Silverton

I made it to Silverton yesterday, July 27. That's only three days to travel 53 miles. That's almost 18 miles a day. The reason is not that I have become a superhuman hiker -- I was just trying to outrun the thunderstorms. The Colorado Trail between Creede and Silverton is almost all above timberline, up on the tundra. In fact the highest point on the CT is in this part, above 13,00 feet, and almost all of it is above 12,000 feet. For miles and miles there is absolutely no shelter, not even a willow bush. Because this is such a wet year in Colorado, I had storms to dodge. I just wanted to get down.

I left Creede on Sunday. I decided not to take my chances on hitching a ride, so I paid a nice lady to take me up to Spring Creek Pass, but she couldn't take me up there until after church about 1:00 p.m. Since I got such a late start I only hiked about 8 miles, but I got to stay in the yurt. I had heard about the yurt in 2009 but had not known exactly how to find it. This year I met a northbound hiker just as I was approaching the area it was in, and he told me exactly how to find it. If you go to www.hinsdalehauteroute.org you can see pictures. The yurt is a big, semi-permanent round tent modeled after tents used by nomadic peoples of Asia. It was amazing! It had a Coleman stove, a wood-burning stove, table and chairs, cots and even old blue shag carpet on the floor! I slept great.

The next day, Monday, it started raining early afternoon and rained until about nine that night. There wasn't a lot of thunder and lightning, but it was cold. I saw more hikers this day than I had on most of the others, mainly because everybody was camping early to get into their tents and out of the rain. One older gentleman and I kept hiking, and it was kind of fun to pass all the young people. Eventually he and I camped. I didn't cook or clean, because I didn't want to get out of my tent to walk down to the creek and get the water to do so. I could have used a yurt this night.

The next morning all my clothes were damp from walking in the rain the day before. It was a cold, cloudy, windy morning. Cloudy mornings don't usually portend good weather for the rest of the day, and that was certainly true for Tuesday. Sometime about noon the clouds began to organize into storms, and I got hammered. I had earlier wondered why I had brought my sunglasses, but today I realized I needed them to keep the wind, rain and sleet out of my eyes. Until about 4:00 I was above 12,000 feet with nowhere to hide, so I just kept going. I was so cold my hands wouldn't have worked to set up my tent anyway. There was so much water the trails were slippy, slidy and muddy, and I went down into the mud on one knee once. However, the views were still beautiful. The mountains are completely different on a day like this, with rain and mist obscuring them and the lights and shadows of the storms highlighting them.

One highlight of the day was getting to see Juan, the Peruvian shepherd, the Border Collie Annie, the two Maremma guard dogs Shadow and Picena and the 3000 sheep they look after. He was standing by the point where the trail leaves the Stony Pass road and goes through the area where his sheep range, greeting the hikers as they went by. I had met Juan and the dogs (actually different Maremmas) in 2009 and thoroughly enjoyed our attempted conversation. I say attempted because he speaks very little English and I speak very little Spanish, but it was amazing how well we could communicate. This year I said, "ano nueve" for year nine and he was able to tell I meant year 2009, and he pointed to where I had camped in 2009 and made a gesture like he was sleeping, so I could tell he remembered me. The 2009 Maremmas were friendly, but I think Juan was keeping an eye on the new ones so they would become accustomed to the hikers. Juan indicated that the Maremmas from 2009, Tony and Yenni, were working with another herd of sheep.

A word about sheep and coyotes -- in the seventies and before, the public policy of our rancher-friendly government agencies in the west was to control coyote populations, not control coyote damage. They set out poisoned bait and traps which also killed other species, including endangered ones like the bald eagle. In contrast, even in the seventies the emphasis for the Missouri and Kansas conservation agencies was to control coyote damage, mainly by going after the offending coyote. In the late seventies I applied for a job with the Idaho Sheep Experiment station as a research assistant on a project to test a chemical that would not kill the coyotes, but sterilize them so the couldn't reproduce. I didn't get the job, but I like to think I made a contribution in my interview. I talked to them about controlling coyote damage instead of coyote populations, and I suggested they look into the breeds of dogs that have been used in Europe for many centuries to protect sheep from wolves. I even told them how to get contact a breeder of one of these, the Hungarian Komondor, in Idaho Falls. We moved away from Idaho, but about three years after my interview my mother-in-law sent me a clipping from the Wall Street Journal about the testing of Komondors by the Idaho Sheep Experiment station. This seems to have been the start of a movement toward protecting the sheep rather that killing the coyotes. The sheep ranchers have pretty much settled on the Maremma from Spain, although some use the Great Pyrenees from the mountains between Spain and France. All three breeds are an off white so they blend in with the sheep and they coyote doesn't know they are there until it is too late. They are raised with the sheep so that they bond with them, not the humans, and they live with them all season long. I don't believe poison bait is ever used any more, which is a good thing for everyone.

I finally made it to the trail intersection where the Continental Divide Trail, which has been contiguous with the Colorado Trail for about the last 230 miles, turns south and the Colorado Trail turns west to go down into Elk Creek Canyon past some of the most spectacular peaks in Colorado. As soon as I started to lose altitude the weather became better, and I was able to make it to a nice campsite about four miles down the canyon in time to set up before it got too dark. The only water that night were the drips from the trees.

The next day it was really fun to be passed by the young people who had thought I would be far behind them by now. They had camped during the storm and I had kept hiking. The weather was pleasant all day.

I will leave for Durango tomorrow. I have already done this part of the trail twice before, in 2009 and 2010. It took me five days both times. It is about 74 miles, so to do it in five days I would have to average 15 miles a day, but to do it in four I would have to average almost 19 miles a day, which I don't think is going to happen. This next part is not consistently above timberline like the Creede to Silverton part and the weather forecast is for "isolated" storms, so maybe I'll have an easier hike.