Colorado, Part 2

BEARS!

Did that get your attention? I hope so. I saw a huge black bear, up close, in the wild! Was I scared? Well yeah, but only for a minute.

I heard a rustling off to my left while hiking in the forest. I knew Shan was ahead of me on the trail, but this rustle sounded distinctly non-human. I stopped and tried to determine the source of the rustling, and spotted the sleek, hairy back of a very large bear, about twenty feet away. I didn't think he'd spotted me, so my first reaction (besides thinking Holy Freaking Crap I'm seeing an actual bear) was to slowly and silently turn and walk back the way I'd come. There were definitely a few seconds where my heart was pounding and I was entertaining the possibility that I would be chased by a bear, in which case I had no idea what I should do. Should I curl up in a ball? Should I just stand there and let it sniff me, like a strange dog? Should I try to scramble up a tree? Should I leap off the nearest cliff and hope for the best?

Luckily, I wasn't forced to act on any of these hair-brained ideas.  I put a little distance between myself and the bear, and heard no sounds of pursuit. But what should I do now? Shan was up ahead, and I didn't know if he'd seen this thing. Obviously I was not well versed in bear protocol, and it seemed to me illogical to make any noise that would draw attention to my presence.  Shan broke the silence for me.  

"Angela! Be careful, there's a bear over here!" 

"Yeah, I saw it! I ran away!" I shouted back.

"What are you doing? Come up here!" 

"No way!" I replied, "There's a freaking bear over there!"

Shan impatiently urged me to continue, so I headed back up the trail, keeping a cautious eye to my left.  Shan was in a clearing up ahead, standing on a big rock. When I made it to where he was, we both had just a moment to say, "Wow, I can't believe we just saw a bear!" before one of us said "Hey look, there's another one, over there!" A little further away we spotted another bear with its front feet up on a rock, looking around. Now that we were together I wasn't afraid, and this bear was a baby! We just saw it for a minute before it turned and scampered off.  Baby bears are way too cute to be scary.

Jared walking down to the Historicorp site in the morning sun

A really cool old stove in the cabin they're restoring

Our bear encounter occurred on Friday morning. Shan and I had dropped Jared off at the site where he was working for the week. He was helping out a Historicorp crew, which was busy restoring an old cabin nestled in a beautiful valley up in the mountains 45 minutes from Durango. Historicorp is an organization that's separate from Americorp. They work on restoring historical sites, which is really cool, and they're almost 100 percent volunteer. The group we met at the site was an interesting mix. Jared was definitely the youngest person, with the others present ranging from probably early 30's to early 70's. Some of them looked like they'd just stepped out of an old Western movie. They fed us an amazing breakfast. Their main cook, Skinny, told us about his favorite hunting trail, which is where we met our bears. "You won't see any other humans up there," he told us. He was right. 

Skinny also told us to bring our cameras, and with good reason! After we passed the area where we'd seen the bears, the landscape opened up and we were on the rim of a high cliff, where we could survey the land. The landscape was amazing.  Clear blue skies, green alpine forests and meadows. We could see the valley where the cabin site was, a larger valley with big blue lakes, and great views of the surrounding mountains. One particular mountain caught Shan's attention. It was the tallest in the vicinity and looked very rocky and interesting. We didn't know yet that that evening we would be camping at the base of that very mountain, and that we would climb the peak the next day.

The Historicorp group only worked a half day Friday, so we met Jared back down at the site a little past noon, where we were fed another delicious meal. We shared our experience with the bears, and listened as the old timers told a few of their bear stories. Everyone agreed that our next stop should be Cascade Creek. Jared had already mentioned this place, although he hadn't yet been there himself. He described it like this: "It's this place where you jump off a big waterfall, and then you have to jump off, like, seven more waterfalls before you can get out at the end." I thought it sounded a little crazy, but we loaded back into the truck and headed for the creek.

We came to a spot along the road where people park while they swim the creek. After our experience floating the Animas the previous day, Shan and I were a little wary. That mountain water is COLD. We walked to the edge of the gorge and watched as a group made their way down the creek, which was beautiful. We could hear them squealing each time they plunged into the water, screaming about how cold it was. We got our water clothes on and made our way down to the water. It was definitely cold, and we were still a little hesitant, especially Shan. Then Jared piped in with "Hey guys, remember that time we almost jumped off those really awesome waterfalls, but then we didn't because the water was cold?" 

Point taken. We waded ahead to the first point where we had to jump and congregated at the edge, Jared wondering aloud if the water was deep enough for him to jump in from the ledge he'd climbed onto. Shan and I edged our way out onto a tree trunk that spanned the water. We all just stood there for a minute or two, nobody wanting to make the first move. I decided something had to be done. Plugging my nose and steeling my nerves, I leapt into the freezing water. I came up for air and let out a whoop...I'd never been submerged in water that cold before in my life! Not willing to be shown up by a girl, Shan jumped in after me, followed by Jared, jumping from his ledge. 

Now we fully understood the cries we'd heard coming from the group we'd watched from above! We plunged ahead through the series of jumps and even a big slide. The last jump was the highest, and looked pretty scary, but at that point there was no going back the way we came, and we were so cold we would have done almost anything to get to dry ground. One after another, we jumped, and swam to the edge of the pool where we scrambled out onto the rocky shore. It was a ten minute hike back up to the car, by the end of which my frozen hands were just starting to come back to life. The inside of a hot truck in August never felt so good!

After a short drive up the road, we arrived at our destination for the night. We parked at the beginning of the trail head leading up to Mt. Engineer, a 12,970 foot mountain. We would backpack up to the base that afternoon and set up camp for the night. The hike up to the base was gorgeous, a steep winding climb through alpine meadow and forest. The beauty of an alpine meadow is almost surreal, especially under such a perfect blue sky. There are wildflowers of all colors: daisies, asters, bright orange and pink paintbrushes, columbines, hemlock, larkspur. Our campsite was amazing. It was near a stream, under shady pines on the edge of the open meadow leading to the base of the mountain. After cooking dinner and playing cards for a while, we headed to bed early. It would be a chilly, peaceful night in the mountains, full of strange high altitude dreams.

The beginning of the trail

Alpine meadow

Mt. Engineer

At the campsite

My tent!