| We got up before dawn and broke camp.
It was light enough that we didn’t need to use our headlights. The
going was much faster on the way out. Not having all of the food weight
has been nice. In addition we have gotten better managing our water so
we don’t have to carry as much. My blisters have been well controlled
with moleskin and 800 mg ibuprophen. On the way out we ran into another
hiker who was headed up to see the All-American Man. This was to be the
only person we were to see the whole trip.We hiked 3 or 4 miles to SC4
before breaking for a breakfast of oatmeal with rasins and walnuts…mmm
good. After breakfast we banged out 14 miles to Peek-A-Boo stopping only
for tuna melts. It was 3 pm and we had planned to spend another night out
but the thought of another freezing night didn’t sit too well with
either of us.There were two ways we could walk out. One was the way we
had come in on the muddy jeep trail (3.1 miles) and the second was on the
Peek-A-Boo trail (about 5 miles). Peek-A-Boo would be a few miles extra
but we had been moving at over two miles per hour so that would put us
at the car by 5 pm and in Durango by that evening. Now, the park ranger
had warned us about Peek-A-Boo trail being icy and dangerous. We decided
that three days of sixty degree weather would have surely have melted most
of the snow and ice and that we were going to give Peek-A-Boo a try. BIG
MISTAKE. The beginning of the trail involved us hiking around the lip of
the canyon before ascending several steep slick rock washes and then up
through a 30 foot crack three feet wide in which a ladder had been bolted.
This was a bit tricky with our packs. Matt went first and I spotted. We
kept on hiking around and at one point I looked up on the rock spine above
us and thought I saw a kern. I remember thinking, “who climbed up
there and stacked those rocks??” After a quick switch back and some
scrambling up the slick rock I found out what that kern was actually part
of the trail. The wind was howling and we could see the clouds rolling.
We continued on and found several long stretches of the trail still covered
with snow and ice. It was pretty scary. After we passed the first sketchy
patch Matt and I stopped for a little pow-wow to discuss turning around.
We looked at the topo map and saw that we were already half way through
what looked to be the most exposed stretch and decided that if we went
back we would have to traverse the same amount of dangerous terrain as
if we continued on. So we pressed on. We had hiked 15 miles at this point
with sixty pound packs and done a bit of scrambling and now had to cross
several stretches of steep slick-rock covered in 2 to 3 inches of snow
with patches of ice hidden underneath. One bad step and it was just a quick
ten meter slide to the cliff’s edge and then a 200 foot drop. Pretty
scary. I used my trekking poles and concentrated on each step. It was slow
going on the ice but we finally reached end of the slick-rock and climbed
down. Because we had taken so long traversing the ice we were beginning
to run out of light so we pitched the tent in one of the Lost Canyon campsites. |
