Potosi Peak

Watch Your Step

Lessons from trail work volunteering on Mt. Sneffels

Leif Johnson

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Driving to work every day I see mountains. La Plata’s to the east, Abajo’s to the west, Sleeping Ute to the south, and the frosted tips of the Wilson Range to the north. For someone who loves to be in the mountains it’s like a surfer driving past a clean break on their way to work, fighting the urge to take sudden, tire-screeching detours. Not to say that I’m a professional or even amateur mountain climber by any means. In fact, I’m quite the opposite, endowed with a rather paralyzing fear of heights. But that’s never stopped me from pretending to be Jimmy Chin on the weekends. As with most people though, the weekends just never seem to be enough. So when the chance to spend three days volunteering on Mt. Sneffels with Colorado 14ers Initiative appeared in my inbox, I jumped in like Bear Grylls glissading down a snow field.

Colorado, more than any other U.S. state, virtually straddles the Rocky Mountains, with its eastern and western boundaries falling to either side of the range like legs hanging from a saddle. Because of this, it boasts more peaks over 14,000 ft in elevation than any other state. With so many of these massive mountains, 58 named peaks in all, the prospect of summitting or “bagging a 14er” has lured people in for decades, becoming a de facto right of passage for many Coloradans.

In the 80’s and 90’s, as the 14er craze gained steam, would-be climbers were taking to the mountains in droves. Places that may have only heard the crunch of hiking boots once or twice a year were now bearing the brunt of tens of thousands, putting an enormous strain on a unique and fragile ecosystem.

As more people ventured out it quickly became apparent that someone needed to control the masses. This realization ultimately gave birth to the Colorado 14er Initiative (CFI), a non-profit whose mission it is to protect and preserve the natural integrity of Colorado’s 54 14,000–foot peaks through active stewardship and public education. And one of the biggest parts of that mission is to restore, reroute, and rebuild trails.

Our camp was a cluster of trucks and tents wedged between two streams. Each morning as we milled about in the cold, the sun would peek into Yankee Boy Basin, blushing the peaks and clouds overhead with shades of purple and red. Once we were sufficiently clothed and caffeinated we would begin the two mile hike to our worksite at the base of Mt. Sneffels. As the minutes passed, the group would spread out and I would watch as the forest gave way to tundra, the trees, like the rest of my team, shrinking into dots on the trail ahead.

The word “tundra” seems so out of place to me in Colorado. Having spent my childhood watching Animal Planet, I was used to hearing tundra referred to as the land of the Arctic, a vast expanse of open ground, full of grazing caribou and wooly musk oxen. Mt. Sneffels may be far from the nearest musk oxen and a long way from the Arctic Circle — roughly 59 hours by car according to Google — but the plant community above the treeline in the Rockies ultimately has a lot of similarities, giving it the name “alpine tundra.”

Golden Marmot

Much like the Arctic, weather conditions can be brutally harsh at higher elevations. Depending on conditions, temperatures can drop 3–5 degrees for every 1,000 feet of elevation gain. Winds can top 100 mph. Radiation from the sun doubles in intensity from sea level, and snow can persist deep into the summer resulting in a growing season of just 3–4 months. So nature has had to adapt, and the best way it knows to deal with high winds, short growing seasons, and frigid temperatures is to get low and get small.

Trails are born out of aspirations. You know the end goal, “I want to get to the top of that mountain,” but the route to get there is not always clear. In the beginning there may be multiple routes that braid in and out of each other as they go, but eventually those routes are consolidated into one main path.

As a trail’s popularity grows, its flaws inevitably grow with it, every compounded footstep further compromising its integrity. Erosion quickly sets in forcing hikers to abandon the trail in places only to bring with them still more erosion. In these high alpine environments, it doesn’t take much to damage the tundra habitat. Just an inch or two of sediment build up from a washed out trail is enough to kill many of these plants, so fighting the processes of erosion becomes mission number one for CFI trail crews. Not only does it kill plants by smothering them, but it also causes the loss of soil that can take tens of thousands of years to accumulate.

“What we’re trying to do is just corral people,” so that they take the right route without thinking.

Mt. Sneffels in the upper left

You likely couldn’t pick a CFI project manager out of a line-up. Their experience is not necessarily apparent to the naked eye. Aside from a few tan lines, some dirt under the nails, and calluses hidden beneath socks and gloves, they blend in with just about everyone else. But put a rock bar in their hands, a pack on their back, and send them up a hill and you’ll quickly start to see there is something different at play.

