A Day Slightly More Exciting Than Necessary

Yesterday (Tuesday) Wiley and I headed up to the Troublesome Valley area, adjacent to the Never Summer Wilderness, which gives me the opportunity to use two awesome placenames in one sentence.



We drove there because I was determined to check another summit off my to-do list: Elk Mountain, 11,332 feet above sea level.



I followed the driving directions in my guide to hiking in the area, which hasn't let me down. Until Tuesday.



After turning off the paved county road onto a recreational road the book described as "a good dirt road," I had to check how recently the book was published (2006). It took me more than an hour to go ten miles over rock, mud, puddles of unknown depth, more rock, and some stretches of rock between the rock. I had to get out several times to move rocks (and one fallen tree) that were simply beyond the abilities of my already-straining Focus.



Oh, and did I mention the road was a steady, steep rise with several hairpin turns?



I kept arguing with myself to turn around, no no, it will get better around the next turn, turn back, etc. I reached a point where it was simply too narrow, with a dropoff to one side, to turn around safely, so I forged ahead.



It was then that the engine light lit up the dashboard.



I was hoping it was just my car's recurring problem of "running too lean." The engine light has come on a few times in the last two years, and three different mechanics in three different states ran diagnostics and reported the engine was running too lean, which essentially meant I was getting better gas mileage than I should, or at least that's how they explained it. I did go almost 200 miles on five gallons of gas the day before.



Anyway, I was also aware that, at nearly nine years old with 105,000 miles on it, my car is reaching that age where Bad Things Happen.



I decided to press on, since cell phone reception, should I need a tow, would be better higher up instead of on the side of a mountain.



14.7 miles later, I got to the turn-off for a logging road described by my guide as, you guessed it, "a good dirt road." Perhaps it had been, in about 1984, but I doubted any vehicle had been on it since the Reagan administration. It was overgrown and deeply rutted, so I decided to park my car and continue the 1.5 miles to the trailhead on foot.



On the walk uphill along the alleged "good dirt road," it was still morning so we were in shade. But not for long. And once out of the trees and up through a steep meadow to timberline, there was nowhere for us to hide from an unexpectedly strong sun in a cloudless sky.



Wiley started breathing really heavily and licking his lips, so I gave him water. Then I gave him some more. I decided, as the creature that was physiologically younger and did not have a kidney problem, I could handle being dehydrated but I didn't want to risk him dying on me on the trail. So I wound up giving him all the water I'd brought, two quarts parsed out over what would be a six mile hike, most of it in the sun.



On the way up, we discovered, I guess, why it's called Elk Mountain:





The hike from the trailhead to the summit has just about a 800 foot elevation gain (not counting probably another 600 feet along the logging road we walked) but it's all in a short, steep climb at the beginning.



We were just shy of timberline in the meadow (trees on either side of it but nowhere near us for shade) when I really thought I should turn back. Of course, you know me, I pressed on, Wiley doggedly following behind and stopping to lay down now and then.



The summit at last!! Here's the official marker:

And here is one of my all-time favorite photos of AdventureDog, looking quite adventurous. I always tell him I buy him IAMS Active Maturity dog food for "his mature yet active lifestyle" and I think this photo is proof that the ground-up baby seals or whatever they put in that purple bag works.

Not bad for a dog who will be 14 in February, eh? Behind him in the distance are the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here's another shot from the summit, looking north toward the Never Summer Range:

According to my guidebook, which was losing credibility with me by the minute, from the summit we were to follow the ridgeline down into forest, past a plaque dedicated to a 19th century rancher/hunter captured (and released) by the local Utes.

Uhm, ok. Down along the ridgeline we went, into the forest. No plaque. No trail. The guide had warned "the trail appears and disappears" but there was nothing. I don't fancy myself some awesome tracker, but I have followed trails all over the world, and let me tell you, there was nothing to follow.

As an aside, I think the terrible road conditions and the disappeared trail are largely because Elk Mountain is not one of the popular peaks, and it's probably gotten neglected by a budget-strapped National Parks Service, what with RoMo (Rocky Mountain National Park) and other star attractions so close and vying for the same limited funds.

Of course, its very obscurity was one of the things that attracted me to Elk Mountain.

Finally, just as I was considering going back up to the summit and retracing my steps back down through the meadow (to be honest, I was thinking of just rolling down the hill...), I saw an overgrown trail on the far side of a tangle of fallen trees. A little further on, I saw two bright blue slashes of paint on trees framing the trail.

Eventually, the trail opened up to this... look! another tertiary igneous dike! It's kinda hard to see in the photo, but it's there, trust me (the rocks lining the draw have fallen down from it). The trail took us along its top for a while before we arrived at a second meadow.

Here, my guidebook instructed me to walk 50 paces along the ridge, then turn right and go across the meadow, back into the trees where I'd see the trail, follow it for some ways and eventually pick up an old logging road back to the trailhead.

I walked the 50 paces, turned and headed for the trees. I saw blue slashes and the overgrown trail ahead of me, but I stopped.

And this is where it gets weird. I just had a really bad feeling about the trail. Like it was not right, and I shouldn't follow the blue slashes or my guidebook. I can't explain it, but I was suddenly very creeped out (medical diagnosis: dehydration was making me all nutty in the head again).

I've had similar experiences when hiking and I always listen to my gut, so I decided instead to make a sharp turn into another clearing almost in the opposite direction of where the blue slashes were leading me. I'm actually really good at landnav on an instinctual level that I can't explain, other than being able to "smell" the right direction. It's weird, I know, and interestingly, it doesn't work in the Southern Hemisphere, where I am hopelessly dependent on my compass. But here and now, I followed my nose.

After about a hundred paces through the brush, I found ruts in the ground and realized I was on another logging road. I followed it for a little over a mile, watching to see if it intersected with any other roads or trails. It didn't. Then, ahead of me, I saw the trailhead gate where I'd started.

That's what I don't understand. I ended up where I was supposed to be, but only by walking in the opposite direction advised by both my guidebook and the mysterious blue slashes that I thought marked the trail. Part of me figures the marks were randomly left behind by loggers and the trail was so overgrown in general that I just didn't see my way and the guidebook's way were one and the same.

But another part of me wonders where the hell I would have wound up if I'd followed those blue slash marks...

In any case, Wiley and I made it back safely to the car and I opted for the "alternate" driving directions in my guidebook, heading west instead of returning over the rocky road. The other road took me about 30 miles out of my way, but it was used by ranchers and was, by every measure, "a good dirt road."

After drinking copious amounts of water, we're both fine. The engine light is still on, but my car has not exploded. And I have checked off another summit on my to-do list.