Monday, August 02, 2004
Bones and Stinging Hail
08/02/04
I see bones every day hiking the CDT. Sometimes it a weathered fragment, other times it's a cranium. Most often, it's a big leg bone, like a femur, some weird four-legged shoulder equivalent, or a vertebra. I wrote earlier about seeing the rib cage and spine of some animal because it was so dramatic. The bones I see daily are noticeable, but not dramatic: the bones become part of the landscape.
Crossing the dry stream bed on my way to our camp tonight, I glimpsed a mini-doughnut-sized vertebra. Earlier in the evening, and downstream, I saw an antlered beast's cranium, but someone had sawed off the antlers. It was a rather shocking discovery. It seems like such a violent act, like cutting off a finger.
Earlier today, we went searching for bones. Jonathan's maps reported a vertical limestone shaft that had buffalo bones in it. It seems that the shaft would become snow-covered and bison would fall in.
We never found a buffalo-sized shaft, but we found some smaller cave-like places amid the white limestone cliffs. I donned my LED headlamp, climbed down, squeezed between some rocks, and ducked into a place where rock was overhead. I moved in a little deeper, 'till I came to the floor.
Scant natural debris covered the surprising rich soil on the floor of the falling cave. I focused on the small bones. As my eyes adjusted from the brilliance of the white cliffs in full sun to the lightless, lifeless depth, I immediately saw two craniums, on the size of a small fist, the other the size of half an Italian sausage. I pulled the smaller one out of its half-exposed state, and turned it over to see two relatively giant front teeth in the front of the top of the jaw, a relatively long gap, then two rows of perfectly intact tiny molars paralleling each other. The cranium had lots of the weird and unexplained holes and sockets for nerves, muscles, and tissue to pass through. It was really cool.
I wanted to dig around because I knew the rock at the bottom of the floor was probably pretty far away, but I'm on a thru-hike, not a archaeology field trip, so I resisted.
Spur was entering the cave as I was headed out. I had to face one of the walls to let him squeeze by, and I noticed a small, natural niche in the wall. I couldn't see far in, so I stuck my camera in and took pictures. I'll post them here when they are available.
I walked below the cliffs for a while, capturing some great photos of Apple Pie.
Then I asked Spur to get up there 'cause it was so cool. Yes, photos to follow.
The next adventure I want to report came after lunch.
We were all short on water. I was out, out, out. We were pushing for Buffalo Spring. We walked with lots of wind and full sun for the whole day to that point. I was keeping an eye on the distant thunderstorms, but they were, well, distant.
The constant wind began to pick up as I reached the spring. There's a cattle tank there, but, as promised, it was dry. I stashed my pack under a lone tree because the wind was stronger and was carrying rain drops from... Well look at that, there's a black cloud being pulled along with the wind.
I looked around for the spring as the storm intensified locally. I took off in the last direction it could be, quickly spotting the blue plastic pipe that was supposed to feed the cattle tank. I soon stumbled across the reason the tank was not working: a disconnected pipe. The uphill side of the pipe had water from the spring pouring out, and that's what I needed. The storm continued building as I pumped, even sounding booming warnings of its approach.
I whoop-whooped to Spur as I was leaving to get him to the right spot, and headed back. In the time it took to walk the short distance to my pack, the storm jumped to a new level. The sky was so dark, I could now see the lightning before the intense thunder, and the wind was strong and whipping the plants and trees in every direction.
Before I could get to my pack, I ran across Apple Pie huddled below the ridge where the wind packed less of a direct wallup. I sat next to her, enjoying the closeness of huddling. I told her that the blow ups we'd been having are worth hiking together, referring to stuff that happened yesterday evening and that we processed at some point earlier today.
I didn't have my rain jacket on yet, and it was time. I made my way over and put on my orange rain jacket in the fierce wind which was bring to the rain to me sideways. The rain soon turned to slushy hail which stung when it flew onto my bare legs.
Before too long the slush fell off the hail. Small, hard balls of ice poured from the sky as I descended, each step easing my fears of being hit by the continuing lightning. Rain mixed with the hail as I ducked under a tree against a slope. Soon the three of us were tucked in there avoiding the current deluge.
We played a memory game as the hill became a stream across our feet, and the nearby road became a wet mud pool.
The rain stopped, and we made our way, with a little trail-finding difficulty, to a dinner spot. Along the way, we passed many large columbine. These fantastic flowers in off-white and light purple grew at the edge of the trail when there was forest on one side and open area on the other.
Our dinner spot was good. We had full sun on the wet grass. We pulled out our
groundsheets and some of our wet gear and had dinner.
The evening was going to be a purple route evening, and I was leading the way. I knew where we were headed, I just couldn't find the trail to get us there. I finally stopped following what I thought was the route and took us cross-country in a fairly direct route to the trail.
A few miles further, Apple Pie and Spur were stopped ahead of me, obviously looking at something. I saw the large bull moose in the forest as I approached. His dark body and large antlers stood out against the white aspen trees lit by the horizontal evening sun.
Our final hour of walking squeezed us up the river canyon and into the night. We camped amid more columbine just before the creek lost its flatness.
I have in my notes for today that Bannack (with an 'a') Pass is a dud. If you come this way, don't try to hitch there.
