Trail Rebuilding in the Wet Mountains

Ahead, the sawyer searches for the lost trail while others clear saplings and logs.

I spent Saturday with a volunteer trail crew rebuilding a trail in the Wet Mountains, a process that we began last summer.

Post-wildifre erosion, followed by a lush growth of grass and aspen, and erased the trail in places. Jeff Outhier, the San Isabel National Forest's "master of trails," marked a new route where the old one been washed out by the normally tiny creek.

When I hiked there before the fire in 2016, I mentally subdivided it into three sections: The Ravine, The Wall, and The Summit Aspen Groves.

Last summer's work was mostly in The Ravine and partway up The Wall. 

The Wet Mountains lack craggy, snowy summits, being mostly below timberline, but they excell in steepness. Somebody with a GPS measured a 2300-foot gain in altitude in about a mile and a half (?).

Summit ridges tend to be gentler and fine for just strolling, once you are up there. 

Here, the summit ridge had offered big aspen groves, probably created by a long-ago forest fire that took out the white fir, douglas fir, and ponderosa pine. 

Loppers for small aspens and conifers. The aspens, being clones, will come back eventually, Job security!

The groves, in turn, burned again six years ago, and now show dead standing dead trunks (until the wind blows them all down) and an understory of saplings that make foot travel difficult. Sometimes I think I can find the old trail most easily by shuffling my feet around in the leaf litter.

And then, mid-afternoon, we call it a day, and it's down down down, an hour's walk (with a break). Maybe by this time next year we will have the whole trail rebuilt. 

About those shirts: I could not decide if I felt like an early-seaon deer hunter or a county jail inmate on work-release.

CPW Fishing App Discontinued & I Wonder Which Others to Keep

You maybe did not notice, but last April, Colorado Parks & Wildlife shut down its CPW Fishing app. 

It's still the Apple app store (Android too, I assume), but a CPW spokesman said,

The app is no longer being updated or supported. As we close it down, those who have downloaded the app may still be able to use several functions, but we consider it closed as we are no longer updating the app and that may cause App and Play stores to remove them without notice. We are building a new website with this type of functionality included moving forward.

Users are instead directed to the online Colorado Fishing Atlas,  "an interactive mapping tool offered by CPW that allows users to search for fishing opportunities by species or proximity to your home or destination" and to the division's printed guides.

Here are some outdoor apps that I am keeping and others that I am deleting to free up space.

CPW's  Match A Hatch Colorado app is still available on Google Play, but I don't know what happened with Apple. It works for me because it does not require a data connection. It just serves up photos of what insects should be on the water this month and suggests some matching fly patterns. Keep.

CO Woody Plants (Colorado State University) is straightforward, but it has to download photos. Are you out in the boonies? Carry a printed field guide. I like Derig and Fuller's Wild Berries of the West. Delete.

The myColorado app (State of Colorado) is supposed to hold your driver's license, Colorado Parks and Wildlife licenses, car registrations, etc. Well, the first one works. The driver's license is up to date, but the app still displays my 2019 fishing license with EXPIRED across it. Gee, thanks. Better keep the paper license in my wallet. (But I did drive off without my wallet last Thursday, so I could have needed that digital driver's license, hypothetically.) Keep.

Merlin Bird ID (Cornell University) needs 1.14 GB of iPhone storage, but I hardly use it. It seemed like a good idea, especially when traveling. But sometimes when I test it against known birds, it is not even close. When you do have a good connection and screen space, Cornell's All About Birds website is really useful. Otherwise, a field guide that shows ranges, so you are not trying to identify a Florida bird in Arizona. Sibley Birds West is a good one. Delete.

Explore USFS (US Forest Service)—another example of "just because you can put it on a smartphone does not mean that a smartphone works best." It works better in a web browser on your computer. The app take up "only" 766 MB, but every "tour" of a national forest requires an additional download. Delete.

Colorado Trails Explorer, otherwise CoTrex. "COTREX puts information about all of Colorado’s trails in your hands, thanks to a collaborative effort by land managers at every level." Well, not really, but it has gotten better since its first version.

When CoTrex first launched (rushed out), it was basically a hiking aid for state parks with good cellular data service — Cheyenne Mountain State Park next to Colorado Springs, for instance, although it might have a few dead spots.

There have been improvements since. You can use the website to pick a trail (foot? bicycle? ATV? dogs allowed?), get some information about it,  and download the smartphone app for iPhone or Android. 

You can get driving directions to the trailhead using Google Maps, which means there are some  . . . oddities. One southern Colorado trailhead is labeled "Florence Re-2," which is a school district in a different county. Why? (Letting users add info leads to mis-info. There is plenty of wrong labeling on Google Maps —nonexistent places and so on.)

Users can create profiles, leave trip reports, all the usual stuff. There is a brief tutorial. 

