established in 1927, though another forty years would pass before a bed of asphalt graced its surface.  Today it ranks as the highest paved road over the Continental Divide.

I had paid little concern to the sign back in Aspen that stipulated vehicles over thirty-five feet in length were strictly prohibited on the road to Independence Pass.  But as we ascended, more signs appeared: “Slow Curves Ahead;” “Steep Grade Ahead;” “Narrow Road Ahead.”  As I would soon discover, they could’ve combined all those warnings into a single, all-inclusive sign: “Scary Shit Ahead.”  The 35-foot length limit was insanely generous—if we came upon a rig that size, we would all perish.

Further up the valley, at around 9,500 feet, the highway narrowed considerably as it cut through a series of cliff bands, the road bed itself blasted out of solid rock.  No longer were there any roadside shoulders.  I peered out the passenger window, straight down, two hundred feet to the frothing rapids of the Roaring Fork River.  Sometimes there was a guardrail, but frequently there was not.  I could look out and watch the right front tire roll along the edge of the pavement, a mere foot or two from disaster.  Yikes!  To help assuage my anxiety, I fetched a beer from the ice box.

Meanwhile, Terry was as calm and focused as a big-rig trucker, navigating through the twists and bends, dropping into low gear when the grade demanded.  She was in the zone.  When I commented on the mortal situation on my side of the van, she responded that everything was under control.  No problemo.  But at around 10,000 feet, the double-yellow stripe down the middle of the highway disappeared—it squandered too much valuable road space, so it was eliminated.  Now if you passed a car coming in the opposite direction, you could get your side mirror torn off.  This was Road Warrior, Rocky Mountain style, and I began to vocally lament that our choices now were to: 1) sideswipe an oncoming RV, or; 2) tumble down the slope, end over end, to our demise.

“You need to relax,” she told me. So I took her at her word. I made my way aft and fished a Vicodin out of my duffel; popped it into my mouth; washed it down with Fat Tire ale.

Not that it helped.  At 11,000 feet, Terry abruptly said: “Uh-oh.”

What’s wrong?

“The ‘Check Engine’ light just came on.”

Crap!  Now I was holding my breath, listening to the engine, which was working extremely hard, but nothing sounded dire or apocalyptic.  I leaned over and scanned the instrument panel—temperature and oil gauges reported normal.  At one point, I caught a whiff of something burning.  Our transmission?  No.  It was coming from an RV that had passed us in the opposite direction, the driver riding his brakes the entire way down from the pass, roasting them to cinders.  This made me feel somewhat better, knowing that it wasn’t us that would be going down in flames.  Yes, we’d be okay.  There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

But at 11,500 feet, the carbon monoxide alarm went off.  The shrillness of it was piercing to the senses and I expected oxygen masks to pop down any moment from overhead.  And since we were above timberline, there were no trees to hide the precipitous drop to the valley floor.  I remember thinking: If I had a parachute, I could bail out right now.

Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the alarm stopped.  Ter and I exchanged a quick “WTF?” look, but never said a word.  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as my grandmother used to say—and she was not that crazy about horses.

We motored up the final mile without uttering a word, the van straining the entire way.  Upon gaining the pass, Ter stopped in the pullout and shut off the engine.  I immediately jumped out, fell to the ground and kissed the earth, looking like Mohammad praying to Mecca.  It was a beautiful afternoon and a few other people were milling about.  The air was alpine crisp.  Cotton-ball clouds floated overhead in a turquoise, iridescent sky, and angels were singing in harmony.  At that moment, that very singular moment, I knew I’d live to see another day.

After a short hike out to an overlook, we returned to the parking lot and asked a Harley biker dude to snap a photo of us in front of the Independence Pass sign.  Then we climbed in the van and started down the other side of the pass.  Ter double-insisted that she drive, and that was groovy with me.  She was in her groove, and I was in my groove.  And then I saw the yellow road sign up ahead…

WARNING

STEEP GRADE

CHECK BRAKES

TO BE CONTINUED…

On the Road in the Rockies - Part 1

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1-  OODLES OF AWNINGS AND A FISTFULL OF VICODIN

Funny how vacations don’t always start how you envision them.  It was late Friday afternoon.  We were FINALLY getting out of Dodge, motoring over Cajon Pass into the high desert—along with four million other people, all of them desperately vying to flee the L.A. Basin in a mass exodus.  We had originally planned to leave town mid morning to avoid this typical Friday night crush… But you know how it goes sometimes, when there are “unexpected obstacles” to overcome at the last minute. It was stop and go, bumper to bumper.  Our average speed from Yorba Linda to the Nevada border: 38 miles per hour.  But hey… We’re on a road trip.  What’s the big hurry?

