Rubies

Wildcatting the RUBY RANGE 

                                off trail traverse of the Ruby Mountains

                   Raggeds Wilderness

                                 Gunnison National Forest

                                                Crested Butte, Colorado, USA  

Journal Entries & Photographs                                                                                .           

From the Hike            

The Ruby Mountains  in central Colorado are a colorful, inspirational, spiritual Eden and make for memorable hiking/camping experiences.  I pass through Gunnison (Sunny Gunny), pick up some supplies, and roll up to Crested Butte.  Crested Butte, the out of the way skiing and biking haven for the artistic neo hippy let it slide and ride Bohemians; way laid back and rich in alpine scenery and local digs.  The suitcase and wallet crowd base a few miles up mountain at the ski resort. I’m keeping it real with the townies.

My first order of biz is a homemade version of Mac’s sausage, egg, muffin and hash browns at the Brothers Deli; a local gas station/short order café.  The same 2 chaps have been serving up the artery clogging chow and constant stream of witty comments the past 8 years that I’ve come here.  I throw in a couple jabs that while unsolicited, were appreciated.  I top it all off with a fresh grind cup of dark roast.

  

 Crested Butte was a company town built to mine bituminous coal in the area.  Coal mining ended in 1852, the railroad pulled up the tracks down to Gunnison, and the economy crashed until a ski run was opened in 1962.  About 1,500 people live in Crested, the ‘Wildflower Capital of Colorado’.  The speed limit is 15 m.p.h., what’s the rush; it is bike, ped, dog, and kid friendly.  There is ‘Butte Time’ - it happens when it will happen.  There are no street lights in Crested, curbs stray light pollution.

I take a stroll down the main drag, Elk Avenue, and take in the building buzz.  The 6 block long street is lined with pastel colored Victorian 2 story houses from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.   A garage is sided with license plates while a Bug parked in front of one house is covered with shoes.  A young gal in a long pastel flower dress is riding down the street on a classic one speed bike with a wire basket wired to the back carrier which sits on top of the full fender.  A young hipster in a green plaid shirt, black denim shorts, tennies, and a green streak in his hair cruises past.  An older gentleman has a cell pressed to his ear.

It is mid-morning but this town ramps up slowly.  I drop a few cards at the P.O., pick up a few hats and shirts, and then stop in an old brown brick 1880 saloon that is now a purveyor of fresh baked goods , coffee, sandwiches, and brews from the microbrew across the street, the Eldo, which bills itself as ‘the sunny place for shady people’.  The ceilings are of the 1880 style, very high and inlaid with engraved metal. 

RED:  hike to Green Lake  BLUE: hike to Blue Lake

Crested Butte-W. central Colo

The weather is looking marginal so I head to Buckaroo Beanery to grab some java and information via my tablet.  The radar shows light rain moving in from the West Elk Mountains.  This is the excuse I need to sit in town and relax.  I eat up some local news, baked goods & lattes while tuning in to the patter of the locals coming in for their java fix. 

Two pals cross paths and one asks “How was your summer”.  This is an odd statement for August 19^th; the dog days of summer back in Minnesota but the onset of fall in the high country.  “I hope this winter isn’t as bad as last year” the other chimes in.  “Ya, hope we get a good snow pack” the first one adds.  Again, mega snow is a good thing in a ski town; still it runs counter to my thinking. Brick Oven Pizza shop delivers slices to Buckaroo at 11:00, another reason to extend my stay here.

Ruby Peak, Mt. Owen, & Purple Pk

By mid afternoon the clouds thin so I roll the 8 miles of gravel forest road to Kebler Pass.  The final 2 miles is a decent gravel road to Lake Irwin; a blue gem sitting at tree line at 10,400 feet.  This campground is one of the highest developed campsites in the U.S.  It is perched on a rocky hill above the lake among meadows and spruce and fir trees.  The multi colored Ruby Range runs along the Western horizon a few miles away.  The Anthracite Range dominates the southern view just across the valley.  It is a rare range that runs East and West (Uinta’s in Utah is another).