Hannah and Miriam, our crew leaders, are mountain people. Light and strong they moved uphill with ease. Hundreds of hours spent waking, working, sleeping, and living at elevation has shaped their minds and bodies to these extreme environments. To them, discomfort is a constant companion, as routine as breakfast, as easily ignored as…

I watched in sheer amazement each morning as they scaled the trail like they were walking through town, but it wasn’t until the actual work began that they really lit up. Sculpting trails was a calling to them, one they gladly embraced. Their eyes have been trained to scrutinize the landscape in a way that most hikers are blind to. Slight changes in slope, minor gaps between rock and soil, testing the durability of a rock-staircase with a step, stomp, or jump. They can look at a trail and know exactly how it will fail in five, ten, or twenty years. So when they work, they’re thinking far into the future.

Building trails in the tundra often starts with finding the perfect rock, that is if rocks are available. Spotting the perfect rock though is always a challenge. Hannah and Miriam would scan the surrounding talus fields until they found a shape that seemed to fit the trail in their mind. Wry smiles would break across their faces when they found one, but finding that perfect rock is only the first step. After all, if you can’t get it to the work site, then it’s not the perfect rock. And so the talus field calculus begins as you imagine transporting it to the spot. A sort of trail work ROI is calculated on the fly, factoring in things like how many people would be required? What tools would be needed? Would it be worth the risk? Because let’s be honest, moving rocks that weigh hundreds of pounds over uneven terrain comes with plenty of risk. Opportunities abound for twisted ankles or pulled muscles, a fact that Hannah’s healing back would readily take the stand for.

So often one of them would point out a rock and I would think to myself, “there’s no way we’re moving that,” but without fail, we always managed to do it. It’s amazing what you can do when you have a couple of people, the right tools, and the right knowhow for the job.

On our last night at camp the eight of us squeezed under a sunshade as ice fell from the sky. Seated in tiny camp chairs we huddled close, water splashing down in puddles all around us. Hail pelted the tent making it hard to hear, so we circled ever tighter, our breath turning to fog in the glow of lantern lights.

Conditions throughout the day had swung from a whiteout blizzard as we worked to beautiful sunny weather full of clear skies and sunburns. Now, as the sun slipped beneath the horizon, ice formed on the outside of my margarita cup as we once again wrapped ourselves in puffies and Gore-Tex.

When I would show pictures of this trip to my family, my dad would comment that it reminded him of his time in the Marine Corps, “practicing misery.” It would have been hard to dispute that the photos had a certain “miserable” quality to them, but as I looked around at everyone’s faces that night, misery was the farthest thing from anyone’s mind. Thunder and hail filled the basin, but smiles wrinkled our eyes and conversations filled the tent.

“Are we group-thinking that we should head for shelter?” someone asked as we traded stories of close calls with lightning. “No…” someone blurted out “we’re group-drinking!” The tent filled with laughter and the sound of clinking margarita cups as another rumble of thunder echoed through the valley.

There are a lot of numbers that go into climbing a peak. Coordinates, mileages, elevations, temperatures, timing. The details are crucial to achieving the goal, but in the end, you can’t quite quantify the value of time spent in nature.

Thinking about it now, I know my life has been forever altered by the time I’ve spent in the wilderness, and yet the wilderness has never asked for anything in return. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize how important it is to make sure my relationship with the outdoors is not one sided, and opportunities to volunteer with organizations like CFI allow me to act on that.

Working for those few days on Mt. Sneffels I came to see that we have the power to change the face of a mountain, no matter how massive and permanent it may seem. Our actions have weight. Things as simple as where we choose to step and the words we choose to use. It all has an impact on the world around us and as humans indelibly linked to wilderness, we have an obligation to it. An obligation to protect the character of the places that improved our own, to give back to what fills us up. To advocate for and speak up for places that speak to us. To pay our respects to what doesn’t charge us a dime and to get our hands dirty along the way.

It’s a weird juxtaposition to acknowledge the impact you have on a place that makes you feel like everything you do is insignificant. To be in the company of mountains and forests that touch the horizon is to be shown how small you truly are, something I think we could all use now and then.

Potosi Peak and the end of the 4x4 road

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