After deliberating for two years, we had finally purchased a camper van: a 16-year-old Sportsmobile with low miles; clean as a whistle; spent most of its life parked in a garage.  Last winter and spring, weekend camping trips had provided us time to sort out what features we wanted to add before the big summer road trip, and this had come down to two essential things: 1) The capability to take hot showers, and; 2) a roll-out awning on the passenger side of the vehicle.

Since the van has a small water heater and a secondary faucet in the rear, we fashioned an outdoor shower enclosure off the back doors, using a shock-cord tent pole from REI and a shower curtain from Bed Bath & Beyond.  As for the awning, we selected the Fiamma model that the Sporstmobile West website recommended.  Terry ordered it from a local RV dealer/repair shop about a month before our vacation.  They said it would take two weeks to get it, and then they’d install it, no problem.  It was as good as done.

But three weeks after putting in the order, the awning had yet to arrive.  “Tomorrow,” we were told by Russell, the friendly service manager.  And the next day it was “tomorrow” again.  We were literally departing in two days, and STILL no awning.  Russell blamed the Fiamma factory in Florida, and lamented that he had called up and down the West Coast and was unable to find anyone who had that awning in stock.  That’s when Terry sprung into action.  She called the Sportsmobile West factory in Fresno—and yes, they had Fiamma awnings coming out their ears.  Oodles and oodles of awnings.  So she left the house at zero dark thirty the next morning, drove 260 miles to Fresno, bought the awning, and then delivered it to the RV shop by the end of the day.  Russell was bowled over.  Speechless.  And he installed it, free of charge.

Meanwhile, as my wife was talking to the Sportsmobile folks, making plans to pick up the awning, I was nursing a toothache at a business conference in Glendora.  The pain had been a minor distraction in the morning, but the left side of my jaw was expressing considerable anguish while eating lunch.  Not wanting to leave on vacation with a cavity that needed attention, I called my dentist.

“Sure, stop by on your way home,” said Dr. Lee.

So I did.  He examined me first, and then took some x-rays.  He studied the images, shook his head.

“I’m sorry, but I gotta pull that tooth. Can’t save it.”

He showed me the x-ray; pointed to the abscessed area around the root of a molar, elaborating on hairline fractures, yada, yada… Not good.  I explained that I was leaving on vacation.  Couldn’t I deal with it when I returned?

“I would suggest we extract it now,” he answered, explaining that it would only get worse.  I could either have it done now, or wait another week, until it became an emergency, and then have it removed somewhere in Colorado.  It didn’t take long to make up my mind: after numbing me with lidocaine, Dr. Lee went to work.

I didn’t feel a thing, and before I knew it, he was done.  He stuffed a gauze pad into my mouth to stem the bleeding; handed me a vial of antibiotics; another vial full of Vicodin.  Then came the post-op instructions:

“Okay, take the antibiotics every day until you run out.  When the lidocaine wears off, take the Vicodin.  And when the Vicodin is gone, drink whiskey.  You’ve got some stitches in there now, very tender, so don’t chew on the left side of your mouth for a week.  Stick with noodle soup, stuff like that.  You don’t want to bust those stitches open, so take it easy.  No heavy exertion for a few days.  You’re not going mountain climbing or anything crazy, are you?”

Umm… No.  Of course not.

“Good, then.  Have a great vacation!”

Henceforth, come Friday morning, instead of us casting off for Colorado, I was stumbling around in a Vicodin haze, organizing the climbing gear, while Terry was running errands that should’ve been done the day before, but she had gone to Fresno instead, and the van was at the RV shop getting the awning installed.  By the time we had fetched the van, packed it, fed the pets, locked the house and pulled out of the driveway, it was three o’clock.

