Trip Report
Snow in The Mountains
September 17th – September 19th, 2002
by Dale Barnard
Knowing that the high-mountain weather in September could take a turn for the worse, I chose to risk climbing some peaks anyway. Since I would be hiking alone, I made a safety-oriented plan. Familiarity seemed nice, so I set off toward Buena Vista, Colorado, a small town at the base of the fantastic Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. My first hike could begin first thing in the morning and would not require any overnight gear.
I arrived at the Denny Creek trail head around 10pm. Paying for a campground seemed unnecessary, so I cleared half of the loft in the back of my truck and stretched out for a short night's sleep. I knew from a past hike that Mount Yale, a 14er, loomed only a day-hike above me. The previous summer, I attempted to climb it with Aaron Miller, a Texas friend now living in Boulder. Lacking time to acclimate, and facing an imminent thunderstorm, we turned back at 13,000 feet. We hiked the next day to a high camp near some other 14ers, which gave us enough time for acclimation, and we ended up climbing two of them in a day. This trip, I had acclimated by doing several medium-elevation hikes before arriving, and the only thing that could thwart my attempt would be dangerous weather. As I prepared my nest in the back of my truck, a light drizzle commenced.
I slept little that night because the wind shook the truck, the rain pattered on the fiberglass shell, and I felt convinced that a critter of some sort had gotten into the back of the truck below the loft and noisily rustled through plastic bags. Also, I noticed some snow flakes melting against the windows. No snow had yet fallen this season, so why did it have to start the night before I planned to climb a big peak? The answer could be that the Great Weather Woogie in the Sky didn't like my plan, but more likely, it's “just cuz.” I slept only a couple of hours and welcomed the morning sunlight, albeit through dense clouds. I had no chance of climbing high that day, and warm enough days to melt the snow might not come until spring.
By the time I reached Buena Vista twenty minutes later, the sun had found holes in the clouds through which to brighten my day. I could see glimpses of the white “foothill” mountains that stood in front of the big peaks. I knew I needed a new plan. The San Luis Valley, which lay to the south over Poncha Pass, qualified as a high desert. Perhaps the bordering Sangre de Cristo mountains would have escaped the storm without snow.
I stopped at the library in Buena Vista to copy pages from my 14er and 13er books and to email my new itinerary to my mother, who was responsible for calling search-and-rescue if I did not turn up at my designated time. A couple hours later, I found myself parked at the new trail head at 9,000 feet, only a thousand feet below the cloud ceiling. I could not get a glimpse of the mountains above them, so I did not know if they had snow on them yet. Whether they did or not, this time I committed to at least getting some backpacking in. These mountains required a 7.4-mile hike to a base camp. My thermometer read 55 degrees F at 3:30 in the afternoon. I organized my pack, putting in four days worth of food and added a fleece jacket and a second thermal top.
As the trail climbed closer to the cloud ceiling, I had fantastic photographic opportunities. The aspens had begun to change and the blanket of clouds above them added to the fall scene. I snapped some tripod pictures as I went, and before long I had fallen into my much-sought-after hiking trance. I found myself making notes about a fictional story I intended to write, thinking about how to best design portable solar-electric systems, and pondering the various aspects of climbing peaks. After perhaps three miles, I entered the clouds, which reduced the visibility to about two hundred meters. I took more photos, taking advantage of the excellent indirect sun lighting.
The trail climbed steeply, and by about six miles, I had reached 11,000 feet. As I neared the top of some steep switchbacks, I heard a very unwelcome sound: thunder. The trail leveled out and I immediately found an already-impacted tent site. By now, a few large balls of sleet had started to bounce out of the sky. I grabbed the tent from my pack and immediately began setting it up. I had borrowed the tent, but it seemed easy enough to set up. By the time I had the tent up sans rain fly, the sleet had begun to pour from the sky in force. I struggled with the rain fly, not able to figure out why it didn't seem to fit. Finally, I figured it out and put my pack and myself inside it. The sleet had begun to accumulate, so before I took my boots off, I dug the line for my bear bag out of my food bag and set out to find a place to hang it in the waning sunlight. I left the food back in the vestibule because I knew I needed to snarf down enough food to keep me warm through the night.
