It’s amazing to see the change in this area in the period of a week. As I write this entry of my blog the visitors and guests to the State Park have diminished remarkably. Many of the loops are half full. Where the Park was seeing record-setting attendance, both in daily visits and in multiple-day campers for the entire summer, the Park is strangely quiet. The small gangs of children who were romping around on bikes and scooters in the campground loops hooping and hollering and laughing have been replaced by the booming bellows of cows who have been loosed just outside of the Park boundaries in open grazing areas. The Lake itself is bereft of boaters and kayakers. No one is swimming at the beach. The countless fields of wildflowers, changing in color almost weekly with the summers slow pace, have turned mostly brown. Today I saw the very first few wistful leaves of an Aspen turned golden. More Sand Hill Cranes are arriving making their strange “Spielberg-ish” Velociraptor cries to each other. Though the days have been hot and dry ( the sun at this altitude is very intense even on an 85 degree day ) the nights are getting cooler, dipping into the 40’s. The temperature swing on any given day right now can vary 40 + degrees from morning to afternoon.
So, why the radical change in attendance? It’s not yet Labor Day yet. What has upset the balance...the summer’s trend of popularity dipping so, seemingly overnight? Apparently, it is a perfect storm of sorts. Here’s what happened during the past week or so:
Major wild fires, 4 or 5 in Colorado and dozens in California, are bleeding smoke into our area due to the prevailing westerly winds.
Since we have had little to no rain during the past couple of months, the landscape has become brittle, brown, and ready...ready for a lightening strike to ignite the place like a tinder box. A stage 2 fire level warning has been initiated. No campfires period. No S’mores!
The lake, a cold water gold-medal trout reservoir, has succumbed to the heat and drought. An algae bloom has taken hold of the lake and swimming is prohibited. This particular type of algae is very dangerous to dogs as well, likely killing a pet who drinks too much of the water. Boats are non-existent now. The fish, though healthy so far, have the toxicity of the algae on their skin. Best not to eat them or handle them.
School, whether virtual or in person, is nearly back in session. That’s where the kids went. Even half of the seasonal staff has left for school.
The Elk River and the Yampa, two of the major rivers in the area who were raging in early summer with massive snow melt, are nearly dried up. The Elk feeds the Yampa and the Yampa courses westerly across Colorado into Utah. Users of the river, way down river, have legal rights to certain amounts of stream flow determined by treaty or law. Folks who use the water up here in the Steamboat area are now legally deprived of using any of its content until better flows return. Fortunately, the reservoirs created up in this area have enough water to continue to provide Steamboat Springs and the surrounding area with drinking water. For a while, anyway. We just need rain.
Right now, the skies are an eerie amber tone lending an other-worldy atmosphere to the place. Bound tightly with the heat, the dry and brittle landscape, and the empty lake full of algae, it’s no wonder the State Park is not full.
Now, please don’t think that the area has become a vast wasteland and that we are depressed to be here. Quite the contrary, we love it here. We can hike in the wilderness and see abundant wildlife. There are two other gorgeous lakes within 5 minutes that are free from algae and full of trout. We can see and feel the seasons changing right before us, and, with us only working 4 hours per day, 5 days per week, we have more than ample time to immerse ourselves in it.
What IS evident to us and the staff here is that climate change is underway. Outside of the kids going back to school, all of the causes contributing to the “amber waves” that have infiltrated our Park are by and large man-made. Yes, fires are a natural and necessary part of nature. Yes, the state and national land stewards will let the fires burn unless they threaten homes and property. But...the high heat and drought are way out of the norm, thus creating ultra-dry landscapes and an environment ready for bacterial explosions in the waters. Locals call it a 20 year drought.
Diane and I, along with the doggies, Heidi and Dash, have been taking time to get out away from the Park lately. Typically we’ll load up a couple of chairs, water, food, and head out after work in the afternoon in the Jeep to find a secluded spot in the shade out in the forest and just hang out. I’ll bring my guitar and Diane will bring her pottery supplies and we’ll spend several hours out there by ourselves. There are dirt roads that lead through the forest and skirt the wilderness areas. It’s a wonderful time...out of time so to speak. The sun will be our timer, no clocks needed. When the sun dips behind the mountains we head home.
This week I got up early one morning ( I always get up early anyway ) and headed out just by myself for a little hike. There’s a trail I spotted when we first arrived here only about 3-4 miles from our campsite that I’ve wanted to trek. It’s called the Prospector Trail and it looks kind of lonely. I never see anyone on it. I arrived about dawn and it was dead quiet. This particular trail leads up rather steeply through sub-alpine fir, lodgepole pine, and aspen groves. It traces a hollow and leads up over a mountain that’s about 1200’ or higher than the surrounding valley where it starts. The valley sits at about 8500’ altitude. The air was cool and still and with the sun barely breaking behind the Zirkel range to the east the ambient light was just enough to see your way along the trail. The forest was mine, all to myself.
