Part Sixty One

     October 3rd                          Rabbit Ears Pass, CO                         (Go to Pt 1)

I got the tent pitched and was unloading my pack when, for no particular reason, I started to feel uncomfortable.  I didn’t know why, but this black-water pond with all those dark, witchy-looking trees surrounding it seemed threatening.  I felt like I was invading a space I shouldn’t be and, despite the idyllic campsite, this Round Lake did not feel friendly.

That night was one of the eeriest nights of the entire trip. There was no moon and the dark was so impenetrable that it was impossible to look into the forest and not see something lurking in the trees.  The silence was deafening but every so often I’d hear twigs snap and then rustling just beyond my sight.  

I got the crawling feeling that something was watching me, so I got up and walked around the perimeter of my camp, peering into the blackness.   Craig flashed through my head because I was growing acutely aware of not having another strong, formidable, male human with mountain savvy at my side in the face of danger.  And I was suddenly seeing danger everywhere I looked.

It was well past dark and I should have been sound asleep inside the tent but instead I sat outside, wide awake, fretting about something prowling around just beyond my vision.  I could feel it, I could sense it, but I couldn’t see it and I felt incredibly vulnerable.  Later, and finally asleep in the tent, I dreamt that I was still awake and sitting outside the tent with all kinds of bizarre things going on in the forest that held me in a state of dread and fear. 

When I awoke from this dream in the blackness of the tent, I wasn’t sure if I was awake or if I was dreaming or if something was actually coming out of the woods after me; I was completely disoriented.   It was a fitful night and the moment morning sun reached the tent I packed-up my shit and got the hell out of there.  
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As far as that night was concerned, the only explanation I could come up with was perhaps there had been a deer or elk carcass right close-by which was still being actively fed on by a mountain lion or bear, and maybe I had spent the night under the wary eye of a leery predator.  It was either that or just sheer paranoia gone haywire.

Click on the map for a larger image

From Round Lake, I started off on a short piece of trail leading down to Fishhook Lake then turned east, going cross-country over the Continental Divide to the eastern slope because my forest service map showed a trail that rounded the north side of Rabbit Ears Peak.
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I hadn’t raised-up any blisters the day before while hiking up the Fish Creek Falls trail but now the break-in battle with my new boots was to begin in earnest.  As soon as I started up the ridge I could feel my heels digging into the heel pocket of the boots and I just knew I should have mole-skinned my heel bones before leaving camp, but hadn’t, and I wasn’t going to stop to do it now.

On the east side of the ridge I found what I figured must be the trail shown on my map and followed it for several unidentifiable miles before it just quit somewhere in the woods on the northwest flank of Rabbit Ears Peak.  From the inexplicable dead-end I had to work my way through a fairly dense forest until I was able to find my way down and around to the lower, eastern slopes.

Here the forest opened up into large glades of aspen on easier terrain that allowed me to pick-up the pace, but not for long.  Just as I was starting to stretch out my stride I began to hear crashing in the downhill woods below that I figured had to be either moose or elk because there was too much racket going on to be deer. That’s when I looked down through the trees and saw range cattle. “Fuck.”

Range cattle were the worst. They were wild animals without a lick of sense. For instance, a moose, elk, or bear, won’t charge at you unless you give them a reason to do so, not so with range cattle.  Range cattle are so blinded by instant panic that they’re just as likely to mow you over in an attempt to get away as they are to actually run away. As a result, their panicked reactions are a helter-skelter of unpredictable power.

As I worked my way down the slope I became enmeshed with the heard but as long as I had trees to screen me I wasn’t causing too much trouble. Then, toward the bottom of the slope the trees thinned as the sagebrush valley opened up below and I lost my cover.  By now I had numerous cows in a state of agitation, jolting hither and tither a few yards at a time and gathering in groups of panicked unpredictability.

I crouched behind sagebrush bushes, allowing the senseless creatures a few minutes to forget they were upset and settle down, then I’d push forward another 20 to 25 yards, just enough to get the hags all riled-up again, before taking a knee behind some ridiculously scrawny bush that only a cow would see as a vanishing act.

From where I was embedded in the heard, I still had about another half a mile to reach the fence line and I was completely surrounded.  My movements now seemed to shock the cattle like a voltage prod and they were bolting into other cows, stirring-up a chain-reaction-disruption throughout the heard.  If I wasn’t careful, I was going to have a small range-riot on my hands. I ‘hid’ behind a sagebrush bush and tried to focus on how I was going to get out of this pasture.

Again, I thought about Craig.  We had managed a lot of range cattle hiking through Montana and with the two of us we could employ strategies to move around the cows.  In addition, the two of us together made for a more formidable looking creature to a cow. But out here alone, mimicking sagebrush was the only strategy I could come up with. 

I spent nearly an hour or more of slow, deliberate movement from bush to bush before I was able to reach the fence, practically snake-bellying my way out of the pasture.  Man, was I relieved to get out of there!  Overall, the dead-end trail, northside bushwhack, and range cattle episodes had cost me the afternoon with only an hour or so of daylight left to find a camp.

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Go to Part 62

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The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

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