On the other hand, smartphone users will have the usual problems with small-screen navigation, and I have seen some errors in the driving directions, like using the wrong name for a road. It all comes down to whether the state agencies will commit to long-term maintenance.  Keeping, for now.

If you value any outdoor apps in particular, let us know in the comments!

We're Broadmoor Hotel Guests, Get Us Out of Here

Cloud Camp lodge, above the Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs

Known its golf courses (plural), tennis club, riding stable, and other amenities, the sprawling Broadmoor Hotel on the edge of Colorado Springs has recently expanded into more "wilderness" experiences.

Naturally, the hotel is being sued. From the Colorado Springs Independent:

The posh resort certainly did deliver on that promise in October 2019 when a Broadmoor guide leading three couples on a 2½-hour morning hike got lost and then allegedly abandoned them as the sun set and temperatures dropped.

The party was located by El Paso County Search and Rescue (SAR) teams at midnight — some 14 hours after the hike began. They then had to hike another six hours to a trailhead before returning to the The Broadmoor hotel.

Now, one of those couples, Victor and Annamaria Mitchell, has filed a lawsuit against The Broadmoor and Emerald Valley Ranch, alleging negligence, negligent supervision of the guide by the two entities, and “premises liability for breach of duty to exercise reasonable care to protect guests from danger.”

The suit claims that toward sundown, the guide, who had his own food and water,  "took off running and left the Mitchell’s [sic] and the other three couples behind, lost and stranded in the unfamiliar wilderness."

A "three-hour tour." This could be the plot of a long-running TV show. 

UPDATE Jan. 12, 2022: The hotel paid unspecified damages.  How much is diarrhea worth in court?

Old Men Hiking the Appalachian Trail and Growing Out Their Beards

This is not my normal territory, but a new men's age record for the Appalachian Trail was set this month:

M. J. Eberhart, "Nimblewill Nomad," on the AT.

M. J. Eberhart, an 83-year-old retired eye doctor, had a strenuous weekend.

On Sunday, he pushed through the final few miles of a hike on the Appalachian Trail, becoming the oldest known person to complete the roughly 2,190-mile trail from Georgia to Maine.

It was an odyssey that started in January from his home in Flagg Mountain, Ala., with a series of day hikes that gradually took him to Georgia. From there, he started the journey along the Appalachian Trail. He carried a six-pound pack, with a tent, sleeping bag and other gear (not including food and water).

Known by his trail name “Nimblewill Nomad,” Mr. Eberhart hiked the distance in segments. Sometimes friends and supporters hiked with him or picked him up for overnight breaks of a warm bed and meal, driving him back the next morning to where he had dropped off the trail.

He was met and accompanied toward the end by the hiker who held the previous through-hiking record at age 82. "'He stole my record from me,' [Dale] Sanders, reached by telephone, said, laughing. 'I am not at all disappointed that he took it. I actually promote older people to get out and break my record.'"

So there you have it. 

The famous "Grannie Gatewood" walked the AT at age 67 in 1955, when it was considerably less well-known and less-well-marked  than it is now. A mere youngster. But she did it in sneakers without trekking poles. Without a backpack, even. And she did the AT three times, the last at age 71.

Meanwhile, beards:

"[Eberhart] lost 15 pounds, but said he would not cut his hair or shave. 'The old man on the mountain has got to have a beard,' he said."

But what does that say about testosterone?  The science, shall we say, is not settled.

As a highly sexually dimorphic trait – something that marks a systematic difference between two sexes of a species – facial hair in humans has been traditionally thought to 'honestly signal' elevated levels of testosterone in those who possess more facial hair than their peers, signaling to potential sexual partners, or perhaps their competition, that they are more masculine or dominant.

However, a new study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior has found no relationship between the amount of facial hair and self-perceived dominance in men and their testosterone levels.

Should SAR Leave the Body on the Peak?

A Colorado Air National Guard Blackhawk helicopter
on a mission near Ouray (Ouray Mountain Rescue Team).

Last August, three volunteers from Mountain Rescue Aspen were injured by rockfall on Capitol Peak as they searched for a missing climber.

One was hit by a "micowave-size rock" that smashed into her hip. "She sustained a comminuted femur fracture (broken in three or more pieces), multiple pelvis breaks and a fractured vertebra."

While she was expected to recover, I suspect that she will feel those injuries for a long time, perhaps the rest of her life.

The injured rescuers were airlifted off the mountain by a Colorado Air National Guard helicopter. (The ANG frequently helps out on these situations.)

The climber, a 32-year-old man from Madison, Wisconsin, was left up there. Some of my climber friends on Facebook were deeply disappointed. 

The Pitkin County team told the family it did not see a way to safely recovery the body at this time.

“It was a difficult decision, but we’ve collectively decided to leave Kelly McDermott’s body on the mountain where it currently rests,” [Sheriff's Office representative Alex] Burchetta told CBS4. “We’ve spent the past month or so working on alternate recovery plans and simply were not able to come up with one that provided the level of safety necessary to conduct another recovery mission.”

