Peggy and I are continuing our exploration of 25 of America’s most beautiful national parks in celebration of America’s 250th Birthday. Today we are journeying to northern Wyoming and visiting Grand Teton National Park with its spectacular mountain range: Our second national park.
I have good news. I mentioned in a recent blog that the Washington Post had reported that Major League Baseball, working in conjunction with the Trump Administration, was exploring the possibility of building a baseball stadium in the Park. Local government and community leaders dashed off a resounding “NO” to MLB and Trump. The idea was dropped faster than a 100 MPH pitched baseball can travel. Concerned citizens can make a difference!
An unobstructed fall view of the Grand Teton mountains with their great natural beauty. Plus ducks. Probably hanging out on their way south.Visitors and wildlife won’t have to cope with thousands of more people clogging the narrow two lane highways and park if a baseball stadium had been built. One can only wonder what would happen if a grizzly attended a baseball tailgate party! One thing’s for sure: It could have had its choice of snacks.Staring to rise 6-9 million years ago, the Grand Teton Mountain Range is the youngest mountain range in North America. The Rocky Mountains developed between 55-80 million years ago and the Appalachians 480 million years. Even the baby Sierra Nevada Mountain Range of California is a million or so years older.And the Grand Tetons are still growing, one earthquake at a time. The latest occurred 5,900, 8,000, and 10,000 years ago. The earthquakes happen along the Teton Fault that runs 40 miles along the eastern side of the mountains. Each quake sees about 10 feet (3 meters) in uplift with the mountain rising 5 feet and the Jackson Hole Valley dropping 5. Is it time for another one? It has the potential of about 7.0 to 7.5 in magnitude.The last time we visited Grand Teton NP we followed Highway 26 out of Casper, Wyoming. Our first view of the Tetons would have been shortly after we passed over Togwotee Pass sitting on the Continental Divide at an elevation of 9,655 feet. Togwotee is a Shoshone word meaning expert spear thrower.Before we could spot the Grand Tetons, we saw these impressive breccia peaks to the north of Highway 26 near the Togwotee Pass. (My father painted these mountains once.)Professional photographer Glen Fishback took this photo of my dad painting the Absaroka Range in the 1980s. Pop, as we knew him, had wandered around the country with his sister, Elanor, a few years earlier.Breccia consists of sharp, angular fragments of various minerals and rocks cemented together within a crumbly matrix of volcanic ash. The peaks are between 10 and 11 thousand feet high.Aspens were also found near the pass. We were definitely being treated to fall colors.Our first view of the Tetons on Highway 26 coming down from the Continental Divide into Jackson Hole Valley.They grew quickly in size and clarity.A closer valley view of the southern Tetons.Now picture yourself as French fur trappers after a winter of being isolated all winter in a single room cabin without female companionship trapping beaver, and you come across your first view of these mountains in 1818. Legend has it that their reaction was something like, “Sacrebleu! Regardez les grand tétons! (Sacred Blue! Look at the great tits!)” Both their imagination and testosterone were running rampant. The mountain range and the future national park got its name. The center peak shown here is the Grand Teton of the park with an elevation 13, 776 feet (4200 meters).I thought this view of the Jackson Hole Valley was rather attractive and looking fall-ish.While the Teton Mountains are young, the rocks that make them up are some of the North America’s oldest, dating back some 2.7 billion years, before there was any life on earth. This photo was from an earlier trip we made to the park (July, 2009). No fall colors! This is looking toward the northern end of the park. The large mountain on the left is Mt. Moran.A final photo of Grand Teton mountain.And a final photo of Mt. Moran. This wraps up our second national park out of 25. Next we will drive up the road from the Grand Tetons and visit Yellowstone National Park. But first— We’ve checked out the natural beauty of the Scottish Highlands; it’s time to check out some of the gorgeous landscaping and flowers of Scottish castles, parks and arboretums.Water lily garden in Scottish Highlands.
Today, Peggy and I are wrapping up Arches NP as the first in our series featuring 25 national parks as a way of celebrating America’s 250th Birthday.
Driving out from the Devil’s Garden, which I covered in my last post, Peggy and I stopped at the historic Wolfe Ranch. It is also the site of Ute Indian pictographs, and the Delicate Arch. Arriving here in 1898 with his son Fred, the 69 year old veteran of the Civil War, John Wesley Wolfe, established a 100 acre ranch where he raised cattle for 10 years.The Old West age of the cabin led me to render it in black and white.Which I also did with the ranch’s original cattle pen.Before Wolfe’s time, the Ute Indians and other tribes had occupied the area, taking advantage of the same spring Wolfe used. The Utes left behind an interesting panel of pictographs that is located above the cabin. Peggy and I have often found petroglyphs and pictographs near water sources in our wandering through the Southwest. These would have been created sometime between 1650 and 1850. The 1650 date comes from the fact that the Utes were riding horses. Horses were not available in North America until they were introduced by Spanish treasure hunters in the 1600s.The Utes riding horses and a dog seem to be herding bighorn sheep, probably toward some type of trap. At least, that’s my interpretation based on the arm positions of the Utes and the location of the dog, possibly to a corral or over a cliff, a trick used by natives with buffalo. The edge of the rock may have signified the cliff. It’s hard to imagine bighorn being herded, however. And it’s easy to imagine their escaping to places the horses couldn’t go. “You want me to jump? Fine. One of my favorite ledges is just over the cliff!”Wolfe’s cabin is also the start of the trail that leads up to Delicate Arch. It is the National Park’s best known arch and an icon for Utah— appearing on license plates, road signs, and in tourist campaigns to encourage people to visit the state..When we arrived, the clouds that we had watched in Devil’s Garden continued to provide a dramatic backdrop. White throated swifts nest in crevices on the Delicate Arch in the summer.If you are following this blog, you will have already visited the Fiery Furnace and the Devil’s Garden in Arches National Park. It’s time to visit the Garden of Eden. My understanding is that early pioneers felt that these two figures resembled Adam and Eve and the surrounding rocks represented a fertile garden. I don’t know about the garden, but they certainly had fertile imaginations. Maybe if one wanders around in a desert long enough… Could Eve be holding up the apple and Adam looking off in the distance as an angel wings and a fiery sword approaches? If you dug around under the rocks, you would probably find a snake to tempt Eve, a rattlesnake. My guess is it would have offered her a dead rodent instead of an apple, however. Or a rock. A person in the foreground provides perspective on size.Is this the fertile garden? An irreverent thought crossed my mind. Maybe it was Adam the first time he saw Eve.Definitely part of the garden. Lots of apple trees, I’m sure. Every garden needs an owl, right? I read that this so-named hoodoo in the Garden is looking down at you. Maybe it’s thinking ‘dinner.’Apparently, climbing the tall hoodoos is a popular sport in Arches. Climbers must have permits and adhere to strict rules that eliminate environmental damage to the rocks.This tall, skinny hoodoo with a man bun is also located in the Garden of Eden.This large hoodoo was along the road between the Wolfe Ranch and the Windows Section. I believe it was opposite the Panorama Point shown on the lower map below. Its size and look earned it a place in this post.Another view.
And now onto what most people think of when they think of Arches NP: Arches. There are over 2000 in the park. It’s the highest concentration of stone arches in the world. The qualification to be an arch is that it must be at least 3 feet in diameter in all directions. I’ve selected six of the most famous arches for today’s post. I’ve already featured the Delicate Arch. Three more are in the Windows section of the park. The other two are between the Delicate Arch and Windows. We missed one of the most famous by cutting our Devil’s Garden walk short: The Landscape Arch. It’s over 300 feet long, making it the longest arch in North America. I’m sorry we missed it.