And like I was saying, it was heavy traffic all the way to the Nevada border, where we stopped at the Starbucks in Primm for a dose of caffeine.  It was ten o’clock when we drove through glittery Las Vegas, and an hour further landed us in Mesquite.  Mesquite is out in the middle of nowhere, settled by Mormons well over a century ago.  There are two casinos in town (though one is boarded up, out of business), plus nine golf courses and three cheap motels.  The Best Western there had a room and we took it.

We were back on the road first thing in the morning.  The air was sultry and it smelled like rain.  Under partly cloudy skies, we motored through the Virgin River Gorge into Utah, where thunderclouds greeted us outside Cedar City.  Intermittent showers and lightning would escort us eastward on I-70, all the way to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Continuing east from Grand Junction, the interstate curved into a valley that is flanked by high buttes and mesas, the Colorado River rippling alongside the freeway.  We were driving into the Rockies now, past the farming towns of Palisade and DeBeque.  Late in the day, we exited the freeway in Rifle, and the familiarity of the place was sort of a homecoming.  There on the hillside stood the old Maxfield House, built in 1881 and perfectly restored.  As far as I know, my cousin still lives there with his family.  In fact, I have many distant cousins who live in the area.  My mother was born near here, as well as her mother, growing up on ranches that had been homesteaded long ago by our ancestors.  Roots run deep on the Western Slope of Colorado.

We had a reservation at the State Park campground at Rifle Gap Reservoir, a few miles north of town.  We found it half empty, our site overlooking the lake.  I bought a bundle of wood from the campground host and made a fire, and while we sat beside it, the night descended.  Lightning danced on the horizon: a storm was coming.  When our campfire at last died out and our wine glasses were empty, we turned in, drifting off to sleep as raindrops pattered against the roof of the van.

Though it had been a shaky start, the trip was off and running.

2-  RIFLE SHOTS

When I was a youngster, my grandparents would sometimes take me along on their visits back to Colorado.  They had moved to California during World War II, but would regularly come back to see family.  They always called Colorado “back home.”  My grandfather grew up near Rifle, and he had taken me fishing once on Rifle Creek when I was thirteen, far upstream, at the 7,000-foot elevation, where the creek rambles through a narrow canyon.  The tall, limestone walls are vertical to overhanging, shading the wooded canyon floor for most of the day.  Deep, clammy grottos pock the base of the cliffs, half-concealed behind trees.  My grandfather had told me that, in the wintertime, curtains of ice would hang from the cliffs and fill the cave-like grottos at the base.  Merchants would then cut the ice into blocks and store them in the caves.  In the spring and early summer, townsfolk would buy the blocks for their ice boxes.  This was back in the “old days,” before electric refrigeration came to town, which my grandfather remembered as a kid.

While the canyon did offer great fishing and bounteous blocks of ice on a warm summer day, I’m certain my grandfather—or anyone else for that matter—had never thought to gaze up at the overhanging cliffs and exclaim: “Look at those sick lines! Grab the bolt kit!”

I’m told that the first climbing routes at Rifle Mountain Park were established in the early 1990s.  They were steep, long, and audaciously hard.  Routes rated 5.13 or harder are commonplace—which means this is a world-class destination for the best of the best sport climbers.  This also meant that Terry and I wouldn’t be able to touch 95 percent of the routes, because there are scant few “easy” ones.  On the other hand, I wanted to be able to say that I’d climbed at Rifle, so…

The morning was overcast when we drove into the canyon.  A light rain had fallen during the night, making the dirt road a little sloppy in places.  The trees were laden with dew.  After talking to a couple of local climbers, we settled on the Ice Cave Wall, where the routes Acquitted (5.7), Spuds in Space (5.8) and Hot Potato (5.9) resided on steep but featured limestone.  Mind you, these were some of the easiest lines in the canyon.  About two hundred feet further up the creek was the radically overhanging Bruahau Wall, where Mike Graham’s 14c test piece, Girl Talk, resided.  Though the physical distance between Girl Talk and the routes we were planning to climb was only 60 meters, difficulty-wise, they were light years apart.