But how many people should risk their lives to bring down a body? My county's Search and Rescue Group, which is large and active, has done it multiple times. But no one has ever gotten a smashed pelvis in the process. (I realize that the injuried searchers did not know that their missing climber had died.)

It's a different order of magnitude, but many bodies have been left on Everest and other big mountains. One corpse, nicknamed "Green Boots," is a well-known landmark to climbers on the North Face. There may be as many as two hundred others.

There are several intertwined problems here.

Most Search and Rescue people are volunteers. I know some locally. They work hard and pay a lot of their own expenses. Should they climb after corpses, or should friends and family take care of that?

SAR groups are more focused on living people who need help, however. They defend their "no-charge" policies, saying that free rescues save more people. The Colorado Search and Rescue Association states their policy:

The State of Colorado has declared that backcountry search and rescue is an essential service in Colorado.  The Colorado SAR community believes SAR is a service that should be provided to anyone, regardless of ability to pay.  These civic minded volunteers do what they do for many different reasons, including simple humanitarian support for their neighbors and visitors. They enjoy being outdoors, and many of them talk about the personal pride that comes from working as a team to save lives.   SAR teams, in many ways, help sustain the Colorado way of life.  Charging for services, especially in a punitive context, does nothing to further this culture and likely would injure Colorado outdoor tourism. . . .

The Summit County Rescue group tells the story of a young hiker who became stranded on Colorado’s 14,270 foot Quandary Peak. She called 911, but asked the SAR coordinator just to “talk her out of the area,” which was a dangerous, technical part of the mountain. The sun had already set and it was getting cold, but she repeatedly insisted the team should not come to help her. The SAR coordinator finally asked why she didn’t want help, and she replied, “I can’t afford it.” He explained there would be no charge and she finally relented.

There are a few caveats to the no-charge-for-rescue doctrine. First, if you are rescued by a backcountry SAR team, they may call in other resources that do commonly charge for services, such as ambulances and medivac helicopters.  Health insurance plans may offer coverage for these kinds of medical transport.

Colorado charges a fee on hunting, fishing, and all-terrain vehicle licenses that helps to fund Search and Rescue groups. I wonder what percentage of hikers and climbers buy the stand-alone COSAR card. It is a fundraiser, but it is not "rescue insurance."

A recent New York Times article states,

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge of inexperienced hikers venturing into the outdoors. And that in turn has increased the pressure on search and rescue teams, as well as the costs. Increasingly, states are looking for ways to penalize people who take unnecessary risks. But some question whether these laws might also discourage people from seeking help soon enough after putting their lives at risk because of an honest mistake.

New Hampshire passed a law in 2008 that allowed it to seek reimbursement if state officials deemed that a rescued person was negligent.

 Colorado's SAR community is resisting this movement, so far.

When I took National Outdoor Leadership School wilderness first-aid classes, one question always bounced around in my head. The instructors always seemed to assume that the helicopter — or the SAR team — would be there when we needed them. But what if they did not come? What happens when they have too many incidents to cope with, "essential service" or not?

Would people be more careful if they knew that help was not just a cell phone call or beacon activation away? 

My neighbors like to say that if a violent crime occurs, the nearest sheriff's deputy is at best twenty minutes away, so you had better have your own Plan B. And we rural volunteer firefighters are not as quick to respond as an urban fire department either. What will you do until we arrive?

Is it fair to ask that of mountain hikers and climbers? 

How would it change things if you went up the mountain knowing that no one—except possibly your friends—would come looking for you if you did not return on time?

Will This Be the Next Extreme Winter Sport?

A winter trek in southern Poland (credit
Notes from Poland.com)

Do you think you're tough? I mean, Polish-winter-near-nude-hiking tough.

Poland has its own subculture of winter-swimming. Some of these  "extreme swimmers" have decided to take their game onto the land.

Growing numbers of Poles participate in chilly outdoor dips, with several winter swimming clubs opening up. An annual four-day gathering of winter swimmers in the coastal town of Mielno last year was attended by 6,000, up from 5,000 in 2019. The next edition is planned for 14 February this year. . .

“It is most pleasant when the air temperature is at -8, -10 degrees Celsius,” Piotr Guzy, head of the club, told Gazeta Wyborcza. “You then get into the reservoir like it’s a bath, the water seems warm.”

The group has now also begun organising mountain treks for members dressed in shorts. “This year they have become extremely popular,” says Guzy, though he warns that they are not for novices. One should build up some experience of winter swimming before embarking on the treks, he advises.

At the start of the year the club organised a winter trek – with most of the club’s members showing up shirtless – on Kozia Góra (Stefanka) hill in southern Poland. Today, the group climbed Klimczok (1,117m), and it is soon planning a trek up Babia Góra (1,725m) on the border with Slovakia.