Skyline Arch is visible along the road between Delicate Arch and the Windows Arches. Again, the clouds were adding a fun background for the photo.A closer look at the arch with its looming thunderhead.We found Sand Dune Arch on the walk through what I thought was part of the Fiery Furnace in my last post. Actually the walk was just outside of the Fiery Furnace.I’m here, giving Peggy a thumbs up, to provide perspective on its size. It was during covid, so I was wearing a mask. Next: The Windows section of Arches NP.The North and South Windows here are what give the Windows section of Arches NP its name. The windows here provide views of the rocks and clouds behind them. We thought eyes would work as well as windows.A close up of the North Window. All of the arches in the Windows section are easily available by trail. As one would expect, there are lots of visitors who take advantage of the fact. Of course, I saw a face in the rock behind the window.Double Arches in the Windows section of Arches NP may be equally famous as the Delicate Arch. A million photos famous. Indiana Jones explored these two arches as a Boy Scout in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There are also several other views of Arches at the beginning of the movie.I’m perched up on the side of one of the arches in 2010, probably close to where the young Indiana looked down on the robbers stealing the Cross of Coronado. The movie was filmed in 1988, some 22 years earlier. Another photo of the Double Arches taken in the middle of the day.My favorite: Turret Arch. The name came from early visitors who thought the large hoodoo on the end resembled the turret of a castle. The stairs leading up to it are part of the trail from the nearby parking lot.Turret Arch rendered in Black and White.A head-on view of Turret Arch. People provide perspective on size. Note the arch just to the left of the main arch.It was quite colorful.This final view of Turret Arch with clouds provides a fitting end for our series on Arches NP. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. There are 24 more incredible national parks to go!This US Geological map and the map below provide the locations of the places we visited and featured in Arches. The lower half of Arches NP.The upper half of Arches National Park. (Source: US Geological map)The second national park in our series of 25 will be Grand Teton National Park. I’ve chosen it because I read this morning in the Washington Post that President Trump is exploring the possibility of building a baseball park within the park somewhere on the land you see in front of you. Imagine having to look over a baseball stadium to get this view. It matches the President’s proposal to cut a road through Yosemite National Park so a resort can be built inside the park by the private equity firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital out of Nevada.In our next post, however, before traveling to the Grand Tetons, we will take you back to the Scottish Highland and its beautiful scenery!
Peggy and I are continuing to look at Arches NP today as part of our series on 25 of America’s national parks as a way to honor the nation’s 250th Anniversary. One thing that we have always noted in our visits to these parks, is that people come from all over the world to enjoy them, which is as it should be. These parks, and national parks around the world, are treasures to be maintained, protected and enjoyed by everyone!
Driving through Arches National Park provides numerous scenic views. This is a look at the Fiery Furnace section. The area gets its name from the color the rocks change to as the sun goes down. It’s like looking into a furnace, or a campfire, when it has burned down to embers.The primary rock formation in the Fiery Furnace is fins. Like a shark’s. Lots of them. The fins are made up of Entrada Sandstone that was initially laid down when the area was covered with vast sand dunes. The sandstone overlayed several thousand feet of salt that had come from ancient seas—a figure that is staggering to think about. As new deposits were laid down on top of the sandstone, the weight caused the salt to flow, almost like liquid, and this caused the sandstone to fracture along parallel lines. Tectonic forces caused the area to rise and erosion wore away the upper rocks, eventually exposing the sandstone. Water was able to seep into the fractures and caused the erosion shown above! And below…Creating what, for Peggy and me, is great beauty.This photo provides a good view of how the parallel fractures have impacted erosion.On our visits to Arches, Peggy and I made a point of visiting at different times of the day to capture the impact of the changing colors caused by the position of the sun. If you visit the National Park, we highly recommend that you go early in the morning and late in the afternoon as well as midday, when the above photo was taken.Horizontal as well as vertical cracks in the rocks allow for erosion to take place in two directions.Looking down into the Fiery Furnace provides a clear look at the impact of the horizontal and vertical fracturing. Plus the green trees add a nice color contrast. This photo also shows the possibility of finding trails through the Fiery Furnace. The word maze fits here quite well. A permit is required for exploration.Imagine wandering through canyons made up of this rock through narrow passages.Peggy walking along a short trail in the Fiery Furnace. It was during covid and she was wearing a mask. All other trails through the area are unmarked, and, like I noted, a maze. People get lost. It’s part of the adventure. Cell phones and GPS don’t work because of the canyon effect. The park labels it a ‘temporary disorientation.’ Box canyons or fallen debris force you to turn around. The limited size of the Fiery Furnace means you will eventually get out. Some fun, huh.The contrasting fractures and uneven erosion can lead to a variety of rock forms in the Fiery Furnace that add to the area’s character.We could not help but think ‘troll,’ when we saw the rock on the right!This added yet another look to the Fiery Furnace. I felt it was almost surrealistic. The white is where water with organic matter, creating a weak acid, has worked its way through the horizontal fractures and bleached the red iron oxide out of the sandstone.A close up. And now, on to the Devil’s Garden…I thought that this pinnacle would make an appropriate introduction to the Devil’s Garden.An inviting trail leads visitors into the Devil’s Garden.Past towering fins.And towering pinnacles.And more fins.There was even a small arch. A larger arch awaited us, but there was much more to see in the park so we turned around.Gathering clouds suggested a possible thunderstorm in our future.This black and white rendering gave it a more threatening look.We will close today with one of our favorite views of the Devil’s Garden. The dead juniper tree in the foreground with a ‘devilish look’ added a nice touch. Next up, an 1800’s ranch, the Garden of Eden, and several arches.
We are starting a new series today on America’s National Parks and Monuments which we will be running in addition to posts on our travels this summer in Greece, Scotland, and Ireland. First up, is Arches National Park in Utah.
There is more than arches to Arches National Park. Balanced Rock is a prime example. It is one of the main attractions in the park. Here, Peggy caught a photo of me shooting straight up from the bottom. Her photo provides perspective on the size of the giant.
Peggy and I have always been drawn to the great natural beauty of our country and the world’s wild areas. In 1999/2000 we both took sabbaticals from our work with a primary goal of exploring the majority of America’s national parks. We ended up visiting 52 from Alaska to Florida. (Our trip also including enjoying the spectacular national parks in the Canadian Rockies.)
Our love for National Parks has continued up to today. Over the past 15 years we have returned to visit and photograph 42 national parks and 20 national monuments— many of which we feel deserve national park status.The parks we will be featuring in this series are all included in this time frame. Most of these parks we have visited at least twice and some, like the Grand Canyon, Redwoods, Death Valley, and Pt. Reyes National Seashore, several times.
We were disappointed that national parks weren’t more of a focus during the 250th Anniversary Celebration. Instead, the Trump Administration pulled tens of millions of dollars in National Park Service funds—primarily from visitor entrance fees—to finance projects in Washington, D.C. and activities like the massive fireworks display, mixed martial arts event called UFC Freedom 250, and the The Freedom 250 Grand Prix. This isn’t meant to criticize the events per se, which were enjoyed by thousands of people, but merely to note that the funds should not have been taken out of much needed national park funds. Sadly, this reflects a number of actions that the Administration has carried out in relation to national parks and monuments.