We dropped our packs at the far right side of the Ice Cave Wall; flaked out the rope; donned our gear.  I took the first lead, starting with Acquitted.  It seemed 5.7 as rated, but the limestone felt greasy and was visibly wet from the rain in spots, which didn’t bolster any confidence. (Trust the feet. Trust the feet.)  Nonetheless, I clipped all the bolts, and then Terry lowered me and she climbed it.  Next was Spuds in Space, which became our nemesis.  On lead, I floundered getting through the crux overhang—though it didn’t help that the key finger hold, a sweet little pocket, was full of water.  I tried it every which way but loose.  And each attempt ended in a fall, giving my belayer at lot of action and kept her on her toes.  Before long, I was wiped out.  Pumped.  And the left side of my jaw was throbbing now.  “Take it easy,” my dentist had warned.  Hmm.  Not at all wanting to defy doctor’s orders (I’m a rule-follower, ask anyone), I duly handed the sharp end over to my wife.  Yes, she is a sweetheart.  She tied in, chalked up, and waged a good fight on that overhang.  But after a couple of good falls at the crux, she, too, asked to be lowered.  What can I say?  We got spanked by a little 5.8 route—albeit a little wet 5.8 route.

The clouds had mostly dispersed by this time, and since we were climbing on a sunny wall, it was becoming quite warm.  Too warm.  And my jaw was hurting.  A beer sounded good.  We hiked back to the van and I popped open a Leinenkugel and that was the end of that.

It would’ve been nice to spend more time here—and we could have, if not for the delays to leave home—but we had a reserved campsite in Aspen that we hoped to reach before dark, and I also wanted to show Terry a few sites along the way.  So it was au revoir to Rifle.

We drove back into town and wheeled onto Interstate 70, heading east.  Acting as tour guide, I pointed to the ancient log house sitting about a half mile out in a pasture.  This is all that remains of the Wright Farm, which had been built by my great-grandfather in 1905, and where my grandfather had been raised.  Further along was the old coal-mining town of New Castle, where my grandmother had lived during her high school years.  We exited the freeway here and drove five miles up Garfield Creek, to the one-room schoolhouse (beautifully refurbished and now a residence) where my grandmother had attended elementary school from 1917 to 1923.  A mile or so further up the road was the site of the old Starbuck Ranch, where my grandmother’s father grew up.  My great-great-grandfather, Asa Starbuck, had homesteaded the property in 1890, raising cattle and horses for sale in Aspen, which was a mining boomtown in the day.  All that remains of the ranch today are a few dilapidated structures in a cottonwood grove.

While the material vestiges of my ancestors slowly erode along Garfield Creek, the anecdotes passed on from my grandmother, Ruth Starbuck-Wright, remain etched in my memory cells: Her and her two sisters riding one horse to school; her father riding home with a Christmas tree that he’d cut from the mountainside; the first family car (1923); the rodeos; the big flood.  Like snapshots, they are fragments of stories that still lurk in this valley.  And coming here always lures them into the light.

