The Old Barn

My family and I recently spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This one time small ranching community has been transformed into a world renowned ski resort just in the span of my lifetime. One of the symbols of Steamboat is a barn located near the base of the ski hill. It belonged to the Moore family when they ran their ranching operation before Ski Town USA was born. This old barn evokes a lot of feelings when I look at it.

When you live back east and see this picture of what looks like the old west with a rustic barn covered in snow and a ski resort in the background, it makes you want to catch the next plane to Denver and strap on the boards. It evokes horses galloping in snow up to their chests with cowboys in hot pursuit. It feels western. The barn is a relic of times gone by. It almost appears to be housing the past as it stubbornly pushes back at the progress of man.

Besides this barn, Steamboat is also known for its Champaign powder snow. The term Champaign powder comes from an observation a skier once made while skiing in deep powder at Steamboat. He said the feather light snow tickled your nose the way Champaign bubbles do and the name stuck. A new marketing campaign for tourism was born.

On our visit, I got to experience some Champaign powder up on Rabbit Ears Pass just east of Steamboat Springs. I went snowshoeing at a place called the West Summit Trail. This trail sits on the west side of the pass at about 9,400 feet. I chose the west side of the pass because it is designated for cross country skiing and snow shoeing only. The east side of the pass is open to snow mobiles as well.

The snow on the pass was already two and a half feet deep. It was so light that it felt like you were walking on pillows when you went off the packed down trail. You didn’t realize how deep the snow really was until you took your snowshoes off and tried to walk around in it. You instantly sank like a stone up to your waist. I took a break on top of a ridge and had a Gatorade seated in the sink hole I created when I took off my snow shoes.

The snow on the ski hill at Steamboat was not as nice. With only roughly twenty percent of the runs open and a base of twenty-one inches or so, the hill got shredded pretty fast when we skied exposing a slick, packed down surface that was challenging. I think they call it icy back east. In any event, the locals didn’t seem to mind and went flying by us with ease. Well, a couple of us anyway. Our daughter flew down the hill with reckless abandon. My wife and I were a little more conservative and fought the hill most of the day. It still felt invigorating though as you tried to keep from sliding off the mountain.

And speaking of sliding off the mountain, the old barn hangs on and remains like a dinosaur from a prehistoric land. Developers have tried to get rid of it. There are condos across the street from it. But the old girl still stands. Her doors are closed to the outside world. Inside, I’ll bet the old west still exists. You can probably here cowboys and horses and all kinds of things western if you were to put your ear to the outside of the barn. At least I like to think so.

Bon Hiver Fort Collins

One of my favorite TV series from the 1990’s was a show called Northern Exposure. The show was set in the mythical town of Cicely, Alaska. The main character was Joel Fleishman, a young doctor from New York who comes to Cicely to pay back the cost of his medical school paid for by the state of Alaska by serving as the town doctor. The show explores what life in Alaska is like compared to what Joel was accustomed to back in New York.

As you might expect, the season of winter and its challenges are a part of the show. Joel’s female interest on the show is a bush pilot named Maggie O’Connell. Maggie helps Joel appreciate his new home by marveling at the natural world. One episode the two of them go for a walk at dusk and it begins to snow. Maggie turns to Joel and says “bon hiver Fleishman” and Joel says back “bon hiver O’Connell”. The scene fades with the falling snow and the onset of night.

This scene reminds me of how it felt to be excited at the prospect of snow as a kid back in Illinois. However, snow before Thanksgiving was almost unheard of and a white Christmas was extremely rare. Believe it or not, it rained more times than not back then. I think what was so appealing about the s word was the fun that could be had in it. Now as adults, we tend to only see the negative effects of snow. You have to shovel it, drive in it, walk in it, and put up with it until it melts.

Our recent early season snowstorms are a perfect example of this change in attitude. I was not a happy camper when 12” of wet snow turned my neighborhood into a war zone. The trees after the storm looked like we had had a tornado. It made me very sad. Sad to see such destruction and genuinely aggravated with the subsequent 9” storm a week later. This was a weird feeling. It may have been the first time I was not glad to see a snow event.