Asked why he does it, Guzy claims that such practices help boost immunity. He works in a coal mine and says that, despite the mass outbreaks of the coronavirus among miners last year, he has repeatedly tested negative for the virus, while other club members have also remained healthy, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

I see one major barrier to topless hiking catching on in the Rocky Mountains. How is our vibrant outdoor recreation industry going to market it when it's all about wearing less?

Blog Stew with Spikes

• Colorado's Most Dangerous Trails! Yes, Death-Defying Dangerous —  and Search & Rescue Will Come *For Free* Because They Are Crazed Adrenaline Junkies

Here's the list. It's kind of an ad for shoe spikes, compasses, etc.

The list is based on the number of rescues conducted and emergency GPS signals near those trails. . . .

Shane Leva, general manager of Mountain Chalet, a hiking outfitter in downtown Colorado Springs, said he agrees with the selection of the four trails on the list.

"For a lot of those, you'll be in fourth- and fifth-class settings, which means you'll be using both your hands and your feet to be scrambling," he said. "Think like low-grade rock climbing, essentially. You'll have hundreds if not thousands of feet under you. You'll need to have some good mountain sense and know how to navigate through that type of terrain

Which remind me that I need to check out the new Mountain Chalet location, but I have not been in Colorado Springs since March, the day before lockdown began, when I went up to see my dentist. 

• How to Photograph the Winter Solstice Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction

Some good advice here  (your tax dollars at work), even if you are just staggering out into the cold night with your smartphone.

And no, this is not the feckin' Star of Bethlehem or the star of anything. Those ancient Zoroastrian astrologer-priests, a/k/a wise men from the East, spent more time looking at the heavens than you do, and they knew the difference between wandering planets and fixed stars. 

If you have been outside recently after it gets dark, you might have noticed a bright pair of “stars” in the sky lying southwest — or left — of where the sun sets.

In reality these are the two giant gas planets, Jupiter, the brighter of the two, and Saturn. Even though they are separated by hundreds of millions of miles in the solar system, they have been moving closer and closer to one another in our sky for quite awhile.

 

• Please don't geo-tag the good places writes Greg McReynolds at Mouthful of Feathers. 

I can't agree more: 

You can post all the hashtags you want, but please knock it off with the geotagging and mapping bird hunting spots. Social media hotspotting is not cool man. Name a state. Name a region. Name a large city with a good BBQ restaurant. But don’t name spots. I know it’s not just hunters. It happens in fishing and mountain biking, sometimes splashing back on hunting. I’ve lost many a blue grouse hunting spot to user-created mountain bike trails, many of them spurred on by social media stoke. And I’ve given up a lot of spots over the years.

 

The Science of Trekking Poles—But This is Science You Can Ignore, If You Like

Photo credit: National Park Service

Some people love trekking (hiking) poles. The authors of the guidebook Don't Waste Your Time in the West Kootenays: An Opinionated Hiking Guide opined as follows:

[After a strenous month of hiking research] both of us developed knee pain. The next summer we used Leki trekking poles every day for three months and our knees were never strained. We felt like four-legged animals. We were more sure-footed. Our speed and endurance increased.

On the other hand, they also reported the reaction: "So where are your skis. Ha ha ha!" 

An article at Outside sums up the research and also gives the contrarian view:

On the other hand, the Switzerland-based International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation sounds a more skeptical tone, suggesting that using poles too much will sap your balance and coordination, thus raising the risk of accidents in situations like crossing ridges that are too narrow for poles.

In other words, poles make you weak! Do you vant to be weak? Or do they make you a sure-footed animal? 

This article on PubMed summarizes the research. 

Interestingly, pole users burn more calories. That could be a good thing (you're hiking to control your weight) or a bad thing (your food supplies are running low). 

You do protect your knees — but, retorts the Mountaineering Federation, the joint stress is good for you. (See also this.)

As they say on the Internet, your mileage may vary. 

Hopeless moderate that I am, when carrying just a day pack, I often carry just one pole, thus gaining some balance but keeping a hand free. The last time I was deer hunting in rocky country, I stashed the pole at one point along the trail in. Not having it was another reason to slow down, and slowing down is a Good Thing (TM) when you are hunting.

In a related issue, I will admit to saying something snarky the first time I saw somone snowshoeing with ski poles — especially as she was in a flat meadow. It seemed like belt + suspenders overkill. But I will admit that ski poles are a help when side-hilling in Rocky Mountain powder.

It's just that I always think that if you're on snowshoes, you need hands free for tools — rifle, saw, whatever.

News Report: More Colorado Women Hiking with Firearms

Chest-carry binocular case by Further Faster Design with concealed rear pocket.
(The antler is just to prop it up.)

 From Denver television station KHOW, "Some women are opting to carry guns on Colorado trails to stay safe."