Backcountry Skiing - Part 2

Here are some more old ski photos.  If Part One could be titled “The RMRU Years,” then Part Two should be called “Fear & Loathing in the High Sierra.”  Bernie McIlvoy and I were as thick as thieves through most the Eighties, each spring romping up and down the Eastern Sierra in search of the finest backcountry lines it could offer.  Never a dull moment.  Just point the tips downhill and go.
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Aspendell, 1985:  Bernie initiates a tailgate party after a romp up to Lake Sabrina.  Spring skiing in the Eastern Sierra became our Holy Grail: Secluded alpine bowls; immaculate corn snow; and an abundance of sunshine.
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Lake Sabrina Road, 1985:  Hitchin’ a ride back down to the car—only there wasn’t anybody driving by, because the road was closed.  When Bernie and I had skinned up this road early that morning, most of it was sheathed in a few inches of snow.  What a difference one hot April day can make!  We skied all the way down from Piute Lake in shorts and T-shirts.
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Onion Valley Ranger Station, 1985:  Relaxing in front of the cabin stove, not a care in the world—at least none that I can remember.  Bernie and I had driven up Onion Valley Road until snow halted our progress.  We then hiked and skied the final three miles up to the ranger station, finding it locked up for the winter.  I figured we’d sleep on the porch—we never packed a tent—but Bernie said: “Hold up there, mate.”  Dropping his pack, he scaled up the side of the A-frame cabin to a second-story window (solid V0), and finding it unlocked, crawled inside.  We stayed here two nights, underscoring our trip with an avalanche-prone tour up to Kearsarge Pass.  And yes, we cleaned up our mess (note broom in background), leaving the cabin tidier than we found it.
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Kearsarge Pass, 1985:  Bernie makes the final traverse up to the 11,760-foot pass.  A hefty spring snowstorm, followed by a heat wave, had created perilous avalanche conditions, obliging us to avoid the best slopes.  But on the run back down, one particular bowl was so enticing that Bernie couldn’t resist dropping into it.  And as he was carving his second turn, Crrrack!!—a slab the size of a basketball court broke loose.  He was able to ride it down, to where it stopped a few hundred feet below.  But then later, we both triggered another one.  We couldn’t wait to be off those slopes, and shared a sigh of relief when we were back at the Onion Valley Ranger Station.  Not that this place was any safer: The very next winter, a big avalanche nailed the cabin, reducing it to a debris field of toothpicks and mortar.
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Mammoth Mountain, 1986:  After a few days in the backcountry, Bernie and I would sometimes stop in at Mammoth for some downhilling.  Bernie is a rare breed, the real deal: one part Hunter S. Thompson, one part Edward Abbey, a splash of Jack Sparrow…  From his point of view, life is one big road trip—and sometimes you don’t see the gist of the adventure until you’re coming ‘round the bend.
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Sawtooth Ridge, 1985:  A nice view up Horse Creek Canyon, with Twin Peak (12,323 ft.) in the distance.  Sawtooth Ridge is my personal Nirvana for backcountry skiing.  You can spend a week up here and not ski the same line twice.
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Sawtooth Ridge, 1985:  Taking a late-afternoon break in Horse Creek Canyon.  Bernie and I had planned to ski the East Col of Matterhorn Peak, but a late start and icy conditions got in our way.  Wisely we bailed.
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Travertine Hot Springs, 1985:  After two astounding days on Sawtooth Ridge, Bernie and I hiked out and grabbed dinner in Bridgeport, where our waitress, bless her, provided directions to a hot spring outside of town.  She was at first reluctant to divulge its location—it was primarily a local hangout back then—but Bernie promised to leave her a generous tip.  And so it was, after considerable time driving around in the dark on bumpy cattle roads, we came upon a hot spring—more of a mud pot, really.  Bernie started muttering about the big tip he’d left for the waitress, and to assuage his dour mood, he opened another beer and popped Stevie Ray Vaughn into the tape deck and turned up the volume.  About then, headlights came around the bend and pulled up next to our vehicle.  It was a Sheriff cruiser.  Crap.  The deputy rolled down his window; asked: “You fellas looking for the hot springs?”  Turned out, we’d passed it, two hundred yards back down the road.  We kindly thanked the deputy, relocated our camp, and spent the remainder of the evening in one of the finest hot springs along the Eastern Sierra.  Early the next morning, Bernie snapped the photo above.  Sure can’t beat the view.
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Twin Lakes Roadhead, 1987:  The trail to Sawtooth Ridge starts in the trees behind the bait shop, and ascends up the hillside into Horse Creek Canyon.  Matterhorn Peak (12,279 ft.) can be seen in the distance.
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Sawtooth Ridge, 1987:  Spring skiing in the High Sierra resembles a beach scene at times.  I wonder what ever happened to that kamikaze shirt?
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Sawtooth Ridge, 1987:  Bernie relaxes at the top of an un-named col.  The downhill fun will begin soon enough.
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Sawtooth Ridge, 1987:  Bernie skis down one of the upper bowls of Horse Creek Canyon.
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Tamarack Bench, San Jacinto Mountains, 1986:  I crawled out of my bag at dawn to snap this photo of our bivouac.  J.R. Muratet, Bernie and I slept under the stars that gorgeous night, during an RMRU winter training weekend.  Although I was no longer active with the team, I occasionally would join my old comrades on a training exercise here and there.
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Shangri La, San Jacinto Mountains, 1988:  My daughter Heather (nine years old here) poses next to an igloo that I help build the prior weekend during an RMRU winter recon.  The two of us had packed a lunch and took the Palm Springs Tram up for a day of x-country skiing.  Fun times.  Heather was as tough as nails, which was a good thing.  I had her out on downhill skis at age 6, and three hours later she did her first intermediate run (which ended in a face plant).  At age 13, she ticked off her first, bona fide black diamond at Mammoth.  One thing I didn’t do was raise wallflower girls.
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San Jacinto Peak, 1989:  Kevin Feldman takes in the view from near the summit.  It was one of those crystal-clear February days, when you can see all the way to Mexico (that's the Salton Sea in the distance).  Kev and I had done a lot of downhill skiing together, so I knew he’d take to alpine touring easy enough.  He borrowed spare gear from Bernie; then we set off for San Jac.
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San Gorgonio Wilderness, 1989:  Rick Sharbinin poses for a photo with Old Greyback.  After giving the San Gorgonio backcountry only cursory attention for years, it was suddenly on my radar screen.  In the distance is the righteous north face of San G, arguably the best ski run in SoCal.
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San Gorgonio Wilderness, 1989:  Rick makes quick work of the slopes in Little Draw.  We spent a long weekend skiing on corn snow in the high country bowls.  Rick, a magnificent skier, moved to Ketchum, Idaho soon after this trip, and has been a Sun Valley local ever since.  As for me: this trek into the San G wilderness opened my eyes to the incredible descents off its high peaks and ridges.  The potential lines were too many to count.  But I was determined to ski every one of them.
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TO BE CONTINUED…