I brought along bear spray and, of course, my Dad’s bear knife, which he inherited from his dad. More for looks and accessor-ization, I don’t plan on using that knife unless all else fails. It’s just cool to me to bring along that knife. It’s like my Dad is with me. He had the pioneer blood. It drove him to Alaska in 1939 to see what was there. But, that’s another story for another day. Tom French, back in Fenton, MO, mad me a wonderful sheath for the blade. It’s very cool.
I bring the bear spray because I figure it will back off just about anything I might encounter that could possibly be threatening. Now, I don’t live in fear in the woods, but … there are mammals out there that could be problematic if you’re not prepared. We’ve seen moose in this area. We’ve heard bear and seen their tracks near here as I described in an earlier entry. One of the rangers told me that big cats have been seen here earlier this summer and Diane and I saw one about 5 miles from here on late afternoon. Outside of that, you might stumble upon a porcupine, a weasel, or God forbid, a skunk.
I actually worry more about skunks than the rest of the menagerie. Maxine, my former dog and best hiking pal, were out scrounging around the woods near the Chubb trail in Eureka, MO one Sunday morning when she took a blast at point blank range from a skunk. She was about 100’ above me rooting around a small bluff as I walked the creek below. I had my back turned from her, looking at something that caught my interest on the ground in front of me. I noticed this strong smell of what I thought was Starbucks coffee. I remember thinking to myself, “Who the hell has Starbucks out here in the middle of nowhere?” Seriously, I did. Well, down the hill came poor Maxine in a panic rubbing her nose in the leaves as she ran for her life. Lord, have mercy! She was full of it. Even though it was about 25 degrees out that morning, I dumped her in the creek to try and wash some of the intensity off of her. Getting her home in the car was a challenge I hope never to repeat. After 4 or 5 washings we finally got Maxine to the point where we could bear to have her indoors. And let me tell you right here and now, that old adage about a bath of tomato juice to get rid of the curse is wrong. You need Dawn liquid soap, baking soda, and peroxide. After several baths and soaking in it, you can finally get some relief. I do not want to go through that again with a dog, or, myself. Hence, my apprehension with skunks...and Starbucks.
So, off I started up the Prospector trail. This particular trail is pretty narrow and is closed in on all sides by thick forest. Sharp turns are abundant. Most often you cannot see what may be ahead 20 or 30 ‘ up the trail due to the twisty turns. Two years ago, on a trail very similar, I came around a bend and ran headlong into two moose. Moose are very dangerous if they get riled up, more so than black bears. They’re huge! My senses were on full alert, my brain synapses were firing on all cylinders. (I don’t know how many I’ve got left, but they were all firing.) I was trying to be aware of everything around me at once. That’s a feeling and experience that is so addicting. That’s one of the gifts of getting out in the woods. You fire up all your senses simultaneously. You become fully human, equal parts physical, mental, spiritual.
As I began to climb higher, maybe 15 minutes into my hike I heard a loud cracking below me on the hillside. I couldn’t make out what it was so I stopped and just listened. There it came again, unmistakable this time. Something or someone was breaking large tree debris and sticks as it moved through the forest. It was intermittent, not steady, as if it were moving very slowly. Having watched mule deer in the forest many times I’ve seen how they hop like antelope when they’re alerted to danger. They ably pick their way through underbrush usually not creating a lot of noise. I didn’t think it was a mule deer. In fact, I had already seen one mule deer buck, and 8 pointer jump across the trail in front of me near silently some time before. What a graceful being. No, this was something else.
As I listened intently I could also hear squirrels knocking pine cones off the trees. They would drop through the over-story of limbs and pop as they hit wood on the forest floor. They were busy those furry critters. After a few moments I decided just to move on. No need to see this unseen being. I think it must have been a moose heading slowly back up to high ground for a nap after having a morning munch in the willowy, serpentine creek below.
As I continued up the trail in the lightly cobalt colored light filtering through the trees I noticed that the trail was barren of any other human tracks. The dust was about an inch thick due to the extreme dryness of late and whenever my foot would come down on the trail a little poof of dust would arise. For some reason I thought of astronauts on the moon and their footprints. Funny how your mind works sometimes. I liked the thought that this place was mine alone for the moment. Just me out here. Of course there were critter footprints all over the place. Here was a deer print, over there a baby deer, scurrying chipmunks, maybe that was a coyote. I surely saw coyote scat a while back full of fur. Maybe one of the chipmunks didn’t scurry fast enough. Animals are opportunistic just as humans are. They’ll take a trail anytime if it’s going the way they want to go. No big tracks this time, though. Just little critters save for the deer.
A little later on the unmistakable peep of a marmot got my attention. He was warning his buddies and his family that I was coming through. The squirrels became more intense in their pine cone picking. Pop, pop...the woods was full of ricocheting pine cones. The day shift was beginning to take over from the night shift in the forest. Here came the crows and the ravens yelling at each other. A mountain bluebird flitted ahead of me on the trail. The marmot continued his peeping long after I passed his neighborhood. The sun rose a little higher and cast a rose colored tint on the glades as I passed. As the morning warmed with the sun, I could faintly detect Fall in the air. You know, it’s that dry smell of rustling leaves in the breeze with just a hint of cool air descending from the north country.
All in all, some might say this was a rather uneventful hike in the woods. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not me. I wouldn’t say that at all.