Playful soft thunder directly overhead. I’m sitting in a cave at — well, I don’t know the exact elevation because my GPS isn’t working, I’m in a cave. Somewhere far above where you’re supposed to be during a thunder storm. The nearest trees are a dark smudge in the basin below the basin below me. I lean out to see if I can get the GPS to work and a piece of hail pings off my knee. My first taste of the famed afternoon thunderstorms of the Continental Divide.
During my survey this morning I saw a lot of very fresh droppings, no more than one or two hours old. Eventually I passed some that looked like minutes. >12,000 feet high, a completely open bowl, open tundra. I should be able to see everything. Where are the animals? I can’t see them but they must be watching me. The Colorado River gurgles from its earliest source in the spongy mountainside. Otherwise nothing moves. I turn uphill and am looking straight at a herd of elk — 5 of them, no antlers, 2 calves, 300 meters away, just open ground between us. I’d been hoping. These watchful elk in their alpine bowl are more majestic than the lions I saw in Zambia. Something about their size, their movement, the habitat where they live. The herd disappeared over the nearest ridge as I watched. Twenty minutes later a lone straggler passed close enough for me to hear his footfalls.
I almost forgot to mention the sound elk make. I can’t think of any other animal that calls like they do. It’s not like the alarmed bark or cough that many deer make. No, here is a member of America’s surviving mammalian megafauna who calls, practically sings, like a colossal cousin to the birds I’ve been chasing all morning. The sound is an ancient, piercing scream, a blend of human, wolf and whale. No terror in it, but a martial ring of announcing. A song that speaks of magic out here, close at hand, treading this same ground. It’s called bugling.
Tomorrow’s survey — my season finale — is in the next basin over, only about a mile away as the crow flies. I have two options to get there: A) Down and around: descend through the entire beetle-killed, pick-up sticks forest I bushwhacked over, under, and through this morning, only to hike aaalllll the way back up the next drainage in order to regain the elevation. B) Up and over: “scramble over various ridges,” as a previous technician wrote in the transect notes. The scramble is all above treeline, on terrain I won’t get to see otherwise. I want to go up and over.
Not five minutes after I finish my last point count, the first raindrop hits me. “Well, shit.” I scramble to repack the backpack I had just opened for lunch, wondering why it never occurred to me to bring a rain jacket or pack cover on this bona fide backpacking expedition. Luckily my tent and sleeping bag are in a trash compactor bag, as always. I stuff Arctic Dreams and my data sheets in deepest, then cover them with belongings that can get wet, lay a bandana over everything to absorb the worst of the moisture and roll the top closed. Where the hell to go? Where did the elk go when they ran away from me? I follow their path several hundred meters to a drop-off for a better view of my options. The nearest trees seem a thousand feet below: too far for quick cover, and I would have to climb all the way back up once the weather clears. AND the trees are all beetle-dead, which means poor shelter, not to mention widowmakers primed to topple and crush me in any wind. I look around and settle on a band of sedimentary cliffs above me on my right, just overhung enough to deflect rain from their base. By the time I get there the shower has mostly passed, but I stop anyway. It’s the most sheltered lunch spot I’ll find around here.
When the sky looks clearish in the direction I need to go and thunder starts to rumble from the opposite horizon, I decide it’s time to execute the up-and-over. For the first 45 minutes of the climb, everything is fine, though disconcerting — thunder still behind me, mixed skies ahead. As I hop over shifting talus, climbing higher toward a gray ceiling, I bandy around reasons why what I’m doing is a good or bad idea. Haven’t heard any thunder coming from above or ahead — Where will you go if you do? — Often storms threaten but blow over — Lightning can strike without rain — Weather changes fast in the mountains, maybe it’ll get better — Or worse.
The crux of the matter is that I just don’t want to go the whole way back down and then up again. More thunder. The thickening skies don’t care about my feelings. I’m nervously aware that this situation feels like the rising action in a case study on decision making gone wrong in the mountains. Now I’m moving as fast as I can, wondering whether I’ll regret taking the up-and-over route, scanning the mountainside for emergency hiding places. The nearest cover is the dead trees in the basin below the basin below me, barely even visible in the distance. I note a big overhanging roof in the rock 100 feet uphill. I’ve reached the most exposed part of the traverse, the crest of the ridgeline where the mountain drops away on both sides. I pause. To move forward I’ll have to continue up the knife’s edge toward the highest ridgetop around. The wind rises. Rolling thunder and raindrops on my head — my cue to get out of here. I scamper up the newly wet, eroding mountainside to the shelter I saw 5 minutes ago. The recess is big enough to hide me from the sky, all that matters right now.
It’s beautiful in here. The falling water is filling the hillside with quiet noise and although the thunder seems to be coming from straight overhead, it has been more deliberative than violent (and I’ve prayed it stays that way). My stuff and I are dry. I’m really lucky I found this cave when I did. It almost seems miraculous. There must be no drier spot for miles, no better lightning shelter anywhere at this altitude, and I just happened to be a 3-minute scramble away when the clouds opened. Thank you to whoever is responsible for this. I’m reminded of last winter with L in Big Bend Ranch State Park when we found an empty cabin just in time for the big snowstorm the day before New Year’s Eve. At the time I thought the world was imposing a day of stillness on us, a pupation in preparation for the unfurling of the new year. With just one survey left in the season, I feel the same way now.
It’s 2 PM. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here. Maybe an hour? It’s been a placid rotation of thunder, hail, rain, quiet, repeat. I just hope they stop within a few hours. Tomorrow’s survey is only 700 meters away by my GPS, but I won’t traverse the ridge in this weather. The valley below is starting to turn white from all the hail, which doesn’t bode well for the traverse even if the weather moves on. I don’t want to think about the long alternative down-and-around in the rain. This cave has no flat rocks to lie down on. If the storm doesn’t break, could I sleep here?
I made a dash for it. Today’s rain clouds materialized late in the morning as cumulus, which led me to believe I was dealing with an ephemeral “afternoon thunderstorm.” After several hours in the cave under a gray stratus blanket with no end in sight, I knew it was time to give up waiting out the storm and find the most weatherproof campsite for the night. Halfway across the ridge, the thunder boomed overhead and a drizzle started up, but I had come too far to turn back. After a long search, I’m holed up in my tent within a tight ring of stunted spruce trees and willow. Hope tomorrow is sunny. The cave was a risky kind of fun, but this day has turned into a cold, wet downer.
Note to self: when spending the night in mountains, come prepared for rain, no matter WHAT the weather is down there!
