Banshees, Siouxsie and the. "Red Light". ("Too much exposure")

I entered the snow of the Southern San Juans on Monday June 1st. Although I had known there would be some snow and ice with which to contend, I could not imagine what I would face.

After a few days of annoying postholing and grueling snow climbing, I found myself attempting to circumnavigate an ice covered rock above a small lake. I had to literally press my enitre body against the ice/snow mixture to avoid falling into the lake below.

But after a morning of throwing myself at the frozen slope, I decided I couldn't get around it. I needed another way out. A quick consultation with my Trails Illustrated map showed I could possibly link up to a forest service road 20 miles west of my position if I took an alternate trail west of the Divide.

Following an afternoon of trudging up snow covered hills, I arrived at Fish Lake, or what I affectionately call "my lake".

In the above photo, you'll see on the right side of the picture, going from right to left, an icy wall with the outline of a trail beneath the ice. Fish Lake is 20 feet underneath this. This was probably a worse situation than the earlier impassable slope, but I needed this trail. There was no other official way out to the west.

I carefully ice axed my way to the top of the wall. Each step I looked down, wondering what it would be like to fall into the lake below. Images of falling flashed across my eyes. About 5 feet from the ridge, I lost my footing and quickly slid uncontrollably onto the ice. Immediately I plunged through the sheet and a wave of cold ran through my thighs. I was only underwater up to my waist, but it felt like more. At the same moment, I was hot and cold. I struggled to stand and eventually found my way up the icy wall back to my starting point. The bottom half of my pack was soaked, as were, more importantly, my camera and my GPS.

They were thoroughly saturated. And inoperable for a time. That afternoon they would both power on ok, but I had ruined two sets of batteries with only one set remaining. I refrained from taking too many pictures from here on out.

Finding my effort at Fish Lake thwarted, I tried bushwack west down a frozen river. Every 10 feet I could hear the rushing river through the thin ice. I avoided those patches....

And 3 miles of frozen river later, only about 2 from my destined road, I'm at the edge of a 40 foot waterfall of ice. Yeah, I was pretty frustrated. It begins to blizzard. I'm desperate to get around this waterfall to the river valley below, and to civilzation. Below is a picture of the rock wall I tried to climb to circumvent the waterfall. I figured I'd go up the rock, down the ridge, and hopefully a trail emerges west. You'll see the rock wall on the left with the river in the center. A few grazing Elk gawked at me. After making it about halfway up - the rock crumbling under my hands, my 40 lb pack straining at my arms- I realized I couldn't make it to the top. After sitting for a while on a ledge, straining in the blue wind, figuring out what I could do, I gingerly climbed down.



I walked back up the river and made camp at Blue Lake. I had two days of food left. That night was a mix of sleep and anxiety. Finally around 3am I began to dream. I dreamed I was near UC Berkeley again. My mom was supposed to pick me up at the subway (the BART?), but I couldn't find the station. I awoke at 5:30 in the snowly tundra still looking for a metro station.

In light of my food and battery situation, I decided to head NE and bushwack my way towards Portero, a small collection of cabins near forest highway 250. I wasn't even sure if there would be cars or food or even people in Portero, but I had to go somewhere. I had to

The route there was trailed about half the time. The remainder of the travel consisted of my stammering collection of slides and jumps across ice chutes and tributary falls(sometimes ending up in the cold flowing river below).

After a morning and an afternoon of snow bushwacking, I arrived Thursday night at this meadow. The sun was shining and I was finally somewhat close to a road. It couldn't have been sunnier.

My tongue strewn downmy chin, sunscreen and dirt streaked across my face like an exhausted tribal warrior, hungry, and at the end of my rope, I staggered in Thursday night at the Portero Hunting Lodge, a small out-of-the-way resupply stay for hunters and fishermen. Uh, they were not entirely pleased to see I was tracking snow on their carpet.

I'll have to cut this entry short since the library is closing, but obviously the story ends happily. I'm going to have my 5th meal today in Pagosa Springs, CO. But well, I suppose we all need to have a brush with the dangerous once in a while.

Hopefully I can speak further to some of the elements in this experience in future entries.

Songs making the honorable mention list:

-Bush, Kate "Running Up That Hill". (obvious!)

-Death Cab For Cutie. "A Movie Script Ending" (When I awoke, I was on the highway)

-National, The. "Baby, We'll Be Fine". (All night I lay on my pillow and pray)