“I carry a handgun when I am hiking alone on a trail that is more secluded, or at night, or (when) I am backpacking alone,” said Cierra LeVan, a 27-year old teacher in Mesa County. “I do this for personal protection and self-defense, from both potential animal and human predators.”

LeVan is not alone; Rather than avoid hiking because they don’t have a companion, some women are opting for more than bear spray for protection when they hit the trails. The question of whether or not one should carry a gun while hiking has long been a topic in online group chats, and there is a Facebook group just for women who hike with guns. . . .

“Most women I know have been touched or grabbed by men when in the woods. It’s too common,” said Sara C., a 35-year-old Denver business owner who did not want her full name used for fear of being targeted. “A creepy guy sees a girl fishing or hiking alone, tries to grab her arm or her body … dogs and guns will scare people off.”

It's an individual choice. There are mental steps to take. Is your life worth defending, yes/no? Are you willing to not only learn to shoot, but to learn the legalities of self-defense? 

Are you willing to commit to regular practice and building "muscle-memory" that will help you in an emergency? Just "buying a gun" is like a non-driver buying a car because you might need to evacuate during a floor or fire — but you just park it in the garage and leave it for three or five years — will it run when you need it? Will you remember how it works?  

Then there is the law. Self-defense law varies state by state, although there are common concepts. Fire a "warning shot"? A hostile district attorney might say you committed "felony menacing" just then. 

Does your state require a concealed-permit? Can you get one by taking a class and exam, or are they issued only to friends of the governor, mayor, or county sheriff?

People must be willing, since gun sales shot up this past summer — many first-time buyers, many racial minorities.

A note on the photograph: This binocular case by Further Faster Design, a Colorado firm, features a slim rear pocket with Velcro closures on the top and both sides for fast, easy access to your birding field guide or whatever. I bought mine this summer, and I like it. More information here.

This case rides high on the chest with X-straps on the back. It might fit some female body types all right, others not so much. But I had just made the photograph for another purpose, so I used it.

"Nice Job, Pixies" — a Weird Day in the Woods

Something weird happened last month while mushroom-hunting. I still have not quite figured it out.

During mushroom season, which peaks in August hereabouts, there is a ridge in the Wet Mountains that M. (my wife) and I try to visit every week. It abuts an area that we named The Mushroom Store; unfortunately, that spot has been discovered, but we are willing to walk farther at 10,000 feet than some mushroom hunters are.

We have been visiting that area for more than ten years, so we have our landmarks: the "long meadow," the cow elk's skeleton, the "little gate," the "big gate," and so on.

The plan, as usual, was to walk downhill parallel the "long meadow," loop around to the south and back east to the crest of the gentle ridge, where we would hit a barbed-wire drift fence that we would then follow north to "the big gate," and from there it is a short walk to where M's Jeep Wrangler would be parked.

So we did that. We were going along according to plan, finding an occasional "good" mushroom, and I was feeling pretty about my deep-woods navigational skills. (Don't get cocky, kid!)

At some point, as we swung back toward the top of the ridge, I looked down to my left and instead of a glimpse of the "long meadow," there was a steep ravine there, so steep that fir trees barely clung to its sides. Where had it come from? 

It was between us and the Jeep (I figured), but I did not want to go down into it and try to climb out again

I looked ahead — the top of the ridge was only maybe 200 yards away. M. looked at me and asked if I was lost. I said something noncommittal, but afterwards at home she said, "I can read you like a book. You were lost." (She will cheerfully admit to being a poor navigator herself, so she trusts me to do the job.)

That feeling you get, a punch in the stomach. Where am I? How did I get here? 

On the ridge crest, I looked south. There was Little Sheep Mountain, a little closer than it should have been, and also a road that I recognized. I knew where I was — I just was not where I should have been.

"Nice job, pixies," I said aloud.

Since I was high enough up to get a signal, I pulled out the iPhone, turned on the GPS and loaded the Avenza Maps app with a county road map. Yep, there we were — the pulsing blue dot —  about where I reckoned we were. Thus oriented, we walked down the other side until we hit a certain little dirt Forest Service road and followed it to the Jeep.

At home, there were mushrooms to be sliced and dried, and life otherwise got in the way. But after a couple of nights I opened Google Earth, where our mushroom sites are marked, and took a look. Everything seemed as it should have been, but I could not find that steep ravine.

OK, so Google Earth gives false ideas of slope. Next, I studied the topographic quad map for that area. I could not find the steep ravine there either.

In the old stories, you go through a portal into the fairy mound, and you eat and drink, and when you come out, a hundred years have passed. Or something like that.

We went back a couple of weeks later for one last foray. Maybe we should walk south and try to find that ravine, I suggested.

"Let's not, and say we did," M. responded.

I did not try to persuade her otherwise.