I will be discussing some of these issues in this series, but my primary purpose will be to celebrate their beauty, wildlife, history and diversity for our 250th Anniversary. The bottom line: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Americans and people from throughout the world could be celebrating the parks and monuments that exist today— plus any more that will hopefully be added— for the nation’s 500th Anniversary.
My objective in photographing the monument from bottom up was to work my way around the monument capturing views like this. One of our goals in this series is to show the beauty of the national parks from different, as well as the same, perspectives that are usually seen.This is a more traditional photo of the rock and its beauty. The total height of the monument is 128 feet (39 meters). The boulder on top is 55 feet (17 meters) and weighs 3500 tons. One wouldn’t want to be under it when this perilously perched peak comes tumbling down tomorrow— or a thousand years from now, a mere drop in a bucket when considering geological time.
The first deposits that Arches NP were created from date back over 300 million years, when sea salt from ancient oceans was laid down. Since then vast deserts, materials eroded from surrounding mountains, shallow seas, lakes and rivers have all played a part. Buried under thousands of feet of rock, geological forces would eventually bring these deposits to the surface, cracking them along the way and leading to the fractures, which, aided by erosion, created the fins, arches, and pinnacles seen today. A process that is continuing.
A similar photo to the one above rendered in black and white. We will be including black and white photos throughout this series. All of the photos are taken by either Peggy or me unless otherwise noted.Peggy and I often amuse ourselves by seeing animals, faces or other imagined creations in rock forms. Balanced rock makes a great dinosaur. We aren’t alone in this tendency. Many of the monuments in Arches have been given names depending on what someone thought they looked like.We found the opposite end of the boulder even more interesting. Scary? Work your way up on the left side from the chin, to the open mouth (with teeth), to the nose and eyes (mainly hidden by prominent cheek bones). We took this photo from behind a small hill next to the monument.Other balanced rocks can be seen throughout the park.Another example. Note the size of the pedestal compared to the rock.A last photo of the Balanced Rock.The location of Arches National Park in central eastern Utah as shown on a Google map. A number of other national parks and monuments are within a 1-2 days driving range.Massive rock structures appear as soon as you drive into the park.They range in size from large…To extra large.And come in a variety of shapes. From peaked…To rounded.The beginning of arches can be seen on the left here. And, if you look closely on the very top. Think of looking up someone’s nostrils.Named monuments are also found a few minutes from the entrance. One of the first is Park Avenue. A half-mile canyon is hemmed in by towering red rocks that reminded early explorers of New York City’s famed street. A close up of the sky scrapers. Some imagination may be required.Meet the Three Gossips busily chatting away.Following the religious theme, this is the Tower of Babel. Arches even has sand dunes— fossilized sand dunes. The eyes staring at you from the horizon are known as The Windows. We will be visiting them later.The La Salle Mountains provide a beautiful backdrop to Arches. I’ll close today’s post here. We have two more coming on Arches. The next post will look at the areas known as the Fiery Furnace and the Devil’s Garden, a gruesome twosome, if you will. We will wrap up Arches with the Garden of Eden and a look at several of the arches that give Arches NP its name. My next post on the Scottish Highlands will be to feature its natural beauty.
The tell-tale hump on its back is a defining characterisic of a grizzly bear. This grizzly is actually an Alaskan brown bear. Grizzlies that live on the coast with abundant fish to eat grow much larger than their inland cousins. But whether a bear weighs 700 or over 1000 pounds, you don’t want one stalking you.
On Being Stalked By a Grizzly
I related a couple of tales about grizzly encounters last week. They were worrisome, but nothing in comparison to being stalked by one. That happened when I was leading a 100 K trek across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in 1985 as a fundraiser for the Alaska Lung Association. We started at Hope on the Turnagain Arm south of Anchorage, followed the Resurrection Pass Trail through the Kenai Mountains to Cooper’s Landing, and then picked up the Russian Lakes/River Trail to Seward. It’s known for both its beauty and bears.
As always, on my Treks in Alaska, I checked in with the US Forest Service to see if there were any issues I should be aware of. There were a couple. A large grizzly was working the area and had treed one of their rangers near Seward two weeks before the trip. Even scarier, earlier in the season, a black bear had bitten through the sleeping bag of a woman ranger and wounded her leg, in the same area. Both had nightmare potential. They had shot the leg-eating bear, however. All I had to worry about was a large, marauding grizzly.
I vowed to keep my group together and make lots of noise on the Russian Lakes/River Trail.
It worked— at least until the last day. The night before, we had come across a forest service cabin. You can reserve and rent them. I’d done neither, but no one was there, and I decided the USF wouldn’t complain about our using it, given that the grizzly incident had taken place about a quarter of a mile away. It was cozy given our group size but bear proof. I figured we were out of the woods, so to speak.
Early the next morning I was awakened by one of my trekkers getting up. I figured she had to go outside and pee, but checked with her. I didn’t want her wandering far from the cabin. “Actually, I want to go for a short walk,” Debbi explained to me. She was a single mom and had loved her week of escape while her mother handled babysitting duties. Or maybe it was her Ex. She missed her kids on the one hand, but didn’t want the trip to end on the other. The walk was her compromise.
I wouldn’t let her go alone, but volunteered to walk with her. I woke up my assistant leader and told him where we were going. We had fun. I liked Debbi. She was bright, had a great sense of humor, and never complained. We laughed a lot. I figured it would keep the grizzly from being surprised if he was around. We hiked for maybe 20 minutes and came to a roaring creek with a bridge over it that we had crossed the day before. We sat down and enjoyed the river for another 20 minutes chatting about our lives. “Time to go,” I said. I wanted to be back by the time the rest of the group was getting up.
We hadn’t walked more than 50 yards when I heard something big moving through the brush on the side of the trail. “What’s that?” Debbi gasped. Whatever it was, it was hidden. And then I saw it. The distinctive hump on the back of a grizzly. A big grizzly! He was moving parallel through the brush, stalking us. “Oh, crap!” I declared.
“What do we do now? Run!?”
I mentioned in an earlier post about not running. Bears think you are food. Plus Debbi was a marathon runner and fast. While she might not be able to outrun the bear, she could outrun me. I suggested we turn around, walk over the bridge we had just crossed and find a tall tree. If the bear appeared and started across the river, we would climb the tree. Quickly. I had spotted a likely candidate the day before. It might very well have been the tree the ranger had climbed.
Thirty minutes later there was still no sign of the bear. I decided it was worth risking the trip back. Two very nervous people began the very long 20 minute hike. Debbi grabbed my hand. She had an iron grip. A mouse in the brush might have given us heart attacks! But we made it with no sign of the bear.
People were finishing breakfast. I quickly apologized for being late and explained the reason. “Yeah, sure Curt.” was the response, looking knowingly at Debbi and me.
Yeah, sure.
I Chat with a Brown Bear Over Menu Choices
Alaska Brown Bears are giants of the bear world. They can weigh up to 1500 pounds and stand 10 feet tall on their hind legs. My first encounter with them was in Katmai National Park, located at the beginning of the Aleutian Peninsula. It’s a wild, remote area known for its trophy size trout. Fisherman come from all over the world to try their luck at catching them. And brown bears grow to their immense size eating them.