Back in the day, if we did get enough snow to play in, we had a pair of 1950’s wooden downhill skis that we got to navigate with. These strange inventions had coiled springs that you clamped your heals into along with some leather straps that secured your fate with. The skis were way too big for us, but they did work just like snowshoes in deep snow.

My winter adventures continued to expand as downhill skiing was explored in the tiny realms of Wilmot Mountain in Wisconsin. Just getting on a chairlift back then was a supreme challenge that prompted thumb cramps for days due to the icy ramp up to the chair access for rolling back over other peoples skis was a faux pas that was to be avoided at all costs.

Now, early season skiing here in Colorado is a little bit of a tease as well. With very few open runs and spotty snow, the skiing is crowded at best and dangerous at worst. We wait patiently though for more of the white stuff to fall so that more runs will open.

So what does “bon hiver” mean? It is a French phrase that means "good winter" or "have a good winter" and I hope this year you have one. Bon hiver Fort Collins.

The Trail Less Traveled

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather and reflect on things they are thankful for. Included on my grateful for list this year is the opportunity to write this column for The Coloradoan. In a photo shopped world where information is routinely manufactured to advance someone’s agenda, I choose to share stories about real life and let the chips fall where they may. The response to this column has been overwhelmingly positive which has inspired me to continue to write.

When a recording artist attains a certain amount of success, they usually put out a greatest hits album. Looking back on the last 6 months of writing, certain columns of mine do stand out. The very first one back in May incorporated the theme of the most interesting man in the world. There were also stories about lightning, trees falling, me falling, bear attacks, elk attacks, famous friends, and of course, hiking.

My instructional columns in the beginning soon morphed into stories of past and present adventures. Nobody seemed to mind, so each week, 600 words or so were carefully crafted together to communicate what I had to say. In an Andy Rooney sort of way, I noticed things on and off the trail. For example, did you ever notice how people enjoy reading about someone else’s mistakes when and if they live to tell about them?

On the other hand, my wife thinks I have an odd fascination with bear attacks. At the same time, she can’t understand how I am unable to watch medical shows on TV because of all the gory stuff they show. From my perspective, the natural world order is one thing and the human being world order is quite another. So as we move from the end of the hiking season into the beginning of the winter season, I will try to keep entertaining my audience with observations from the outdoors.

In nature, winter tends to cull the herd of the weak and the sick. For humans, winter sometimes is a dark and cold time. A Kung Fu master once said,( through my stories this winter, I will try and) “Be like the sun, and what is within you will warm the earth.” I hope my writing helps you to enjoy the day and adds something to your Sunday morning.

I plan on skiing and snow shoeing this winter and will incorporate those topics into the column. I will sign off today with a poem either about rugged individualism or a hiking friend’s indecision. Either way, it is one of my step daughter Mallory’s favorites:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Big Buck

I grew up across the street from an 80-acre tract of land known as the Somme Woods Forest Preserve of Cook County Illinois. For a young boy, these woods were filled with adventure. Stately oak trees hundreds of years old stood aligned like pawns on a chess board horizontal to the dividing road and forest entrance. Beyond the oaks were scattered stands of sumac. Fields of tall grasses lay intertwined with marshes and small seasonal ponds throughout the mostly flat landscape.

Trails were carved out by our daily travels. Tree frogs would greet us with their melodic song each spring. Red wing black birds would stake out their claims on the marshes. Mallard ducks would inhabit the small ponds. Fireflies would dominate the night appearing just over the fields in summer. As we got older, white tailed deer moved into the area. In the fall, the thought of seeing a buck deer would have us combing the area for hours. They were elusive though and seldom seen.

I am not a hunter in the sense of killing animals for sport. Back then, some of my friends were hunters and I wanted to simulate the experience. There was a small marsh in the middle of the woods that we planned on pretending to build a duck blind from and pretend to hunt from with our toy rifles. When the day came one gray November day to go sit out in the cold and pretend to hunt ducks, my fake experience was cancelled due to a previously planned trip to Grandma’s house.

I was so mad that I kicked the porcelain bathtub and almost broke my foot when my mom insisted that I get in the car and skip the fake hunting trip in the woods. To this day, I can’t figure out what the lure was and why this make believe reenactment was so important to me. Sitting on cold and wet ground in the middle of the woods in November pretending to hunt does not sound fun to me now.