Reviewing Colorado Parks and Wildlife's New Apps

I was going to review two new free smartphone apps from Colorado Parks and Wildlife today, but I will be reviewing only one, because I am having problems with the other.

First up is CoTrex, "Colorado's Trail Explorer." Subtitle: "We're mapping Colorado's trails."

They have a way go on that. Based on my trial, it works well in state parks. But standing on my front porch, I am within two miles of three or four marked US Forest Service trailheads, and none of them shows up on CoTrex. Yet every trail up at Lake Pueblo State Park is visible.

Colorado's state parks are popular, and it is good to get people out walking around. When I tested CoTrex at Trinidad State Park — which has good connectivity, since it is just outside the town of Trinidad — the app was more convenient in some ways than a paper brochure, but it did not give me the historical/ecological information that the park's trail brochures contained.

Cotrex lets you save routes (if you create an account—more on that below) and even set up a sort of "friends" network and other social mediumistic stuff, if you're into all that.  You may complete “challenges” to earn badges.

You can also download your trail map for when you lose your data signal. (If you come to my neck of the San Isabel National Forest, even digital-trunked radios don't work well, not to mention cell phones.) But at that point, no device screen will show you as much as a paper topo map, unless you keep a MacBook Air in your day pack. Me, I like my iPhone SE because it fits in a shirt pocket, even inside its Otterbox fumble-finger protection case. But it is a way-too-small screen for map-viewing.

Pluses: Easy to use. If you have a data signal and GPS enabled, you can see your position on the trail and reassure your anxious hiking partner that you are not lost and that an important trail junction is just head. And it's free.

Minuses: Shows only a fraction of "Colorado’s unique trail experiences" at this time. The app designers invite uses to add them (otherwise known as do their work for them), which could lead to all kinds of confusion over trailheads, private property, seasonal trail-closures, etc. But the makers do promise to grow their database. Like any app, it encourages you to stare down at a screen when you should be looking around and orienting yourself.

I expect that CoTrex will help newbie hikers who are using urban and state parks systems primarily.

I also planned to review an app called CPW Fishing.

It is supposed to help you "visualize your trip and track your catches with CPW Fishing, the official fishing app of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. CPW Fishing can help you discover new fishing locations, learn new skills, stay on top of the latest regulations and journal your fishing experiences.​"

I downloaded it, created an account (see below), received a verification code in my email, typed in the code, hit "Go" — and it stalled. After looking at an "Authorizing . . . " screen for five minutes, with no way to restart the process, I just removed the app. (I emailed the "support" address, but no response yet.)

Still, it's out there, and maybe I can get it work later. Tell me your experience if you use it.

There is also a "Match a Hatch" app that I mean to try as well. My little iPhone should display invertebrates well enough.

CoTrex was created by a software firm called Natural Atlas, whereas CPW Fishing was created by Crestone Digital. Apparently they do not talk to each other — they are competitors, after all. Worse, no one at CPW is forcing them to talk to each other and to agree to make accounts interchangeable.

Right now, I have four CWP accounts:

1. For buying hunting and fishing licenses
2. For volunteer work
3. For CoTrex
4. (in theory) for CPW Fishing.

Wouldn't it be nice to have One Password to Rule Them?

Our First Trip to Trinidad Lake State Park

Part of Carpios Ridge Campground from an overlook.

As I turned into the Carpios Ridge Campground at Trinidad Lake State Park, pulling the little pop-up trailer, I saw this tall building with a bright red-orange metal roof.

"That must be the visitor center," I said to M. But I was so wrong. It was the "camper services" building — toilets, plus coin-operated showers, laundry room, and vending machines. The actual visitor center was more modest.

By happenstance, the first weekend of June found us holding reservations for the dogs at the boarding kennel, but our original planned destination was impossible. What to do? A lot of the high country was still snowy and/or in the middle of the Big Melt, so we looked lower down.

A view from our campsite. The forest here is mostly piñon-juniper.

Trinidad Lake SP was not too far away, and thanks to our volunteer work, we had a brand-new hang tag for the Jeep that would give us free park admission — we still had to pay for the campsites. I went online to check, and there were two left, so I grabbed one. (All these campsites are by reservation only.)

The Purgatory River was dammed to create the lake in 1979, making it slightly younger than Pueblo Reservoir.  The lake's level fluctuates, but it is around 800 acres.

Creating the lake drowned some former "coal camps," but you can see visit Cokedale at the park's west end, with its long row of former coke ovens aging under the Colorado sun — when they were working, that little valley must have filled with choking smoke.

One morning I went down to fish before breakfast, and I admit to being skunked—I saw a couple of fish, but they rejected my lures. Some anglers in boats were not doing well either, but I saw one hooked by a fisherman on the shore.

Muddy water flowing into the lake.