I had traveled from Anchorage with a friend to go backpacking. The backcountry where we were heading was the site of a huge volcanic eruption in 1912 and has a beautiful, almost surreal feel to it. The National Geographic had called it the Valley of 10,000 Smokes shortly after the eruption from all of the fumaroles. A number continue to smoke. You can hear your footsteps echoing as you walk over lava tubes. A bit creepy. During rainstorms, volcanic rocks (pumice) float down the river. The river, btw, is named the Lethe after the river of forgetfulness from Hades of Greek Mythology where the dead go. “Souls drink from its waters to completely erase the memories of their earthly lives.”
We had flown over to Kodiak on Alaska Air and then taken a large float plane to Katmai. Four fishermen from Germany and two from Japan traveled with us. We were all met by a ranger when we deplaned. “I’m here to explain proper bear etiquette,” he told us. The large number of giant bears hanging out and feasting on the trout meant human-bear encounters were inevitable. His first directions applied to the fisherman. “If a bear is fishing in a hole you want to fish in, go find a different hole. If you have a trout on your line and a bear shows up, cut your line. If you reel it in, the bear will take the fish— one way or the other.” The ‘other’ sounded ominous.
Then he gave advice that applied to all of us. “Don’t camp on a bear trail,” he admonished. “It irritates the bears. They may remove the tent and you, if you are in it.” And how in the heck do you know a bear trail? It isn’t hard. They are the freeways of animal trails with two distinctive side by side ruts.
The second bit of advice was “If you meet one on the trail, talk to it and slowly back away.” “Talk to it???” What do you say to a thousand pound creature with long, sharp claws, and big teeth that might be having a bad day?
While the water wasn’t as deep on Kodiak Island as it was on the Katmai pool where the giant brown bear was fishing, the objective was the same. Sushi for lunch.
Our first bear encounter was peaceful, at least for us. Not so much for fish. A large pool above the campground had a granddaddy of a brown bear fishing in it. He wasn’t standing on the edge and flipping salmon out like you see in many documentaries, however. He was quietly walking around in the pool about five feet deep with his head under the water. Only his back was showing. Woe to the large trout that swam by. He would strike with all the speed of a snake, and then sit up for a more leisurely feast. The bear held the fish in his paws and ate it like you or I might gnaw on a corn cob— if we were eating the cob as well as the corn. We could hear him crunching away. Then he was off to catch another one. Over and over. It was prime fishing. No wonder brown bears grow so big.
Right about the time we saw him down his third fish, a younger brown bear came along and decided to join in the fun. Not. Granddaddy charged. It was his pool and his fish! The youngster skedaddled. You’ve likely heard that bears can run fast. The smaller bear was faster than that. The two jumped out of the pool and dashed down the trail through our camp. I’m glad I wasn’t in their way, or peacefully sitting outside our tent eating dinner.
That evening I went out for a short walk. Other than mosquitos, black flies and no-see-ums, it was a pleasant trail. I had it to myself— until I rounded a corner and came upon a brown bear going the opposite direction. We both stopped immediately and stared at each other, from about 15 feet away. While not as large as the Grandaddy bear, he was still appeared huge! The trail was narrow and he seemed to be irritated. Maybe it was the bear that had been chased out of the pool earlier.
“Talk to the bear, Curt,” I admonished myself. But what to say? Smart ass that I am, I punted…
“Um, good evening Mr. Bear,” I stuttered respectfully. “I am an Alaskan, just like you. You don’t want to eat me. If you are hungry, I understand there is some great Japanese food on the menu. Or you might want to try the German.”
The bear stared at me for a long two minutes, barked a growl of annoyance, and detoured off the trail. I quickly returned to whatever safety my tent offered. No Japanese or Germans were eaten that night. Or, at least I didn’t hear any screaming. Happily, when we backpacked into the Katmai wilderness the next day, we encountered no bears.
I’m about to wrap up my bear stories, but I do have one more. So far I’ve been featuring bears I have met up with in the woods, but what happens when they come to visit you at your house, as they did in Oregon. They came by to dine out of our garbage can or steal sunflower seeds from our bird feeders. One decided to open my Weber Grill… The bear way.
We are in the final stages of our two month exploration of Greece, Scotland and Ireland. This is the Liffey River in Dublin that our Zanzibar Locke apartment overlooks. The bridge is Dublin’s historic Ha’penny Bridge. It got its name originally from people having to pay a halfpenny toll to cross. The river has a fun tie in with today’s post. James Joyce connected it with the mythological Hades River, Lethe, in his masterpiece: Finnegan’s Wake.
A pair of Kodiak brown bears have a stand off on an Alaskan river. “Maybe if I pretend he isn’t here.” When our son Tony was flying helicopters for the Coast Guard on Kodiak Island, he and his wife Cammie arranged a trip for us to watch brown bears fishing.
The Alaska wilderness experience is significantly different from what you experience in the ‘Lower 48.’ One of my primary reasons for moving to Alaska in 1983 was to explore the difference.
There is a sense of vastness when you slip on your backpack and head away from your car in Alaska, a possibility that you can hike for days and not see another person. And there is an element of danger. Few well-maintained trails and trail signs are there to guide you. The weather is always a factor. Large storm systems march across the state and bring rain and mists in the summer and biting cold and snow in the winter. Plus there are large animals out there, large animals with big teeth, big claws, big hoofs and big horns.
“The better to eat, scratch, trample or gore you, my dear.”
It isn’t that the animals are out to get you. They just don’t have the same level of tolerance their southern cousins do. Recognizing this, I always went out of my way to be polite when wandering in their territory. The number one rule with bears is no surprises. Bears weigh several hundred pounds and have suspicious minds. Their tendency is to bite first and ask questions afterwards when surprised. So, you make lots of noise when walking through dense brush. Almost all of the wilderness shops sold bells to wear, but I regarded them as dinner bells. Cows wear bells, right? And grizzly bears like to eat cows. I preferred to sing. Cows don’t sing. And believe me on this one: There is nothing like a large pile of steaming bear shit to make you sing loudly. Peggy is known to break into a rousing chorus of 99 Bottles of Beer on the wall.
The number two rule is don’t run away. Behaving like food implies you are. Also, as part of this rule, stand tall. Look like a human being. Such behavior suggests to the bear that you know something it doesn’t. Why would a 100-200 plus pound creature stand up to a 500-1000 pound plus creature? It makes the bear more cautious. Possibly something else would taste better.
Be particularly wary if you encounter a female with cubs. Do not approach the cubs or get between the mother and her cubs. It’s a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
These cubs were delightful little fellows, but definitely called for a telephoto lens. Mother bears are very protective of their kids. The cubs were walking across a a fish dam and ladder on Kodiak that was built to allow salmon to get around a 30-foot falls. And Mom was nearby.
Carry bear spray. If that doesn’t work, play dead. Fortunately, I’ve never had to use bear spray or made it to rule number three. (I don’t count the bear standing on me in Yosemite as an attack. I think he was merely curious about what might happen if you stand on a human. Call it a scientific experiment.)
My first journey into grizzly bear country occurred when I went to Alaska in 1981 to help the American Lung Association set up its Trek Fund Raising Program I had created. A friend came along to go backpacking with me in Denali National Park and canoeing on the Kenai Peninsula. Before we headed out on our adventure, the Lung Association Board Member who had brought me to Alaska, took us aside for some advice.
“You will want to carry a weapon with you, Curt, in case a grizzly bear attacks,” he warned. Now there was a comforting thought.