By the time I returned to the tent five minutes later, the sleet had reached an inch deep. I jumped inside the tent, trying to keep my stuff as dry as possible, and set about trying to eat. I would have preferred to lay down and enjoy the storm, but I did not have that luxury; I needed to hang the food bag before the sun went down or the storm got worse. I stuffed down some jerky, a granola bar, some peanuts, and dried fruit. Within 30 minutes of setting up the tent, the sleet had accumulated to four inches and the lightning had come much closer, now crashing near enough to make me nervous. I had set the tent in the trees in a valley, which made sense according to statistics, but given a choice, I would have asked the storm to leave me in peace.
After I hung the bear bag, which turned out to be close enough to the ground to be more of a bear toy than a bear obstacle, I settled into the sleeping bag to get warm. The heat generated by my uphill hiking had ceased to give me that uncanny feeling of warmth, the warmth that had had me hiking in a t-shirt with the temperature at 40 degrees F.
I did not set out to be unrealistically optimistic in my planning, but I had still not given up on climbing peaks. I wrote in my journal that perhaps I would at least day-hike to Willow Lake, probably only a mile further up the trail, even if I couldn't climb peaks due to snow. A little sleet would make for great pictures. I changed to fresh sleeping socks, a trick my friend Ben Wright taught me, to keep my feet warm, left my rain pants on over my thermal bottoms, and climbed into the silk mummy liner and then into the mummy bag. I closed it around my head, doing my best to suffer through the confinement of a narrow bag with a t-shirt, thick thermal top, and a thick fleece jacket on. I even managed to read chapter one from Larry McMurtry's “The Last Picture Show,” although the furthest I could hold the book from my eyes was perhaps four inches. I soon grew weary of holding a book while so confined and turned off my red LED headlamp. I looked at my watch, disappointed to learn that it was only 8pm. Too early for sleep. What else could I do?
I lay there awake through most of the night. The sleet had stopped and an uncanny quiet had set in. I could hear occasional gusts of wind start somewhere far away, taking perhaps five or ten seconds to finally bat against the tent. I wiggled my toes for two full minutes, which felt like an eternity, in an effort to warm them. Eventually, with some supplementary ankle rotations, I started to feel blood moving through my heels, soon to reach my toes. I slept perhaps three hours during the night, which, by my standards, constituted an above-average night's sleep in the high country. For the second night in a row, I looked forward to the morning light so I could get up. After thirteen contiguous hours in the tent, I could stand it no longer. It was 7:30am, time to make a move. I checked the thermometer in the the tent: 35 degrees F. At least my water bottles weren't frozen. I put on my gloves and unzipped the tent door that leads to the vestibule. The vestibule had disappeared, apparently squashed by the weight of some snow. My boots seemed to be the only support posts for it. Thankfully, snow had not entered my boots, so I laced them up and unzipped the outside door.
Eight inches of fresh snow greeted me. That explained the eerie quiet of the night: the snow had created an insulating blanket over the tent. I knew I needed to act fast in order to stay warm. Although the sky was blue, it would be two hours before the first direct sunlight could hit me on the western side of the mountains. I immediately gave up any hope of a day-hike further up the valley; I needed to focus on descending quickly in order to stay warm. Although I had a lot of layers with me, I lacked proper snow-hiking gear. My boots lacked insulation, my gloves gave little warmth, and I had no gators to keep snow out of my boots. I retrieved the bear bag, glad to see that my boots only sank four inches into the moist snow. I took a quick picture of the tent, anxious to put my gloves back on, and set about taking down the tent. My hands quickly lost their warmth as I brushed snow off the tent and then rolled it up.
Fifteen minutes later, I set off down the trail, my toes already feeling cold. I immediately faced a creek crossing. My hiking poles helped stabilize me as I side-stepped across a log. If I had slipped and immersed a boot, I'm not sure what I would have done. I realized that I had little margin for error on such a cold morning. The trail proved easy enough to follow, and I made fairly good progress. Ocassionally, a leg would sink almost to my knee in a snowdrift, but mostly I managed to keep the snow out of my boots. I pulled my nylon rain pants down a little in an effort to keep them over my boots. This made it feel a bit like waddling with the crotch of the pants now too low.