When I don't know a lake, my default strategy is to fish the inlet. We went up there later, but the muddy water of "the Purg" was flowing in big-time out of the Culebra Range. So I switched to hiking and geocaching — CPW staff have placed some excellent caches, as well as those left by other geocachers.

The riparian zone meets the P-J in Long's Canyon.

The best hike is Long's Canyon, about a three-mile round trip, because it is away from roads and follows a creek and riparian area that offers the best birding and wildlife-viewing opportunities. There are even some permanent blinds.

It also includes a geological feature, the KT (KPg) Boundary, as described in "An Earth-Shattering Kaboom at Trinidad Lake State Park."

If all this is not enough, you are only about five miles from the Corazon de Trinidad National Historic Area.

An Earth-Shattering Kaboom at Trinidad Lake State Park

Right here is when (most of) the dinosaurs died.

Things you learn. Not being a paleontologist or a geologist, I did not know that that the K-Pg boundary — Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary — is visible at a southern Colorado state park. (It used to be the K-T boundary [Creataceous-Tertiary], but the kool kidz have changed the name, and if you don't keep up, you're just so 1990s.)

In a  recent New Yorker article, "The Day the Dinosaurs Died," Doug Preston writes,

Today, the layer of debris, ash, and soot deposited by the asteroid strike is preserved in the Earth’s sediment as a stripe of black about the thickness of a notebook. This is called the KT boundary, because it marks the dividing line between the Cretaceous period and the Tertiary period. (The Tertiary has been redefined as the Paleogene, but the term “KT” persists.) Mysteries abound above and below the KT layer. In the late Cretaceous, widespread volcanoes spewed vast quantities of gas and dust into the atmosphere, and the air contained far higher levels of carbon dioxide than the air that we breathe now. The climate was tropical, and the planet was perhaps entirely free of ice. 

You stand there, and you look at it, and you think, "Right there. Death and chaos like we cannot imagine."

His X-Acto knife unearthed the edge of a fossilized fin. Another paddlefish came to light; it later proved to be nearly six feet long. DePalma probed the sediment around it, to gauge its position and how best to extract it. As more of it was exposed, we could clearly see that the fish’s two-foot-long snout had broken when it was forced—probably by the flood’s surge—against the branches of a submerged araucaria tree. He noted that every fish he’d found in the site had died with its mouth open, which may indicate that the fish had been gasping as they suffocated in the sediment-laden water.

Here is another view of the layer from sciencebuzz.org.

This site is on the Long's Canyon Trail at Trinidad Lake State Park. It is just a quarter mile or so from the trailhead. 

Where Are the Dogs of Yesteryear?

Ubi sunt?

"Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?" asked the medieval French poet François Villon. Usually that is Englished as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

And where are the dogs of yesteyear?

M. with Jack the Chesapeake Bay retriever and Shelby the collie-Lab mix, also known as the Bandit Queen. North Taylor Creek, Sangre de Cristo Range, early winter, 2002(?).

An Unexpected Slot Canyon, Trail Art, and a Threat

It's better in the winter — this is early December

I was over in Fremont County, south of Cañon City, in an area where I used to wander some twenty years ago. Back then, a hike meant following deer trails, arroyos, or an occasional two-track road.

Now there is a trail network. That's a good thing, mostly.

Stumps + rusty iron = trail art

Winter is the time to be out in this country. The sun is bright, there is only a little ice in the shady spots, and the "piñon gnats" of summer — those little bugs that fly into your eyes, nose, and ears — are absent. So are rattlesnakes.

Layers of shale.

 I found this little slot canyon that I had not known about.

Tint the photo pink and say that you were in Utah.

Other people knew about it though, as their old graffiti attested.

1901 ??

I learned that some people believe there are dinosaur tracks in the canyon. I have seen tracks in places like the famous trackway out in the Purgatory Canyon. To me, the various dimples in the rocks looked more the result of erosion.

I don't think these are tracks from a prehistoric beach.

But there is always something. These trails are on BLM land, and a Canadian mining firm, Zephyr Minerals Ltd., wants to core drill part of the area and maybe mine it — or sell it to some outfit that would. So instead of year-around recreational area, there would be a big hole in the ground, maybe a cyanide-leaching pad or some crap like that.

There is a potential for polluting Grape Creek, which brings down the DeWeese-Dye Ditch & Reservoir Company's water from the Wet Mountain Valley to serve hundred of shareholders large and small on the south edge of Cañon City.

So another battle to be fought.

"Dogs will be attracted to foot-hold traps . . . "

You may not like trapping.  Or you may have no problem with trapping as long as trappers follow the rules.

Regardless, these videos contain information that you can use — especially the second one, on releasing your dog from traps.  They were made by Idaho Fish & Game, but everything in them pertains to other states as well, except maybe the wolf part.


Basic rule: Compress the springs, don't pry the jaws. If nothing else, learn the Conibear trap, which starts at about 3:40 in the video. "Your dog is most likely to be trapped by its head or neck, so it's critical you learn how to act quickly to save your dog."



