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Adventures of the Spirit Eagle - Colorado CDT

  by Jim & Ginny Owen

August 10 - Campsite at Pinos River ford - 13.5+ - total 126.0

Ginny: Today was a fairly frustrating day. It rained all night. We slept late, but finally decided that the rain wasn’t going to stop, so we might as well get up and deal with it. We cooked and pumped water from inside the tent (stove outside). Finally the moment of truth - putting on the soaked clothes and rain gear and going outside. BRRRRR!!! It rained steadily until noon. After slowly crossing a big snowfield, we sat under the Window (a rock formation near the Rio Grande Pyramid) and ate some gorp as we watched the clouds flow by - above us, below us, and all around us. Nothing like walking the Divide during a storm. Although the only thunder we heard was far away, it is still scary to be above treeline like that when it is stormy. It finally stopped raining as we descended into the trees about 2:00. There we ran into a group of Scouts from Wisconsin on an 80-mile trip along the Divide. They were just getting ready to break camp as we left after a nice chat. Because of the long stretch above treeline, the leaders didn’t want to take the kids up during the storm. And they didn’t even know about the snow crossings! (We had one short steep nasty one, and one broad but fairly easy one.)

Then we reached Weminuche Pass - an innocuous looking place, but deadly. It’s a big meadow about a mile wide and several miles long. Posts led us halfway across the meadow, then disappeared. The meadow became a bog, about a foot deep in water. We crossed several streams, then reached one whose bottom, as far as we could tell, was at least four feet deep. You couldn’t see it, as it was muddy and surrounded by heavy grass, but we tested several areas with our ski poles, and they all disappeared into the murk. Jim finally noted a dammed area, and we went way around to cross below the dam. We looked ahead for the trail but could see no posts. It was raining again. We did see some people disappear into the forest ahead. So after crossing a couple more streams, we reached the woods, but could find no trail, no posts. We wandered up and down looking for where the trail entered the woods. There were several campsites and small trails, but nothing major. Unfortunately, we concentrated on the area where we had seen the people disappear. The real trail was half a mile in the other direction. We finally found it using a little logic and really looking at the maps, but crossing the meadow and looking for the trail cost us at least one and a half hours. We needed that time to dry things out. We climbed up along a pretty stream in the woods to a meadow where we are belatedly attempting to dry out our gear from last night. It is 7:30 and the sun isn’t very warm, but it is better than getting into a soaking wet tent. At least the sun is out. It stopped raining about 5:00. Dinner is finally ready - so enough already.

Jim: Took some pictures of the Window and the Rio Grande Pyramid, but I don’t know how they’ll turn out cause it was overcast and foggy. The Pyramid was generating its own weather system - makes it hard to get good pictures that way. The worst - or at least the scariest part of the day was crossing the snowpack before we got to the Window. The slope was at least 45· with a 400 ft drop and a couple feet of snow pack directly across the trail. We had no rope, no crampons, no ice axes - and there was no way to get around it by going down. So we went up - onto the rocks on an extremely steep and slippery slope. This was NOT a "fun" thing to do - the potential for injury was much too great for comfort. Once we got past the snowpack, the rest of the day was a piece of cake - except for Weminuche Pass which turned out to be a massive bog. And once again, the directions in both guidebooks sucked swampwater. Only a good map, a lot of luck, a lot of dry weather and an Army Engineer Bridge Company would make this an easy crossing of what looks to be an innocuous meadow.

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© Copyright 1997 Jim & Ginny Owen