“I don’t have a weapon,” I told him. “And, furthermore, I would probably just piss the bear off or shoot myself.” But he was not going to let us go off unarmed. He broke out his 357 magnum pistol and handed it to me along with a handful of bullets. With that much fire power, I could at least seriously piss off a bear. I took the gun and bullets and dutifully stuffed them into different compartments in my pack.
I thought of a use for the pistol shortly after we headed off into the backcountry of Denali. My friend was walking in front and was primarily in charge of making noise.
“Here bear, here bear,” she kept repeating, “eat the one in back of me. He’s fatter.”
It was our canoe trip on the Kenai Peninsula that led me to finally break out the weapon. It was early in the evening. I was peacefully sitting back, reading a book and sipping a cup of tea when the silence of the evening was shattered.
“SCHIWISSSSH!”
“What the…” I thought, dropping my book and knocking over my tea.
“SCHIWISSSSH!”
Loosing the tea really irritated me. It included a shot of my 151 proof rum. I made a dash for my pack, the pistol and the bullets.
“SCHIWISSSSH!”
Whatever it was, it was getting dangerously close to camp. I could dimly see a large figure through the thick trees. I fumbled through loading the pistol with eight thumbs and two fingers, took it in both hands movie style, and made a heart pounding stalk through the forest, the Great Hunter personified.
“SCHIWISSSSH!”
A large, ungainly moose (all moose are large and ungainly) was methodically stripping the leaves off of a tree. He would grab one end of a limb in his gargantuan mouth and work his way down, ripping off leaves as he went, schiwissssh. My 457 and I high tailed it back to camp in hopes that the moose would find greener leaves elsewhere. Old timers n Alaska will tell you that the moose is more dangerous than the grizzly.
Looking ungainly but not very dangerous. A moose that Peggy and I found in Alaska.Peggy provides some perspective with moose antlers on one of our drives up the Alaska Highway. How would you like to wear these on your head, or worse, have them charging you? This set weighed close to 50 pounds.
My actual encounter with bears waited for when I moved to Alaska. Two involved grizzlies and the third a larger Alaskan brown bear. The first happened on an off-trail trek I was planning to raise funds for the American Lung Association of Alaska. I decided going cross country would be fun and selected a section of the Alaska Range for the adventure. I invited two people, Margaret Timmerman and her friend Tracy, along to help preview the route.
Both were experienced Alaskan outdoor people. Tracy was a glacier guide and Margaret taught mountain climbing for the local community college. She was also my travel agent. Once, when I visited her to arrange for a trip to New Orleans, she related an experience she had leading a group on an expedition up Mt. Denali. They had been caught is a serious whiteout storm on the mountain side and been tent bound for several days. Since I couldn’t imagine leading groups up Denali much less being stuffed up in a tent for that long, I recruited her to be one of my Trek leaders.
Other than fighting off the usual hoards of insects and spending hours walking in the rain, our Trek review went smoothly. But that was before we ran into the bear.
We were hiking happily along on a rare sunny day through relatively open country when a caribou came flying out of a small valley. I mean it was moving. We had seen several earlier. They would bounce up to us, take a look, and bounce off. They weren’t worried and neither were we. But this guy had a problem. Within seconds he had disappeared over a ridge. We looked over in to the valley but didn’t see anything except some snow that hadn’t quite succeeded in melting. I could see tracks in the snow, though, and persuaded Margaret and Tracy to climb down with me and take a look. The story of what had happened was obvious, at least to me.
“Do you guys see what happened here?” I asked. They replied “no,” so I gave them a quick lesson in animal tracks 1a.
“Look over there,” I suggested, pointing down the valley. “See the Caribou’s tracks. He is strolling along without a care in the world. Now look up on the hillside coming out from the brush. See the snow thrown every which way. Something big came barreling out of there heading straight for the caribou. Now look at the caribou tracks here.” The caribou’s nice little stroll has turned into huge bounds. It had gone from 3 to 30 mph in 3 seconds.
“Guess what?” I asked with a nervous grin.
“What?” came the mutual query.
“Somewhere close to here is a hungry, irate grizzly bear.” Three pairs of eyes suddenly got very busy searching the surrounding area. We spotted him almost immediately. He was sniffing around on a hillside looking for marmots to crunch. I pitied the poor marmot he found, but figured better the marmot than us. Besides, I knew that marmots are pretty good at taking care of themselves.
I once watched a grizzly try to catch one in the Canadian Rockies. I had backpacked into a remote area with a geologist from the University of Arizona in Tucson who was doing a study on the origin of the Rockies. The bear provided after dinner entertainment one evening.
He had chased a marmot down its hole about 50 yards away from our camp and was pursuing it with all the passion of a 300 pound NFL lineman pounding after a skinny quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Dirt and rocks were flying everywhere. After about five minutes, the marmot poked its head up out of another hole a few feet behind the frenzied bear, watched with interest for a minute or so, and then whistled. The grizzly whirled and leapt in one blinding motion but the marmot was faster. Once again the air was clouded with flying debris as the frustrated bear doubled its efforts. Three minutes later the marmot poked his head out from yet another hole and whistled again. I swear it was playing with the bear. “Come on over here big boy.”
Tracy, Margaret and I didn’t wait to see whether our irate friend found its marmot. We quietly exited stage left.
My next post will involve two more encounters. Both were much more close and personal than the one described above. In the first, I am stalked by a grizzly bear. In the second I work to persuade an Alaska brown bear I am not a menu item.
Peggy and I are now exploring Northern Ireland as part of our two month jaunt through Greece, Scotland and Ireland. This is a photo from one of the beautiful, glacier created nine valleys coming down from the Antrim Plateau to the Irish Sea. The one we chose to hike up is known as The Queen of the Glens for its tumbling waterfalls. There were several in the section we explored. This coming week, we will be in a remote farm house, apparently without wi-fi or phone service!
Yosemite National Park is world renowned for its beauty. For backpackers, it is also renowned for its bears.
At the end of my last blog, I had backpacked 18 miles into Yosemite Valley to resupply the food the bears had consumed— and alcohol. (I would have loved to witness the reaction of the bear that bit into my plastic bottle of 151 proof rum.)
My intention was to stay in the Valley that night, but it was a zoo, absolutely crawling with tourists. So I shouldered my pack and hiked back into Little Yosemite Valley. My body was not happy. The hike added a 2000 foot climb plus another five miles to an already-long day.
The area’s proximity to the Valley means that it is a popular camping area for backpackers, either as a first-night stop or destination. I found a small, one-person site with a convenient log in the middle for sitting against and used my pack and Thermarest mattress to make a comfy chair. I whipped up a quick dinner, topped it off with a cup of wine, and prepared for bed. (My 151 proof rum was not available in the Valley.)
The popularity of the area for backpackers also means it is a popular area for bears— a dine in or take out restaurant. Given my experience of the night before, I was a tad paranoid. I carefully stuffed my food, and anything the bear might find tasty (wine, toothpaste, etc.) into my food bag and used a cable the park provided to hang food beyond a bear’s imagination.
I also made sure that every pocket in my pack was open, including the top. Although the food was out of the pack, there might have been lingering smells to attract a bear. Closed pockets can lead to bears opening them. It’s rather hard on backpacks. And even if the bear doesn’t stop by for a snack, lots of other woodland creatures, mice for example, are happy to chew holes to get at food— especially in popular camping areas. I’ve had that happen several times over the years.