As I got older, after that episode I am not sure if I can use the word “matured” here, I looked forward every year to early November and my quest to see the big buck in the woods across the street. Back then, I was not yet into photography because if I were, my camera would have been what I would have been hunting with.

In the late afternoon, I would venture far into the woods back where the crows squawking would sometime give you the creeps. As the light faded, sometimes I would build a fire and wait for the big buck to appear. As darkness fell, sometimes a buck would calmly walk by. Year after year, I would return to the same places that I had seen one. It was amazing how consistent they were. One year, I came around a bend on a trail and was within about ten feet of a buck. He looked at me and I looked at him and slowly backed up out of his way.

There was also the time that a certain field seemed like it was going to become a battle ground. Several bucks appeared from the fringes and looked as if they were going to square off in a duel. It was then that the big buck rose up from his day bed in the middle of the field to display his rack and signal to the other less mature males that he was top dog around there. It was quite a sight and to think he had been there all along just waiting for his chance to strut his stuff. If I had had the photography equipment I have now, he would have been quite a shot.

The Moose Story

Motorcycle riders have a certain code, a hand signal that they flash, when they pass each other on the road. Hikers have a certain code as well, passing along valuable information, when they come in contact with one another on the trail. Sometimes the responses the fellow hikers give to this information are a little odd.

This past August, my hiking companion Ras Erdal and I were patrolling for the Poudre Wilderness Volunteers up at Trap Park. Since Ras has been hiking the Trap Park trail annually for the last 14 years, you might say he knows this particular trail. During our hike, he and I talked about past encounters with wildlife such as the time a bull moose rose up after a nap just off the trail and scared him half to death.

On this day, we hiked the entire length of the trail with no wildlife encounters except for a red-tailed hawk sighting. We joked about rogue bears and such as we peacefully ate our lunch at the end of the marked trail. On our way back, we ran into three bow hunters who were scouting out the area prior to the opening of the season which was the following day. As we exchanged pleasantries with the hunters, I spotted something looking at us across the valley.

To everyone’s delight, it was a bull moose. Then, we spotted another one. And then yet another one. To our amazement, we counted six bull moose together at one time. They were feeding on willow branches and keeping an eye on us.

This group of moose reminded me of a bunch of cowboys like the opening to the TV show Bonanza. One of the hunters was bold enough or stupid enough to try and approach the herd. He crossed the valley and slowly tried to get closer to them from below. The moose watched him, but did not do anything aggressive. Personally I was looking for a good tree to hide behind just in case they stampeded toward us.

I had my camera and was taking pictures. If I hadn’t, nobody would have believed us. After a while, the weather began to deteriorate. The rain began to fall lightly as I tucked my camera away in my pack to protect it. Ras and I headed back down the trail towards the trailhead still buzzing at our luck at seeing such a spectacle.

We were almost to the end of the trail when we came upon a man and a woman just starting their hike. We exchanged some small talk about the weather and asked them if they had any rain gear. They seemed ambivalent to the weather and annoyed by our attempt at conversation. So I nonchalantly mentioned that we just saw six Bull Moose together at one time. Once again there was no response other than they see moose all the time when they fish here.

We parted ways and I commented to Ras that their response to our bull moose herd sighting was peculiar. Once at the trailhead, we noticed a camper left wide open. We joked about a bear being inside, or maybe someone sleeping inside, but it was strangely vacant.

We then spotted a fishing pole leaning up against the camper’s bumper. We reasoned that it must belong to that couple we met coming down the trail. They must have been on something. Six Bull Moose, together, and all they could say was “we see moose all the time”. I’ll bet you do.

Alone in Alaska

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Famous for his living experiment at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David
Thoreau built a dwelling and lived in it for 2 years and 2 months. He was only a mile from town and visited the real world often. Hate to say it, but old Henry had nothing on Dick Proenneke.

At the age of 51, Richard “Dick” Proenneke decided to build his own cabin up in a remote area of Alaska called Twin Lakes. The nearest
town was 40 miles away by float plane. No walks to town. No neighbors to visit with. He truly was alone in the wilderness.

Dick set out to live at Twin Lakes for twelve months. He ended up staying 30 years.