Anthracite Range

The symmetrical volcano named Carbon Peak rises to the S.E.  The smoke from western wildfires is thicker here than I thought it would be. The Mushroom festival is on this week in Crested.  This campground always has an eclectic group of outdoors enthusiasts – dirt bikers, hikers, bicyclists, retirees, wildflower and mushroom enthusiasts.  The camp host comes by to collect the fee; a retired bloke from Texas.  He tells me this campground was snowed in until July 1.  Grand Mesa to the west is still snowed in after 460” of snow.  How cold did it get? Is an oft asked question in the morning; I impart this info to the host who passes it on to other campers.  I take a swim in Lake Irwin, a cool 58 degrees, the same temperature of the Pacific Ocean off Yahats, Oregon the beginning of August.

Extinct Volcano Carbon Pk

Lounging in camp late evening, a big Mama Black Bear and 2 Cubs move through the meadow next to my camp towards the pond.  Mama must have told the cubs to wait as they stopped and sat on their haunches as Mom went down to the pond.  Then it got crazy, the gals next to me yelled “Bears! Bears!”.  The guy in the site next to me charges into the forest with his kids and dog.  A Ranch-neck (western red neck) charges off on a 4 wheeler. 

The camp host goes site to site telling everyone there’s a bear in camp.  “Is that necessary” I state in a flat line tone.  “Well in case they have kids and want to leave” the camp host says.  The 4 wheeler guy tells the gals he has a gun and to yell out if they see the bears.  What a frenzy, I thought maybe the Wolfman was loose.  The naiveté is inexcusable.  Last I checked we are in a Wilderness in a National Forest – Bears live here, we don’t.

A crescent razor thin moon sets over the Ruby Range.  I pull out the heavy BTU oak to mix with some snap, crackle, pop  Pine to chase the chill that is certain to set in at this elevation.  The skies are extremely dark and clear, the stars crisp.  I see 4 meteors as the temp dives to 39 degrees by midnight.  Well past midnight the land is quiet, broken by the sound of distant waterfalls in stereo; one pouring out of the Rubies and another exiting Lake Irwin.  Porcupines and skunks were about.

Fire and sky; the baseline experience since the dawn of man.  Staying in one spot gives you a sense of place; otherwise it is like a photograph, a snapshot in time.  In the San Miguel’s over the days I saw how the light hits the mountains in the morning, silhouettes out at sunset and see the sun dropping along the side of Middle Pk.  A few days are but a slice of a season. It would be cool to see the landscape change in fast forward mode from Earth spinning up from a cloud of dust 4.5 billion years ago. 

It is amazing to think that the galaxy as we see it is expanding at an expanding rate.  Eventually it will stretch matter thinner and less dense until the universe disappears.  The sun, the earth, people and even atoms will expand and pull apart into nothingness.  But the matter we see is but 5% of the mass of the universe; dark matter being 20% and the rest being dark energy.

Wake up at sunrise and a crisp 35° and the clatter of a young bear trying to get into the garbage bin across from my site.  It pulled garbage out of the bin and slammed the metal cover.  I woke, grabbed the video recorder and stepped outside.  The bear looked at me and jumped off the bin and ambled out of camp and into the forest.  All the campers were up now.

I prep for my hike, load cold water, strap on the new Vasque Sundowner hikers, check the camera, GPS, binocs, load up some carbs and grab my hickory hiking stick.  It’s time to add 9 more miles to my lifetime hiking total.  I whittle a band around my hiking stick for every 500 miles hiked.  I’ve logged 3,165 miles, far fewer than the near 15,000 miles on my bike but the miles just kind of roll up on the bike.

Few of my lifetime miles are easy street such as the 24 mile round tripper with 9,000’ of elevation change to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and out.  It was 38° on the rim and over 100° at the bottom.  The last 3 miles out of the canyon climbed the Redwall in full sun at a 20% grade.  Also memorable is the 14 miler to Longs Peak Key Hole with 8,000’ of el change.  The weather went from sun to rain, snow, and ice pellets with a hike out down a snowfield in a whiteout. 