If you have any actual experience with dogs in traps, I would like to hear it. But if you just want to talk about how you want to put some trapper's head in a large-size Conibear, well, I have heard that before.

In Response to Pain, a Change of Gait

I developed a foot problem this summer, and it has me thinking more about gait than at anytime since my brief foray into track-and-field as a 14-year-old.  (Working with a chiropractor-kinesthesiologist now too.)

It's been upsetting, since hiking through rough country was always something that I was good at, and now I am having  to retrain one foot, which produces certain protests from the tendons.

Shoes and boots are part of the problem, that's the irony. It was probably wearing the wrong ones in younger years that created the problem, on top of some slightly malformed toes that I was born with. Over the past couple of years I have discarded about a third of the shoes and boots that I owned — getting to be pretty fussy about what I will put on my feet. I even consider shoelaces: would round or flat be better?

You have probably read old descriptions of American Indians "gliding" through the forest in their moccasins, but as medieval reenactor Cornelius Berthold — who apparently is also into Historic European Martial Arts, going by the broadsword on his hip and some remarks about fencing— points out in this video, that is how Europeans walked too, prior to about 1500 and the widespread development of harder-soled shoes with built-up heels. (Stiffer shoes maybe encouraged the toes-out gait.)

Not like this:

Quick Time . . . . At the command Forward, shift the weight of the body to the right leg without perceptible movements. At the command March, step off smartly with the left foot and continue the march with 30-inch steps taken straight forward without stiffness or exaggeration of movements.

United States Army, The New Infantry Drill Regulations, 1943.

So during this hunting season I sometimes pretend that I wearing moccasins — or medieval shoes like Cornelius Berthold. When the "new" pain starts — the tendons protesting their new stretching — I just slow down, stepping on the balls of my feet. That helps. One day, it will have to be better.

Links Taller than Your Head

It's a good year for wild sunflowers.

Links. Do I have links. They sprout like sunflowers on the prairie.

• How to improve your outdoor photography. 10-2-4 is not about Dr. Pepper — 2 p.m. is when you are traveling to the place that you wish to photograph after 4 p.m. And "Zoom with your feet" does not apply to buffalo.

• Predatory ducks. It's Romania, so maybe they suck blood as well.

• How older elk survive to a ripe old age (for elk).  They learn the difference between bowhunters and rifle hunters.

• A poacher goes down hard. If only this happened more often.

• From Colorado Outdoors: "Five Tips to Catch More Fish This Summer."

• Another article on bold, aggressive urban coyotes. Denver, this time.

• High country trails don't just happen. It takes people like this.

Hiking Makes You Smarter — Or at Least Less Depressed

So there is your New Year's resolution,  if you follow this line of thought:

To conduct this study, researchers compared the reported rumination of participants who hiked through either an urban or a natural environment. They found those who walked for 90 minutes in a natural environment reported lower levels of rumination and they also had reduced neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain related to mental illness. Those who walked through the urban environment, however, did not report decreased rumination.

 So there it is: 2017: The Year of Decreased Rumination

Smoked Links with Seal Meat

This is "good" smoke, coming from a fire-line burnout
on the Junkins Fire three days ago.

I am still catching up after the evacuation, the firefighting, the meetings, and the general nervousness of having Chinook and Skycrane helicopters thumping over the house hour after hour.  So here are some quick nature-blogging links.

¶ Talk about going against the narrative— an Inuit filmmaker creates a pro-seal hunt video.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril: I'm Inuit, so I grew up in the Arctic. I grew up hunting and eating seal meat with my family, and as an Inuk, you just grow up hearing people complain [about] and criticize seal hunters. It's just kind of always been an issue for me, and I knew that when I became a filmmaker that I was eventually going to have to cover this issue. 

¶  When trekking poles became popular a few years ago, I had a sort of snobbish reaction. "Who needs two poles?" I thought. "They turn you into a beast of burden. Maybe if you are carrying a very heavy pack on rocky ground . . . "

Other people put a positive spin on "beast," saying that the poles make them feel like a sure-footed quadruped.

I am all for sparing your knees on long downhill trails, but I hate to have two hands occupied with poles. When I broke one of my old bamboo x-c ski poles a few years back, I cut them both down to walking-stick length and added rubber tips. But usually I carry only one, because the other hands needs to be free for a tool, a leashed dog, or whatever.

But here is Randy Newberg, one of the few makers of hunting videos that I can stand to watch, making the case for them — with a video too.

“You can laugh at me all you want,” says Newberg. ” But there’s a reason why this 51-year-old, gray haired fart, who drives a desk for a living a good portion of the year, can go and hunt the mountains: trekking poles.”

¶ Another video: Put a camera on bears in Yellowstone and let them wander — and see what happens when they encounters wolves.