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| PAGOSA PAST: Father-Daughter Backpacking, Part Two |
| Jerry Driesens | 3/24/09 |
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Read Part One
We weren’t due for any thunder showers for the next couple days, so Molly and I trekked the last mile or so up over 12,100’ before the trail dropped down a couple hundred vertical feet to the lake. We set up our little backpack tent and ate our lunch. We were able to view several bighorn sheep grazing on the side of Hossick Peak; I was glad I had brought a pair of binoculars.
We had the lake all to ourselves. The cutthroats up there are notoriously fickle (if you’ll recall my Hossick Lake story). They either bite like crazy or not at all. Thankfully we both caught and released many on our copper Z-Rays and I managed a few on my fly-rod as well. I always raved at the wonderful dark orange salmon-colored meat that many of the alpine lakes produced because of the scuds, often referred to as fresh water shrimp, which contain carotenoids that not only produce that orange color but such a succulent rich salmon-like flavor. ( A trout is a salmonoid).
 The girls picked up on this raving and my becoming, over the years, a trout and salmon gourmet/connoisseur (snob). Only orange-meated trout and only wild salmon and never, never any color-added farm raised salmon. (One time when we had over-night guests staying with us at our home on Lake Pagosa, they requested that I grill the trout that we had caught that day off the dock and from the boat. I usually wrap them in aluminum foil, add maybe a little butter, some salt and pepper and some lemon-pepper and kind of bake/broil them. The trout stocked in Lake Pagosa used to turn kind of pinkish-orange (when there were lots of snails in the lake), after several weeks.
The father of our city guest family asked our daughters if they liked eating elk meat and trout that we harvested ourselves, like their Dad obviously did. They all kind of shrugged like it was no big deal and that they were okay with it. But Molly piped up and said, “ I only really like the orange-meated trout, myself.” She then shyly glanced over at me as I beamed with pride.) We really enjoyed our orange-meated cutthroats that night about dark-thirty when we pulled the aluminum foil packages out of the coals made from firewood I had carried from the last scrawny little stunted spruce grove before the lake. Firewood is close to non-existent at those lakes above timberline. I’m sure I embellished it a bit (me?) when I proclaimed to her that nobody anywhere probably ever had any better or fresher trout than these from these pristine waters at the top of the continental divide! (Well, tell me where they would be any better?)
We heard a bull elk bugle down below us until we feel asleep in our little backpacker tent at 12,000’ elevation. It was right before Labor Day weekend and there was heavy frost on the ground when we awoke (about the only time there isn’t frost is during the late summer monsoon, but then there’s too much danger of lightning to camp exposed up there above timberline).
I knew a shortcut out of there ( a bit of a sporty route, if you will) that I had learned about when I once went over to the edge of the cliffs, through which the lake spilled down, one evening to see if any elk were in the last meadow above timberline, just below the cliffs. I had watched a huge bull elk with his harem of nearly 20 cows the very first night I spent up there and usually went for a look just before dusk.
One evening 3 elk and I surprised each other when they were coming up a narrow game trail that they could squeeze onto between the cliffs going down and the steep part of Hossick Peak that rose up just behind the lake. I first thought I had them cornered and trapped and that they would have to come right by me to get back to the lake or the peak from where I figured they had to have come. But they turned tail and slipped down to that meadow via a narrow precarious looking slot. So, I figured that if elk could travel that way, so could a human, and thereafter often used it as a short-cut hiking in and out of Hossick Lake.
It was a very steep shortcut , however, especially carrying a full backpack, but it saved at least a mile and even a mile and a half - depending on how much bushwacking one could handle before rejoining the trail on the opposite side of Hossick Creek. I had done many day hikes to Hossick alone and had shocked some fast horsemen who had passed me on the trail, but then found me fishing at the lake when they arrived. When quizzed, I told them I knew a shortcut that I didn’t believe a man on a horse could make it on. I have found that I could follow an elk anywhere it went, although in some cases I almost wished I hadn’t tried. You don’t want to make that mistaken assumption with bighorn sheep. While I tend to think I can follow them uphill on all fours, if necessary, carrying nothing more than a small daypack; going down, sometimes, they will make huge leaps over steep faces that for a human would be far too treacherous or deadly. Even with the horseback ride up that had saved so much of our energy, I decided to hike out the shortcut with nine-year-old Molly to save her a mile and a half of what is still quite steep even on the trail itself.
We also didn’t have to go up to Poison Park, as David Cook, who had packed in the camp for Mr. Lindner, let us park at the ranch where his horses were. Nevertheless, Molly was one tuckered-out little girl when we arrived back at the car. She never asked to go back to Hossick, but we’d had one heck of an adventure. To her, the scariest part was riding the horse.
One other trip with Molly that gave me more insight into the determination and mental toughness of my shy one, was a trip to Crater Lake at first ice-out one early June. We couldn’t even drive all the way to the head of Trail #707 on the road from near Summitville to Platoro Reservoir because of snow still on the road. I four-wheeled through a couple of snow drifts that still covered the road, made Molly get out and walk around on one where there was enough of a drop off that the Suburban might roll, if for any reason I went off the road. ( I really didn’t think it was that dangerous, but you’ll enjoy Molly’s quote later.) We finally had to stop about a mile from the trailhead and struck out toward the trail on a diagonal with me breaking tracks and sinking to my crotch. Molly followed, somehow.
The problem was after we joined the trail, once we dropped down into the timbered areas of the San Juan National Forest the trail was still covered in deep snow until we got out of the deep shade. Somehow she managed to follow Dad without complaining. Finally, when we got to where I was quite certain there would be no more snow to deal with, I stopped to get out her extra pair of tennis shoes and a pair of dry socks. I told her we could now keep our feet dry and warm until we had to hike back out the next day. I asked her if she was okay and told her how amazed I was that she kept wanting to press on forward with me through all that snow. I had asked her a few times if she wanted us to turn back and it was always, “It’s okay, I’m alright.” But now she broke down and cried.
We put on dry jeans at the campsite and I built a big fire to dry everything else out. Three-fourths of the lake was still frozen, but enough open water to catch our supper. I’ll let her quote later finish this episode.
(But I thought of this particular adventure when the Biola University volleyball coach years later told me that the reason they decided against having Molly play for them was not that she didn’t have the skills and ability and great un-realized potential, but that he and the team captain didn’t believe she possessed the necessary mental toughness to play in the Golden State Athletic Conference — that it would be too intense for her. She ended up playing for California Baptist University, one of Biola’s conference rivals. How delighted I was her freshman year when she called the night CBU defeated Biola in the Final Four -West Coast Regional championships in Biola’s gym. Biola had been seeded 1st and CBU 4th going into the tournament — allowing Biola to host it. Her coach came on the phone and told me that Molly had played the game of her life and blocked nearly all of Biola’s captain’s kill attempts. But those city slickers had never been to Crater Lake, nor hiked through waist-deep snow to get there.)
Read Part Three... |
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