I also hiked 10 miles up Flattop Mountain in RMNP and walked along the continental divide a few miles before glissading down Andrews Glacier to a tarn while battling the onset of severe altitude sickness. Hiking 10 miles across the Utah desert in 100° heat to the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers also stands out.  Climbing rope ladders into and out of red rock canyons added interest to the hike.  I also hiked along the Oregon Coast for 10 miles; exploring caverns, tide pools, sea life, dodging crashing waves and incoming tides.  Oh wait, that would be the definition of easy street, hey, even the Hickory Hiker needs some down time.

I also notch a tepee in my hiking stick for every 100 nights camping out; I have notched 873 nights so far.  My hiking stick is a solid piece of Shagbark Hickory from Kipp S.P. in extreme S.E. Minnesota.  A piece of leather is wrapped around the top for a hand hold.  I have a mini thermometer and compass attached and a clip to attach bird feathers I find on my hikes.

Todays hike is a wildcat off trail excursion masterminded from the lounge chair in winter with the aid off topo maps and Google Earth.  I am in the Ruby Range basin.  This basin is separated from the adjacent Oh-Be-Joyful valley and basin by a tundra ridge.  This ridge would afford views into both basins and long panoramic mountain top views; stellar stuff if it pans.  As I found in the San Miguel’s, hiking the terrain is different from mapping it.  I head cross country around a pond across undulating meadows with pockets of Spruce and Fir trees.  Iron in the soil has oxidized turning it a light brown. The sun is out, the air calm and cold.

The hike beta:

start elevation:  10,450’ 

end elevation:    11,855’

elevation delta:    1,405’

miles:  8.4’

average MPH up:  1.7

average MPH down:  2.8

A Red Fox crosses my path.  It is heading down to the lake. A Spruce Grouse ambles along in no particular hurry or direction, as grouse are want to do. The Ruby Range comes into full view.  The Rubies top out over 13,000’ and are purple, cinnamon, maroon, and white.  Rather than hike up the valley, I am striking cross country straight up and onto Ruby Peak to a bench or shelf that runs across its base  to adjacent Mt. Owen.  Landslides, snowfields, and serrated edges cascade steeply down to a line of firs and blooming meadows in a kaleidoscope of colors.  A full on frontal view of the north end of the Anthracites looms large.

RUBY PK   -  12,644'

Ascending bench of Ruby Pk

Westernmost Peak of ANTHRACITE RANGE

The white Cow Parsnip is 4 to 5 feet tall.  Views are getting large.  I’m now on the chest of the mountain where the gradient shortens significantly.  A multi series of waterfalls and cascades comes tumbling down out of  a bowl of snowfields.  The 20’ and 40’ falls crash over blocked purple rock.  A rush of cool moist air hits me at the base of the falls.  I climb up the falls.  Yellow Dogtooth Violets emerge from the snow around the rocks and flowing water.

Waterfall from GREEN LAKE

I hit tree line where the Firs end and give way to Englemann Spruce and ground hugging Firs and cross the base of an avalanche slope.  Most years the slope is a huge snowfield.  I cross a 3 foot wide brook which splits a large meadow.  The brook cascades off a 40 foot chiseled purple cliff.

A white moth with black bars along the front edges of its wings and black circles on its back wings sips nectar from a sunflower. Water, snow, rock; flowers are profuse with the sound of rushing water everywhere.    

ASTERS

The climb is steady.  I cross over a braided stream that cascades off a 60’ cliff from Green Lake to an alpine tundra cirque below Mt. Owen.  I hike to Green Lake by crossing a landslide talus slope of fist sized and bowling ball sized rocks falling off the side of 12,812’ Purple Pk.

Lake Irwin

Nearing GREEN LAKE

Rock close up

COLUMBINE - Colorado State Flower

GREEN LAKE

The amazing blue-turquoise Green Lake fronts 2 large snowfields and a talus slope in a rocky bowl between Purple Pk and Mt. Owen.   I breathe in the long views across Gunnison N.F., Lake Irwin and the cone shaped Carbon Pk.  The entire Anthracite, Range is in full view rising from a deep green blanket of forest.  Its 360 degrees of color and sound.  The mountain pass looms steeply above.  Staccato bursts of puffy cumulus range through the deep blue sky. 

Wildcatting it across basin fronting Purple Pk.