It should be noted here that several bear/rodent-proof containers are available for today’s backpackers. They weren’t in the 70s. I nodded off that night listening to backpackers yelling and beating on pans as bears worked their campsites, wondering when my turn would come.
I woke up around 11 when I heard a noise on the other side of the log where I had placed my pack, about five feet away. Heart pounding, I sat up to look. A bear was methodically emptying the pack, checking to see if there was any food. I watched with clinical interest as it shoved his head into the pack, pulled out an item, dropped it on the ground and then stuck his head back in the pack. By then I had enough, and suggested rather loudly that the bear go elsewhere. After one more foray, it did. The only damage I suffered was bear slobber, all over everything. My old Basset Hound, Socrates, the world champion of slobberers, would have been jealous.
The next night I was leaving my camp for an evening walk when I met a bear coming to visit. I bent over and picked up a rock. He took off like a dog: It was my kind of bear. And thus my summer went. By the time I had led two back-to-back hundred-mile trips into Yosemite, I had my fill of bears. Each time a bear visited in the night, I’d hear a scream, “Curtis!” I considered myself an expert bear chaser.
It was almost my demise.
At the end of the second Trek, my friend Jean, her sister Mary and her husband Tim joined me at Tuolumne Meadows to hike the John Muir Trail. We spent the night at the Tuolumne RV/car campground. I had eaten backpacking meals for 18 days. It was time to celebrate. We grilled up steaks, broke out a fifth of Jack Daniels, and threw in several cans of beer.
Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park
As the night progressed, I was feeling no pain. So it wasn’t surprising when a bear came to visit our neighbors from Iowa, I was prepared to do battle. They had left their cooler out on the picnic table and the bear was leisurely opening it. The Iowans were hiding out in their camper, making nary a peep.
“Hey bear,” I yelled as I strode across the road, “Get out of here!”
Well, Mr. Bear had found himself a cache of fresh food and wasn’t about to leave. He turned around, stood up on his hind legs, raised his front legs over his head and said “GRRRROWL!” He was one big fellow, towering above me. Stone cold sobriety was instantaneous.
It looked like this stuffed bear at the Tonopah Motel in Nevada.
“OK bear, it’s all yours,” I mumbled as I scurried back across the road to my own camp and safety. “Eat all of the Iowan food you want. Heck, eat the Iowans.”
By this time though, 20 flashlights were shining down on the bear. Campers are packed into Tuolumne Meadows like tenement housing in a barrio, and all of the neighbors were checking out the action, worrying. Thus disturbed, Mr. Bear went grumbling off over the hill, more than a little pissed to have his fine feast disturbed. You could almost make out in his growling, “I’ll be back.”
Of course the Iowans left their cooler out on the table. No way were they budging from their camper. I pictured them driving nonstop back to Des Moines the next day.
Finally things settled down. After another beer, or two, we crawled into our sleeping bags. Tim and Mary disappeared into the security of their truck while Jean and I crashed on the ground.
Not surprising, there came a time when Jean had to visit the restroom. Beer will do that. Equally unsurprising, the bourbon helped me sleep right through her getting up. But I did hear her come back. Except it wasn’t Jean I heard through my alcohol-induced grogginess. It was the bear— coming back for revenge.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” I screamed with all of the passion I had used when I had awakened with the bear standing on me. Jean, not knowing what to do, grabbed me by the head and said, “Curt, it’s all right, it’s only me!” This was undoubtedly the right thing for her to do, except now the bear had me by the head. As you might imagine, my yells increased in volume. By 10.
Picture 20 flashlights shining down on this happy little domestic scene.
That was my last bear encounter of the season. There would be many more in the Sierras, but my next post will discuss encounters with grizzlies and the giant, brown bears of Alaska. If you find encounters with black bears scary…
Consider this fellow. I was stalked by a grizzly bear when I was leading a backpack trek across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.
Peggy and I are in the Scottish Highlands of Northern Scotland now, and continuing our summer adventure of exploring Greece, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Today’s tale from my WordPress blog-a-book, UT-OH!, is about the time I woke up at 4 a.m. with a bear standing on top of me.
Black Bears aren’t nearly as big— or as likely to attack you as their bigger cousins, grizzlies and brown bears. This doesn’t mean they can’t be scary, especial when you wake up with one standing on you. This guy was wandering around our neighborhood when we lived in Oregon.
Bears like me, or at least they haven’t eaten me. They’ve had numerous opportunities over the years. It goes with the territory of backpacking throughout North America for six decades. My scariest encounter took place in the summer of 1969.
By the fifth year of the 100 mile Sierra Trek I did as a fundraiser for the American Lung Association, I had worked my way southward from Lake Tahoe into Yosemite National Park. Since we were utilizing a new route from Yosemite to Kennedy Meadows, I had to preview it. (Besides being another excuse to head out into the wilderness and get paid for it, I didn’t like to take people out on a trail I wasn’t familiar with.)
My friends Ken Lake and Tom Lovering joined me on the first three days from the Yosemite Valley floor to Tuolumne Meadows. Day one found us climbing several thousand feet out of the Valley and camping above the Little Yosemite Valley. The bears dropped by for a visit on our first night in the Park.
Half Dome, Yosemite. Little Yosemite Valley is on the other side.
After carefully hanging our food bags from a cable provided by the park service and burying the left over fake freeze-dried raspberry cobbler (it was made from apples), we trundled ourselves off to our sleeping bags. The problem was we buried the food a little too close to Lake. I think Tom may have been up to his usual mischief.
The next morning, a very excited Ken asked if we had seen the bears in our camp the previous night. Neither of us had and we attributed his sighting to an overactive imagination. Believe me, if a bear had been digging up food next to my head, my two companions would have known about it, immediately.
Day two was tough. What I hadn’t counted on was the amount of snow still left on the ground. The fact that it was melting simply made the hike more challenging. We spent most of our time slipping, sliding and slogging through it. By three in the afternoon, Tom was ready to set up camp right in the middle of a snowfield. Ken and I threatened to leave him with the bears and he committed to another hour. Fortunately, that night was bear free. They would have found little resistance from the three of us.
Eventually, we made it into Tuolumne Meadows where I was faced with another challenge: hiking over 70 miles of snow-covered trails by myself while Ken and Tom returned to Sacramento and work. The journey was fraught with opportunities for breaking a leg, or losing the trail, or being washed away when crossing streams raging with water from melting snow. None of the above was a desirable outcome for someone hiking alone.
Tuolumne Meadows in the summer.
My other option was to return to Sacramento with Ken and Tom, which was not acceptable. I had a week off to wander in the woods and I was going to wander in the woods for a week. I compromised by heading back over the mountains toward Yosemite Valley. My fractured logic concluded that it was better to break a leg and get lost where I had been than where I was going. I also promised myself to be really careful. This included keeping my food from bears.
Hiking out of Tuolumne Meadows took me back around Cathedral Peaks shown here.
The first day was non eventful and the second idyllic. I was exploring new country, doing what I most love to do. As evening approached, I found a delightful campsite on the Cathedral Fork of Echo Creek. Amenities included a babbling brook to put me to sleep, a flat space for my sleeping bag and a great food-hanging tree with the perfectly placed limb. A hot dinner topped off by tea spiced up with a shot of 151-proof rum and I was ready for sleep.