My feet grew colder as I walked, although my hands had begun to recover. I had plenty of layers around my core, and I resisted the urge to unzip my jacket, fearing that my body would further restrict blood flow to my feet. After an hour or more of hiking, crossing two more creeks, I felt the first direct ray of sunlight on me. Instantly, the situation changed. My feet quickly warmed up to normal and my attention turned to my eyes. I had neglected to bring sunglasses and soon grew tired of squinting. Mostly for fun, I decided make Inuit glasses. I tore a page from my notepad and duct taped it over my glasses. Then, I took my pocket knife and cut tiny slits in the paper. It worked! I no longer had to squint. I could barely see the trail, though, but I was having fun.
The sun stayed with me for perhaps thirty minutes before some dark clouds rolled up from the San Luis Valley and blocked it again. As I descended further, the snow accumulation had become only four inches, and it appeared to be melting. Snow falling from the trees occasionally went down my neck, but my warmth from exertion melted it instantly. Soon, breaks in the clouds above me gave me my first view of where I had camped. Above my camp loomed the white peaks I had so much wanted to climb. At the higher elevations, the snow might not melt until spring. I took several pictures, repeating one nice shot from the previous evening, this time seeing something very different through the lens.
Soon, I descended below snow line entirely. I was ready to strip down to shorts and a t-shirt, although the thermometer still read 35 degrees. I reached the truck at 10:30, having thoroughly enjoyed the last part of the hike. Through holes in the clouds, I could still see teases of the high peaks. Had the weather been more favorable, I could have climbed two of them that day.
During my summer hikes in the high mountains, I often ponder what the worst-case scenario might be in case of trouble. Could I live through a night at 12,000 feet without a tent and sleeping bag? Probably. What if it were raining? Probably. Certainly, I would be hypothermic, but at least I wouldn't be dead. I could not say the same of the September conditions. The weather had caught me without much of a backup plan. I had prepared for the possibility of snow, and had been challenged by it, but at the same time, I knew the margin of error had been almost eliminated entirely. What if my borrowed tent had collapsed under the weight of the snow? What if it had been a little warmer and the snow against the side of the tent had melted and made me wet? What if I had slipped while crossing a stream and doused a boot? My only course of action would be to descend as quickly as possible. If any of those things had happened, I would have been fine, but a lot more miserable. If something had gone wrong in the middle of the night, I might have had frost bite by the time I descended to safety under the light of a small headlight. I find myself now thinking about getting some mountaineering training. Fall hiking in Colorado could easily inspire many more gear purchases. That could be painful. However, as an introduction to snow hiking, I loved every minute of this hike, even if I didn't get to climb any big peaks. At least I got to test the limits of my gear.
Addendum:
Two days after this hike, I returned to the wilderness. The mountains closer to Pagosa Springs had received only a dusting of snow, thus offering favorable hiking conditions. This time, I climbed Pagosa Peak, which looms as the most prominent peak from the town of Pagosa Springs. I still had an itch to stand on top of the world. Although Pagosa Peak is a mere 12,620 feet at the summit, far short of a 14er, I found the views exhilarating. There was not a cloud in the whole sky. It took three hard hours of climbing to reach the summit from the trailhead. At the top, I met a young couple from Pagosa Springs who had come up the easy way. Huh? You mean I took the hard way? It turns out that they hiked only about two miles to my five and climbed only 1,500 or 2,000 vertical feet to my 4,000. The climb kicked my rear. I nearly pulled a lung sucking the thin, dry air so energetically. After ten miles, including 4,000 vertical feet up and another 4,000 down, I felt exhausted and satisfied. This peak tested me more than I had expected and did a pretty good job of making up for not climbing any 14ers or high 13ers this year. I'm glad I took the hard way up. Nothing kills a good adventure faster than stopping to ask directions.
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