I backtrack down the talus slope to the basin fronting Mt. Owen.  The Tundra ridge separating Oh-Be-Joyful valley rises a half mile across the basin.  This is wildcat time.  I survey the terrain and pick a route across the basin to the far ridge.  A flock of Grey Jays passes through.  I take a circular route up and over purple cliffs and climb to the high point in the saddle of the ridge. 

PURPLE PK.

I drop my pack in the short brown tundra grass dotted with wildflowers and take in a 360° view.  I overlook the head of Oh-Be-Joyful valley, the basin I climbed up, and magnificent long and deep mountain top views that defy sensory processing.  My view is hemmed in on one side by a line of 4 tundra topped purple cliffs.  Each cliff has a long talus chute of purple rocks beneath it that meets the thinning forest as it blends tree line into tundra.  Across the neck of the basin is symmetrical Gothic Mtn. with avalanche chutes dropping down from the peak. 

On tundra ridge looking down Oh-Be-Joyful valley

GOTHIC MTN

The opposite valley ridge forms the N.E. wall of the valley and is infused with striations of white rock.  Looking off towards Aspen and the Maroon Bells, peaks loom across the horizon, poking above the Joyful valley walls and the building cumulus cloud swatches.  

I have forded the Slate River and hiked 4 miles up the Oh-Be-Joyful valley.  The valley is a magnificent hike in its own right.  The near peaks of Purple Peak, Afley Pk., Oh-Be-Joyful Pk., and Hancock Pk. form the 12 ½ thousand foot headwall of the valley.  The ridge I’m on juts out into the valley.  800 feet directly below me is Blue Lake.

BLUE LAKE 800' below sits at the head of Oh-Be-Joyful valley

Miles away Lake Irwin glistens in the sun like a jewel recessed into a dark green forest.  The volcanic Anthracite Range looms as the northern outpost of the West Elk Mountains.  The volcano Carbon Peak is silhouetted from the backlighting and wildfire smoke.  The Ruby Range contains my view as it runs south into the Anthracites.  The Ruby basin is a patchwork of meadows, cliffs, forest, and brooks.  

A cold alpine breeze blows up from the valley while my back cooks in the hot sun.  The views and my thoughts are expansive.  In my mind I am still that young buck who could hike all day, jump creeks & crevices and scale landslide slopes.  I am closer to the day I will be unable to do this hike.  My spirit will die long before my physical shell.  In some ways it is too late to leverage that hard earned lifetime to advantage. 

4 miles up the Oh-Be-Joyful valley

Head of Oh-Be-Joyful valley & Blue Lake

It is an ironic quandary that as we get older we learn the possibility of our dreams with the wisdom and knowledge to attain them.  Sadly we are locked in and too vested in the current path.  It is too late, too risky to change the trajectory in any earth shattering meaningful way.  As we get older there are fewer moments of pure joy, exhilaration, and triumph. The bonds of family and friends disintegrate and dissolve away like a fizzy in a cup of water. 

The industrial age has brought great wealth to man at the cost of our humanity.  A more intimate interface with Earth and nature is more fulfilling.  Andrew Carnegie controlled 1% of this country’s wealth in the 1880’s.  It was built on the backs of men working 12 hour days 6 days a week.  The gentler kinder version is todays cubicle infused white collar information assembly lines conducted inside fancy brick corporate headquarter buildings.  It can breed contempt and dissatisfaction.  As Thoreau pointed out, the ‘cost’ of something is better measured in the time it takes to earn the money to purchase said item.  Our lives get consumed in the minutia and infrastructure of modern life as we define it.

Increasing smart and sophisticated software and nano, genetic, robotic technologies may render man to the sidelines and largely irrelevant.  Man may largely be freed from ‘work’ but bulging populations, the strip mining of earth & oceans of resources, pollution,  a poisoned environment, and concentration of wealth may leave no wild nature left to enjoy.  We will live in the cubicle of the new age; a garage sized concrete bunker stacked end to end to infinity to efficiently house man.  Our experiences with nature will all be virtual; which is to say virtually nonexistent.