Backcountry Skiing - Part 1

THERE WAS A TIME, many years ago, when I had this problem.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  I was a ski-a-holic.  I couldn’t get enough: from the first snow flurries around the Christmas holidays, to the sunny spring days, where carving turns on pristine Sierra corn was simply Nirvana.  And while downhilling at the resorts was all good fun and great practice, it was in the backcountry where I found total harmony.  Here, you had to earn your turns.

This is the first of four installments of some of my backcountry exploits in the local mountains and High Sierra.  I lugged around a 35mm Pentax SLR in those early days—no fancy mini-cameras back then—so it was difficult to impossible to snap any action shots, or be overtly spontaneous.  But I got by.  So pop into your bindings and enjoy the pics…

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1978:  Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit teammates, Ed Hill and Steve Jensen, survey the fresh powder in Tahquitz Meadow during a training weekend.  Due to the heavy, external-frame packs we had to carry, snowshoes were our usual mode of travel in the winter.  But on this trip, Ed brought along his Nordic skis to tool around after we dropped our packs and made camp.  I had never skied before, and watching him glide across the meadow and through the woods struck a chord—and he made it look so easy.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1978:  This is our camp from the same RMRU training weekend as the prior photo.  A storm had rolled in; snowed all night long.  During the course of the evening, my tent mate and mentor, Bernard McIlvoy, the Chasm Meister himself, affirmed that he was amped to purchase cross-country skis.  He and another teammate (Tom Aldridge?) had recently rented gear in Mammoth and skied out to the Hot Creek Hot Springs.  That trip pretty much sealed the deal.  We were going to take up skiing.

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 San Gorgonio Wilderness, 1979:  Skating across Dry Lake on my new Trak Mountain skis.  These skis were a little wider than the standard Nordic planks, sporting metal edges and a waxless base.  Before buying, I had frequently rented the traditional cross-country skis which required kicker waxes.  But having to constantly apply and remove those waxes—especially the messy red Klister—unanimously settled it for me: I was going with the new, waxless Traks.  A Nordic purist, I was not.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1979:  Bernie McIlvoy streaks through the forest near Tamarack Valley.  When it came time to buy ski gear, he went with fat, metal-edged Trucker alpine skis with Ramer bindings.  The bindings, which Paul Ramer introduced in the late ‘70s, revolutionized alpine ski touring.  The heel piece was free in the ascent mode, and with climbing skins, you were capable of attacking surprisingly steep slopes.  For the decent, you removed the skins; locked down the heel piece; and presto, you were downhill skiing.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1979:  J.R. Muratet and Bernie pause for a break on Black Mountian Road.  An Arctic storm had trundled through SoCal the night before, and in its wake, J.R., Bernie, Pete Carlson and I skied the eight miles up to the summit of Black Mountian.