Can you imagine living everyday without conveniences like: electricity, heat, and plumbing? What about having no grocery stores to get your food from? Dick had no restaurants to go to, no sporting events to attend, no anything but nature all day, every day. I don’t know how he did it.

Dick was self reliant. He had to be to survive. He had to plan ahead for everything. He had to have enough food and water. He had to be very careful not to capsize his canoe when he was on the lake and to be patient and wait out bad weather. He simply could not afford an accident with
no one around to help him.

He had to be in tune with his surroundings and know weather conditions and forecasts at all times. In the winter, temperatures would sometimes drop to 50 below zero. Dick had to make sure his water hole in the lake never froze too thick to cut off his water supply. He had to store his
food high enough so that bears and other creatures could not get to it.

He had to cut enough fire wood to warm his cabin throughout the winter. And speaking of his cabin, he built it by himself before his first winter at Twin Lakes. The place had to be sound enough to keep animals and Mother Nature out and keep the warmth from the fireplace in.

He had to be vigilant each day to properly store his food and make sure everything was in tip top shape. There was no room for carelessness or forgetfulness. I guess when your life depends on it, depends on you, you become more responsible.

Now Dick did get mail and some supplies dropped off to him by float plane every 6 weeks or so. He also had a radio for weather and
emergency communications as well. But from what I’ve read about other people’s experiences of living separated from society, the isolation sometimes is more than most people can bear. I hear that the silence drives them mad.

Personally, the thought of being that alone with things that go bump in the night would scare the crap out of me. Dick wasn’t completely numb to fear though. I saw a picture once of the inside of his cabin and saw that there was a gun holster strapped to his bed post, just in case.

An Elk Paparazzi

Yogi Bear was smarter than the average bear. Rudolf the red nosed reindeer could fly. So why does it surprise me when an elk goes
for a swim and then takes a hike to dry off?

I took a hike to Mills Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park in late September on an unseasonably warm day. When I arrived at the lake, I found people fishing and eating lunch andsoaking their feet in the water. I set up my tripod to take some pictures and eves dropped on several conversations about not falling into the lake when the people were wading around in it.

I then moved on along the shore line to my own private rock outcropping to continue to take pictures. I was getting a little bored of sunning myself like a marmot when all of a sudden something caught my eye in the distance. It was a big bull elk and he was crossing the lake.

The big guy moved from a shallow spot to some deeper water submerging his entire body with his rack of antlers bobbing up and down as he swam. He came to another shallow spot, rose up out of the water, and shook his coat like a dog. He then made a beeline for a rock platform on the shoreline and hoisted himself out of the water like an Olympic athlete getting out of a pool.

I was stunned at my luck. I had the tripod set up and was leisurely clicking away as he performed for me. At one point, the bull appeared
to be looking right at me for some reason. When he removed himself from the lake and started advancing toward me on the path around the lake, I was sure he was coming for me. Other people had started to follow him down the trail like he was the Pied Piper.

What a sight this was. A huge bull elk walking right down the trail after taking a swim. Then, a couple of women appeared next to me on my rock outcropping. They were more than a little concerned with the developing situation. They asked me what we should do if the big guy makes a hard right turn and charges us.

I reasoned that we could all jump in the lake, but after seeing him swim, that didn’t seem like a safe option either. As he approached, the sound of his hooves reminded me of a Clydesdale horse in a Budweiser commercial. My camera was still set up, so I risked it and tried to take his picture.

The first shot was blurry. It reminded me of those pictures when an animal rushes the photographer and this is the last thing he saw before he was trampled. The second shot was clear and eerily massive as he filled the lens. The third shot was of his rear end as he continued on past us down the trail.

After my heart rate calmed down, I decided to call it a day and head back down the trail. I was deep in thought enjoying my hike down when all of a sudden the elk reappeared and tried to ambush me from behind a big boulder. Stunned, I was like, “whoa big guy” and high tailed it backwards around to another big rock nearby. My tactic worked and he gave up his charge and crossed the trail to move on up into the brush.

After calming down again, I went after him and scolded him from the trail. “What’s your problem Bud?” He was rubbing his antlers on some trees and gave me a look as if to say, “What? You think I like all you people gawking at me and trying to take my picture all the time?”

It was then that I realized I had officially become an elk paparazzi.