dancer
08-16-2009, 01:38 AM
I was reading a thread lower down -- basically about the soul value of a campfire and it made me want to tell a story...
With a friend as guide, drove an old '67 Dodge 2WD pickup up the western side of Grand Mesa until it would go no further by crashing across any more boulders. Left the truck in the "road" with the keys in the ignition, in case someone was higher up and needed to get down or stronger at coming up from below (presumably they could have backed my truck down a piece, or pushed it over the edge). My buddy and I grabbed our backpacks and gear and headed further up in the last hour and a half before dark. It was the day before the elk-only hunting season opened.
By dark, we'd made it up through the scrub pines following a game trail to near the base of the cap rock at around 9200-9500 feet elevation. We came to a babbling stream about three feet wide and decided to camp there. Built our little campfire in a ring we made, gabbed a while, but we were exhausted and pitched the little pup tent, threw in the sleeping bags and crashed. It was much later when I woke to two sets of really strange sounds not unlike one another but in two completely separate places. One, it was easy to tell, was my buddy snoring, but the other... Well, "slurping" is the only word that comes close -- sounded like cows drinking from a pond or a trough. I know it was hours after we'd first gone to sleep because I reached up to touch the tent and it was solid ice inside from our condensed breath. My buddy didn't wake from the "other" strange sound and finally it went away and I went back to sleep as well.
He had some kind of alarm that woke him and he woke me a little before dawn. We dressed and crawled out while I was telling him about the night's sounds -- and jerking his chain a bit about his snoring. He decided the other sound was indeed cows whose owners hadn't yet gotten them down from the free range in the high country that some ranchers used. And then we saw the tracks in the washed gravel and sand of the little creek -- looked like elk to us! And not 20 feet from where our campfire might still have been smouldering!
We boiled our water, made our coffee (Ovaltine for him, I think, because he was a strict practicing Mormon), had our oatmeal, grabbed our rifles and day packs and headed further up to the outcrop where we'd sit and glass the mountainside for our quarry/prey/whatever -- the damned elk!
Three days later, we'd seen not a single elk. I did see one of the most magnificent muleys ever, but their season had expired. We were out of food and out of energy and we dragged ourselves back down the mountainside to the truck. Got in the truck and started backing down the trail to a wider spot to turn around. Hmmm, something wrong with the steering -- this thing doesn't go where I'm pointing it. Get out and look around and underneath. OK, the left front wheel is turned right; the right front wheel is turned left -- which means the tie rod is now a V! We don't have the right tools, so hiking is the only answer. That was pre-GPS days. He guessed nine miles and I guessed eleven. Finally came to a municipal water pumping substation that had a crew and we got a ride back to civilization. The following weekend, just before the big snow of the season, we used a borrowed Blazer 4X4 to go back to my stranded Dodge with a replacement tie rod and the tools to replace it. No problem! Back to the world. One of the best camping adventures ever! The price per pound of elk stayed at infinity for another year.
With a friend as guide, drove an old '67 Dodge 2WD pickup up the western side of Grand Mesa until it would go no further by crashing across any more boulders. Left the truck in the "road" with the keys in the ignition, in case someone was higher up and needed to get down or stronger at coming up from below (presumably they could have backed my truck down a piece, or pushed it over the edge). My buddy and I grabbed our backpacks and gear and headed further up in the last hour and a half before dark. It was the day before the elk-only hunting season opened.
By dark, we'd made it up through the scrub pines following a game trail to near the base of the cap rock at around 9200-9500 feet elevation. We came to a babbling stream about three feet wide and decided to camp there. Built our little campfire in a ring we made, gabbed a while, but we were exhausted and pitched the little pup tent, threw in the sleeping bags and crashed. It was much later when I woke to two sets of really strange sounds not unlike one another but in two completely separate places. One, it was easy to tell, was my buddy snoring, but the other... Well, "slurping" is the only word that comes close -- sounded like cows drinking from a pond or a trough. I know it was hours after we'd first gone to sleep because I reached up to touch the tent and it was solid ice inside from our condensed breath. My buddy didn't wake from the "other" strange sound and finally it went away and I went back to sleep as well.
He had some kind of alarm that woke him and he woke me a little before dawn. We dressed and crawled out while I was telling him about the night's sounds -- and jerking his chain a bit about his snoring. He decided the other sound was indeed cows whose owners hadn't yet gotten them down from the free range in the high country that some ranchers used. And then we saw the tracks in the washed gravel and sand of the little creek -- looked like elk to us! And not 20 feet from where our campfire might still have been smouldering!
We boiled our water, made our coffee (Ovaltine for him, I think, because he was a strict practicing Mormon), had our oatmeal, grabbed our rifles and day packs and headed further up to the outcrop where we'd sit and glass the mountainside for our quarry/prey/whatever -- the damned elk!
Three days later, we'd seen not a single elk. I did see one of the most magnificent muleys ever, but their season had expired. We were out of food and out of energy and we dragged ourselves back down the mountainside to the truck. Got in the truck and started backing down the trail to a wider spot to turn around. Hmmm, something wrong with the steering -- this thing doesn't go where I'm pointing it. Get out and look around and underneath. OK, the left front wheel is turned right; the right front wheel is turned left -- which means the tie rod is now a V! We don't have the right tools, so hiking is the only answer. That was pre-GPS days. He guessed nine miles and I guessed eleven. Finally came to a municipal water pumping substation that had a crew and we got a ride back to civilization. The following weekend, just before the big snow of the season, we used a borrowed Blazer 4X4 to go back to my stranded Dodge with a replacement tie rod and the tools to replace it. No problem! Back to the world. One of the best camping adventures ever! The price per pound of elk stayed at infinity for another year.