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Pear Lake Ranger Station, Sierra Nevada, 1979:  Bernie (hanging from the roof) and I skinned six miles into this backcountry ranger station in Sequoia National Park for some springtime skiing.  I think we paid $7 per person per night ($38 now).  Accommodations included bunk beds; a full galley with white gas stoves; a dozen old National Geographics; a Playboy magazine; a half-full (but soon empty) bottle of Jack Daniels; and a potbelly stove with a chord of wood to keep the place cozy.  It was a super deal, and we had the whole place to ourselves.

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Tablelands, Sierra Nevada, 1979:  This 11,000-foot plateau overlooking the Great Western Divide is readily accessible from Pear Lake Ranger Station.  The Tablelands is also part of the spectacular Sierra High Route, a 50-mile ski tour that begins in Independence on the east side of the range, and ends in Sequoia National Park on the west side.  The first traverse of the entire route was done in the mid ‘70s by backcountry ski virtuoso Dave Beck (whom I would run into on the High Route many years later).  It is still the most coveted trans-Sierra passage in the range.

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Tablelands, Sierra Nevada, 1979:  Bernie mounts up for another exhilarating run down to Pear Lake Ranger Station.  His alpine touring gear had the advantage on the steeps, while my lighter Nordic setup excelled on the flatter terrain.  Everything is a trade-off.

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Sunrise at Anvil Camp, Sierra Nevada, 1980:  At an elevation of 10,500 feet, this is the traditional first-night camp of the Sierra High Route.  We got this far before increasingly foul weather beat us back.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981:  RMRU teammate, Tony Loro, scans the terrain as we are airlifted into the high country after a winter storm.  When three backcountry skiers failed to return home Sunday night, their wives called the Sherriff and we were called in.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981:  Don Landells hovers near the summit of Jean Peak, assessing a location to drop off a search team.  Without a doubt, Don was one of the best chopper pilots in the business, constantly amazing us on the improbable locations where he could light.  It was Don who airlifted most of the men and material up into Chino Canyon for the construction of the Palm Springs Tramway (though the magnitude of this aerial feat is lost unless you’ve taken the Tram, and seen firsthand the precipitous locations of the tower landing pads).  Tragically, he was killed in 1986 when his helicopter crashed during a bighorn sheep tagging assignment for the Department of Fish & Game.

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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981:  New deployment tactics took shape as more team members took up backcountry skiing.  With a helicopter, we could drop off two-man teams on peaks and high ridges, where they could ski down through a search zone faster than a team on snowshoes.  Soon after my teammate, Jim Garvey, snapped this photo of me, we came upon the snowshoe tracks of some lost (and clueless) backpackers, and then followed them down to their bivouac at Willow Creek Crossing.  This was also the winter where I made the switch from Nordic to alpine touring gear.
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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982:  J.R. Muratet skins up a slope on Day 1 of our trip.  We gave ourselves six days to cover the 60-mile passage from Mammoth Lakes to Yosemite Valley.

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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982:  J.R. packs up for another day on the trail.  The first day of the trip had started out bright and sunny, though clouds rolled in as the day progressed.  We woke up to snow flurries on the second day, and it continued to dump, night and day, for the remainder of the trip.  This slowed our progress significantly—and with all that fresh powder stacking up on the slopes, the avalanche potential became more than we bargained for.  We turned around and headed back to Mammoth on the morning of Day 4, rather than continue over Donohue Pass and down the avalanche-prone Lyell Canyon to Tuolumne Meadows.
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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982:  We had blizzard conditions for most of the 3-day retreat back to Mammoth.  While skiing along the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, it ceased snowing long enough to snap this photo.  Upon reaching Mammoth, bone tired and nearly depleted of food and fuel, we discovered that the gigantic storm system that had pounded us for days had been one for the record books. (This same storm dumped 15 feet of snow at Donner Summit.)
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San Jacinto Peak, 1983:  Bernie basks in winter sunshine at the summit hut.  We would ski the peak from the Palm Springs Tram mountain station several times each year, snow conditions permitting.  As for Bernie, the consummate renegade, nobody at the time was ticking off as many ski descents as he was.  On one search mission around 1983-84, Don Landells dropped him off right on the summit at sundown.  Then, after checking the hut and immediate area for signs of the missing party, he skied back down to Long Valley Ranger Station under a full moon, on a foot of fresh powder.  Who could ask for more?
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To be continued...