I carefully hung my food bags at the recommended 12 feet off the ground and 9 feet away from the tree trunk and then snuggled down in my sleeping bag. As was my habit at the time, I slept out in the open, only using my tent when rain threatened.
It was somewhere around 4 am and very dark when I awoke with a pressure on my chest. I couldn’t see very far but I didn’t have to. Approximately five inches away from my face was a long black snout sniffing at me. It was filled with grinning teeth and topped off by a pair of beady eyes that were staring at me with a hungry look.
I let out a blood-curdling scream and vacated the premises, in like three seconds!
As I flew in one direction, the equally surprised young bear that had been standing on me flew in the other. I don’t even remember getting out of the bag. The next thing I knew I was standing up, yelling and shining my flashlight into the woods where not one, but two pairs of orange eyes were staring back at me. I lost it. Never have so many rocks been hurled with so much vigor in such a short period of time. The bears wisely decided to head off over the mountain.
But the damage was already done. My camp was a disaster area. My carefully hung food was scattered all over the ground with literally every meal torn open and sampled. All I had left was a chunk of cheese and it had one large bear bite out of it. I hid the cheese under a heavy rock.
As a further insult, one of the bears had chomped down on my plastic rum bottle and all of the rum was gone. I couldn’t even drink. With that option eliminated, I policed the area, crawled back in my bag and went back to sleep. When I awoke in the morning it was obvious that the bears had come back into camp to clean up anything they had missed. Once again the previous night’s trash decorated my campsite. At least the bears let me sleep this time. And they had missed my cheese.
So I ate it for breakfast, cleaned the area again, packed up my gear and hiked 18 miles into the Yosemite Valley to resupply. But my week wasn’t over; neither were my bear experiences. The summer had only begun.
I’m going to be off from blogging for a week or two. We flew back from Greece to attend our grandson Cody’s graduation and naturally I had to catch a bad cold while traveling. Now we are in Scotland getting ready to explore the Scottish Highlands for two weeks and have a full schedule. After that we will be in Northern Ireland for a more relaxed visit and I should be able to catch up!
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that will eventually make it into the book I am blogging: UT-OH!.
I was working in Alaska in 1986 when I decided to give myself a present for my 43rd Birthday, a six-month escape to the wilderness. I resigned my job, said my goodbyes, sold or gave away anything that wouldn’t fit in the bed my Ford Ranger, and dashed down the Alaska Highway to California. I stopped in Sacramento just long enough to turn down two job offers, see my dad, and visit with friends before zipping off to the Grand Canyon for a backpacking trip.
Looking down from Lipan Point at the start of the Tanner Trail. The sharp bend in the Colorado River… far away, is where I am heading. (The photos in this post are from a later trip down the trail that I made with Peggy.)
My first day at the Canyon was devoted to preparing for my hike into the Canyon. Seventeen years of backpacking in all kinds of terrain and climate had taught me that there was no such thing as being too careful. I approach compulsive when it comes to backpacking alone. Had I resupplied my first aid kit? Was my stove still working? Did I have adequate fuel? Did I have my flashlight, signaling mirror, whistle, compass and maps? Did I have enough but not too much food, water, clothes, reading material, etc. etc. etc?
Safety, comfort and even entertainment are important but weight is always an issue.
Having satisfied myself that I could survive seven to nine days in the Canyon, I headed off to the backcountry permit office. The more environmentally inclined within the Park Service are seriously into minimizing impact and promoting safety. Requiring wilderness use permits is their primary tool in achieving these goals.
I patiently waited behind six other would-be canyon explorers and had memorized the minimum impact lecture by the time my turn was up. The ranger frowned when I mentioned the Tanner Trail.
“The trail is poorly maintained, rarely used, 10-12 miles long and arduous, and may be washed out in places” she cautioned strongly.
“And that,” I replied, “is exactly what I want.” I was especially enamored with the ‘rarely used’ part. I had no desire to share my experience with dozens of other people, much less armies of cantankerous mules that leave lakes of fowl smelling pee on the trail. If I had to face a particularly tough physical challenge and be extra careful to avoid a tumble into the Canyon, it was a price I was happily willing to pay.
At 8:30 the next morning my pudgy, pasty white body was having an animated discussion with my mind over the wisdom of my decision. I had started my day by splurging for breakfast at the elegant El Tovar Hotel and then driven out to Lipan Point.
I was now poised to begin my descent into the Canyon. It looked like a long way down. I gritted my teeth and banned any insidious second thoughts.
They came rushing back as I struggled to hoist my 60 plus pound pack. It was filled with seven days of food, extra water and all of my equipment. I had cursed the day before as I struggled to find room for everything. Now I was cursing I hadn’t left half of it behind.
The steep trail seemed to disappear under my feet as I began my journey and descended through millions of years of earth history. About a half of mile down it disappeared for real, having been washed away by winter rains. “I told you so,” my body whispered loudly as I mentally and physically hugged the side of the canyon and tentatively made my way around the washout.
Steep drop offs are a common factor in all trails leading into the Grand Canyon. The first trails were created by Native Americans. Later miners, rustlers, and entrepreneurs interested in promoting tourism would enhance the original trails and create new ones.
I am not sure when my legs started shaking. Given the stair-step nature of the trail and the extra weight of the pack, my downhill muscles weren’t having a lot of fun. Fortunately, Mother Nature provided a reprieve.
The erosive forces of wind and water that have sculpted the mesas and canyon lands of the Southwest are more challenged by some types of rocks than others. Somewhere between two and three miles down I came upon the gentle lower slopes of the Escalante and Cardenas Buttes, which allowed me to lollygag along and enjoy the scenery.
I escaped from the sun beneath the shadow of a large rock to drink some of my precious water, nibble on trail food and take a brief nap. It would have made a good place to camp, others had obviously taken advantage of shade and flat surface, but the Colorado River was calling.
Ignoring the ever-increasing screams of my disgruntled body parts, I headed on. At mile five or so my idyllic stroll came to a dramatic halt as the trail dropped out of sight down what is known as the Red Wall. (It received this imaginative name because it is red and looks like a wall. The red comes from iron dissolved in water that runs down from the rocks above. Think rust.) Some fifty million years, or 625,000 Curtis life spans, shallow seas had patiently worked to deposit the lime that makes up its 500-foot sheer cliff. It is one of the most distinctive features of the Grand Canyon.
The Red Wall, seen across the canyon here, is a prominent land mark and geological feature of the Grand Canyon
My trail guide recommended I store water before heading down so I could retrieve it when I was dying of thirst on the way out. I could see where people had scratched out exposed campsites as a place to stop for the night. The accommodations weren’t much but the view was spectacular.
The rest of the five-mile/five month journey was something of a blur. (It was closer to five hours but time was moving very slowly.) I do remember a blooming prickly pear cactus. I grumbled at it for looking so cheerful.
I was too tired to fully appreciate the beauty of the inner Canyon.
My lack of appreciation included a cheerful cactus flower.
Looking back up the trail provided a perspective on how far I had come. The small, needle-like structure on the rim (right) is Desert View Tower.
I also remember a long, gravelly slope toward the bottom. My downhill muscles had totally given out and the only way I could get down was to sidestep. I cackled insanely when I finally reached the bottom.
Setting up camp that night was simple. I threw out my ground cloth, Thermarest mattress, and sleeping bag on a sandy beach. Then I stumbled down to the river’s edge and retrieved a bucket of reddish-brown Colorado River water, which appeared to be two parts liquid and one part mud. I should have waited for the mud to settle. Instead I used up a year of my water filter’s life to provide a quart of potable water.