I stand here in this magnificence and grandeur of nature.  This is why I am here on Earth.  Photography is my voice, my interface to the world.  I never lived in a place that I’d call home; but this is home; and life sustaining.  This view is much the same as it was a century ago.  Time becomes the here and now.  Everything else either has happened or will happen.   The Sun & Moon move across the sky at a slightly shallower or higher arc each day.  These are the demarcations of time.  Calendars and clocks become irrelevant.  Time is malleable like the Salvador Dali watch.

Sitting on the mountain top is me stealing the nexus; the nectar of the landscape.  In a sense it is not pure for I am but a visitor.  The sun is shining, the sky is blue, tundra grasses and flowers hug the earth, white puffs of cumulus march across the sky with their shadows moving in lockstep across the massive landscape.  This is life and I am alive.

Descending from the saddle

I track back slowly to camp.  The grand views incrementally dissolve as I descend; like an ore carrier disappearing over the Lake Superior horizon.  I lounge and snack too long at camp.  I rush to Crested and just miss the U.S.A. Pro Cycling Challenge riders cruising through town by 10 minutes.  Lance Armstrong was in town yesterday.  He ran from his digs in Aspen across the mountains to Crested and back.  It certainly has to be a 30 mile run (it’s a 160 miles to drive to Aspen).   He bought a hotel in Aspen and converted it into his personal enclave.  It is true, the billionaires have pushed the millionaires out of Aspen.  As long as I’m in town I hit the Buckaroo Beanery and grab a few supplies (supplies meaning snacks). 

BECKWITH MTN.

On the drive back through Kebler Pass, on the Eastern end of the Anthracite Range, I saw the Mama Bear and 2 Cubs in a meadow about 5 miles from camp.  A Bears’ sense of smell is 2,000 times better than humans; they can smell raw meat from 20 miles away.  A group of Peruvians herd sheep down the road, presumably to greener pastures. White Beckwith Mountain rises from the forest to the south.

Bears in Kebler Pass

Back at camp that night I talk with 2 gals around their fire and have some wine.  Mama Bear and 2 cubs are back, this time jumping on top of the garbage dumpster.  The camp host bungeed the cover shut but the Bears would jump on top of the dumpster and pull the lid back in an attempt to open it.  The bungies held and the cover snapped back with a long clang. 

The gals freaked out and went for their car, turning on the head lights and honking the horn (it is 1 a.m.).  My campsite was across from the dumpster so I watched the show.  The bears caused quite a ruckus, ran around tents, people screaming, they hauled off a cooler, walked up the dirk bike ramp lowered from a school bus, dogs going crazy.  People are funny, it did a good job of clearing the camp out.  Attention National Forest Mgmt:  Hey, I’m paying fees here, how ‘bout getting some bear proof dumpsters in here; and pick up the trash once in a while.  This situation is abzurd, redonkulousness squared.

I tracked back to camp after leaving Crested in time to catch the Earth’s orbital velocity spin it out of view of the sun, otherwise known as sunset.  The Anthracite Range is silhouetted in a smoky grey haze.  At this elevation above 10,000 feet the temp drops quickly.  I crank up a fire as the stars spin up.  The crescent moon sinks below the Ruby Mountains through a thin stand of Spruce trees shortly after darkness sets in with Mars, Saturn, and Spica clustered with it.  All is in balance; the Earth and my Spirit are in alignment.

Slice of a Rainbow

MORNING in the MOUNTAINS

Morning comes in 2 phases; early & late, yin & yang, waxing & waning.  Early morning light leaking onto the landscape brings a tranquil contemplative mindset.  Colors are muted, the atmosphere calm and moist; sharpening the earthy smells that emanate.  The earth quietly spins on its’ axis, birds and animals go about their business.

The demarcation between early and late morning is sublime; a movable imprecise timeline; a passing noted after the fact.  It is an event brought to consciousness by the peeling off of a long sleeve shirt, a bright sun past 35 degrees of declination, sunglasses, staccato bursts of warm wind blowing through the dying embers of the morning fire, a background soundscape muddied increasingly by humans and their machines, the appearance of patchy low key stratus clouds scraping across a powder blue sky and a time piece that reads 10:15. 

Early morning is a creative time to nourish the soul and to drink in the nectar of the earth.

mef