Sitting beside the muddy Colorado River.
My old yellow bucket, a veteran of dozens of backpacking adventures.
All I had left to do was take care of my food. Since people camped here frequently, the local critters would see me as a huge neon billboard that blinked ‘Eat at Curt’s.’ Not seeing a convenient limb within three feet, I buried my food bag in the sand next to me. Theoretically, anything digging it up would wake me. Just the top was peeking out so I could find it in the morning.
As the sun went down, so did I. Faster than I could fall asleep, I heard myself snoring. I was brought back to full consciousness by the pitter-patter of tiny feet crossing over the top of me. A mouse was worrying the top of my food bag and going for the peanuts I had placed there to cover my more serious food.
“Hey Mousy,” I yelled, “Get away from my food!” My small companion of the night dashed back over me as if I were no more than a noisy obstacle between dinner and home. I was drifting off again when I once more felt the little feet. “The heck with it,” I thought in my semi-comatose state. How many peanuts could the mouse eat anyway?
The river water I had consumed the night before pulled me from my sleep. Predawn light bathed the Canyon in a gentle glow. I lay in my sleeping bag for several minutes and admired the vastness and beauty of my temporary home. The Canyon rim, my truck and the hordes of tourists were far away, existing in another world.
My thoughts turned to my visitor of the previous evening. Out of curiosity, I reached over for my food and extracted the bag of peanuts. A neat little hole had been chewed through the plastic but it appeared that most of my peanuts were present and accounted for. The small contribution had been well worth my solid sleep.
I then looked over to the right to see if I could spot where the mouse had carried its treasure. Something on the edge of my ground cloth caught my eye. It was three inches long, grey, round and fuzzy.
It was Mousy’s tail!
Something had sat on the edge of my sleeping bag during the night and dined on peanut stuffed mouse. Thoughts of a coyote, or worse, using my ground cloth as a dinner table jolted the primitive parts of my brain. Had I had hackles, they would have been standing at attention ready for action.
I ate a peanut in honor of Mousy’s memory and tossed a few over near his house in case he had left behind a family to feed. I also figured that the peanuts would serve as an offering to whatever Canyon spirits had sent the night predator on its way.
I had my instant oatmeal, dried apricots and coffee breakfast, packed up, and prepared to hike up the river to the Little Colorado. It wasn’t to be. My legs went on strike! Ut-Oh! I hiked about 50 yards, found an ideal location that provided shade and a river view, and set up camp. I happily spent the day watching rafters fighting the rapids while I read a good book and tanked up on water. Over the following five days I explored the canyon, became less pudgy, and gained a tan. I hiked out in three hours, half the time it had taken me to hike in.
The view from camp looking across the Colorado River and up.
Monday’s post: I encounter a radical group of killers and kidnappers out practicing with automatic weapons on a remote mountain road. This story gets a capital UT-OH!
As we noted in last week’s post, our 2025 wrap-up is based on three trips we made during the year and blogged about. The first was Hawaii, which I posted last Monday. Today’s post features our Southwest journey where we wandered through the Southwestern US for five months visiting national parks, state parks, and national monuments. Next week’s post will cover our three week leaf-peeping trip through New England in the fall.
The photos used in the three posts are all from ones we selected to include in three calendars we developed for our extended family, each focused on one of out trips. (Not all of the photos here made it into the calendars, but it was a flip-of-the-coin type decision.)
We discovered the towering rock above in Chiricahua National Monument, which is located in southeastern Arizona. The monument is named after the Chiricahua Apaches who roamed the area prior to it being occupied by pioneers from the eastern US. A couple of notes. One, the park is filled with a fascinating variety of rock structures. Two, we have discovered over the years that national monuments often include scenery, geology, history, plants and animals that easily match those found in national parks. They are definitely worth visiting and are usually far less crowded.
Petrified Forest National Park is found just off of I-40 in eastern Arizona. There are thousands of logs like the one above found in the park. You can still see the bark on this petrified wood that was once a tree that fell 200 million years ago.While most people come to the park to admire the petrified wood, there is also much beauty such as the colorful ‘Teepees’ found on the main road. Each color has a different story to tell representing millions of years in geological history.The Blue Mesa side road includes many other interesting and colorful land forms such as this. If you visit the park, be sure to take the short detour. A walk out in the desert on well maintained trails is definitely in order.Ancestral Puebloans and other indigenous tribes left a view of their ancient world in Petrified Forest NP in petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock. While our understanding of what they were communicating is limited, there is magic in contemplating the possibilities.While we are on the subject of petroglyphs, we found this unique one staring out at us in Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, NM. Over 20,000 petroglyphs have been discovered in the monument. Peggy has plans to include this one in the revision of her word search book: Artistic Word Searches, Unique and Magical: Discovering Petroglyphs from the Southwest.Canyon De Chelly (pronounced shay) is located in northeastern Arizona. Jointly operated by the Navajo Nation that owns the property and the National Park Service, Canyon De Chelly features striking canyon views plus Ancestral Pueblo ruins and petroglyphs left behind by both the Pueblo peoples and Navajos.Our trip this past spring and summer took us into Califonia where we visited family and friends in San Diego, LA, and Sacramento. We also took time to visit Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, known for its strange trees, after which it is named.We found the rock structures to be of equal, if not greater, interest. Some of which could be said to possess personalities.In addition to being known for its outstanding rock forms (think of the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce and Arches— plus what we visited this year), the Southwest is noted for its deserts and cacti, none of which is better known than the Giant Saguaro. We’ve often stopped to admire these huge plants in Saguaro National Park but have never been in Arizona when they are blooming. Things were about to change. Note the buds popping out on top of the arms.This time we were lucky. The blooms are almost other-worldly, in addition to being a source of food for numerous insects such as the bee coming in for a landing.A number of other cactus flowers also lit up the desert.Like plants, animals adjust to the deserts of the Southwest. Several birds choose to nest among the needles of various cacti including the curved bill thrasher Peggy found raising her family in a cholla cactus. The thrasher was not happy when she sneaked up to it and her hatchlings to catch a photo with her iPhone. It’s probably a good thing Peggy couldn’t understand what momma was saying.Bandelier National Monument, located mere miles away from where the first atom bomb was created at Los Alamos, New Mexico, features the ruins of homes built by Ancestral Puebloans that included natural and carved caves (cavates) with pueblo structures once built up against them.Peggy and I climbed up to one of the cavates. It was quite cozy inside. “Honey, I’m home.”Just beneath the cavate, this outcropping of rocks overlooked the large Tyuonyi Pueblo at Bandelier. A corner of the ruins can be seen here. It was built in a circle and contained contained 400 rooms.This tall rock was among the rocks in the outcropping. My first thought was wow! Nowhere in our travels though out the Southwest have we seen a statue like it carved by Ancestral Puebloans or any other indigenous tribes. We had a guide to the trail we were walking on, but there was no information on the statue. Nor was there anything in the information center. The emphasis was all on the scenery, cavates, petroglyphs and pueblos. Human or nature carved, I would think that the park’s literature would at least comment on it. That’s it for today. Next up:We wrapped up our year of travel with out trip to New England so it’s proper that we finish off 2025 with the trip.
Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for joining us on our adventures in 2025. It’s much appreciated. Costa Rica, Bali, and Scotland are coming up in 2026! Curt and Peggy
