The Adventure
Rocky Mountain National Park has a backcountry ranger cabin at Poudre Pass. In the winter they conduct more or less weekly snowmobile trips into the cabin to make sure everything is secure. On the way in they check the Corral Creek Park Service/Forest Service cabin, too. A law-enforcement ranger leads the trip, taking one or more other folks with him/her for safety. Once they reach Poudre Pass Ranger Station, they call ROMO (Rocky Mountain National Park dispatch center) to confirm their safe arrival. My husband and I accompanied out friend Chris on the Valentine's weekend trip of 1995. My husband has been back several times, but I just haven't had it work out for me. But I will return. And I WILL make it to the Poudre Pass cabin.
The Start
A simple trip by snowmobile into the Poudre Pass ranger cabin, that's all it was going to be. Oh sure, we were going to get stuck a few times, but no big deal. Yeah, right.
All during the week before the trip people kept asking us if we were still going to go. First they asked because the weather was warm, the snow was getting really soft and we were likely to have a rough, slushy, wet, time of it. Later in the week they were asking because we got dumped on for two days straight. We figured the worst that could happen would be that we'd get to a place where we couldn't get any further, turn around, and come back. No big deal. Yeah, right.
Saturday morning we arrived a few minutes late to meet Chris. Nobody knew where he was. Tom & I knew he had gone to Denver Thursday and Friday, and expected to meet us at 8:00am. It was about 8:15 or so before he arrived. He'd had a rough drive home; 7 hours from Denver to Grand Lake (normally a two-hour drive). When we went to load up the snowmobiles, one of them wasn't idling, and was running rough, missing now and then. It turned out the spark plug wire was off one cylinder. We fixed that. Then we decided to check the fuel levels -- they're supposed to be topped off before they're put away. One was at half tank, the other three-quarters full. The one snowmobile that was already loaded on the trailer was full.
Finally, by about 9:30 we were on our way. It's 144 miles to the Corral Creek Ranger Station, 9 of them on snowmobile. We stopped briefly (potty stop) at the Rand store. The co-owner/wife gave us a sample of the wonderful barley-split pea-navy bean soup she was cooking. We were off again by 11:30. We doubled back to the cutoff - Jackson County Road 27.
About 4 miles from Rand we saw that another vehicle was approaching. We couldn't really tell where the roadside ended and the ditches began. The few tracks there were kept to the center of the road area. We moved a bit to the right and stopped. The obviously flat area ended just ahead of us. When the truck got to us the driver stopped and threw up his hands as if exasperated with us. Chris pulled ahead a little, then stopped, hoping the other driver would go on by. But he moved only a little, then stopped. So Chris tried to cautiously go by. Unfortunately we weren't far enough over and the newest of the snowmobiles (they hang over the side a little) hit the truck. The truck's grill was dented, the mirror (swing-away type) was flattened to the truck door, and there were a couple of scratches in the door. The snowmobile lost the taillight lens. At first the driver was furious. "What the fuck are you doing? You ran me off the road last year and left me stranded for three hours! It was this same truck, same trailer and same three snowmobiles." Chris told him he wasn't the one who ran him off the road. He also told him not to worry it wasn't his (the other driver) fault, and insurance would cover all repairs. The other driver told Chris that the truck wasn't even his, it belongs to his boss, who was following on a tractor. He (the other driver) cooled down very quickly when he realized that Chris was staying to get all the details straightened out. It was understandable that he was really hot when the accident first happened. Whether it happened exactly as he said, that's how he perceived the incident. I would have been hot, too. It turned out there was more room on our side than on his and he knew it. There was less than a foot between his right wheels and the edge of the road; about 3-4 feet on our side. Once we had all the details exchanged we were on our way again.
Finally, we got to the trailhead. We offloaded the sleds, found out the trailer hitch on the Indy Trail Deluxe was either frozen solid or damaged. We tried beating it gently with a hammer, but it was stuck solid. So we hitched the trailer to one of the new machines. Then we went over the berm. The highway department had pushed snow to the edge of the wide area at the start of the road to Corral Creek & Poudre Pass. This berm was very soft. Chris went first and sank. So we dug him out. Tom took the next machine through and barely made it through. Chris asked me if I wanted to take the one with the trailer and I told him I didn't really want to, but he said "go for it", so I did. Tom told me to "gun it", so I did. I didn't get the sled stuck. But I did get it airborne, trailer and all, then I fell off. When Tom & Chris asked if I was OK, I didn't think too much of it. After all, they were my companions and friends. When the skiers came up to ask if I was OK I started wishing we'd had a video camera!
So began our trip.
The Journey In
For the first couple of miles things went fairly well. Then we began getting stuck. Chris was in the lead on the Indy Trail Deluxe. He was turning white all down his back from the snow the machine was kicking up. What we didn't realize was that his front was getting crusted, too. None of us could put down our visors; they fogged up right in front of our eyes. Tom & I abandoned our sunglasses, too, because they fogged or frosted every time we got going. Poor Chris had prescription glasses. Photogray glasses stay dark when they're cold. He was damned if he wore them -- they frosted over and he couldn't see; he was damned if he didn't because he couldn't see without them. You should have seen the icicles he kept growing off the bottom of his helmet, usually three at a time!
The snow that had fallen up in the Corral Creek area was comparable to what had fallen in Grand Lake during the same two or three days. There was a faint track in the snow from where folks had gone before the current run of storms. But even in that track we sometimes found our machines getting sucked off the hard-pack and into waist-deep powder. Each time we dug out it got harder. A few times Chris simply missed the track because his glasses were frosted over. We took turns in the lead, but Tom and Chris did most of the trail-busting. The one time I was briefly in the lead we came to what almost looked like a fork. The last tracks turned around there. They were deep tracks. We thought it looked like the roadbed to the right. I led off and got about fifty to one hundred feet when my machine just started sinking. As it sank, it tipped to the right. (Most of the time we tipped to the left.) The powder was so deep we decided this was not the way to go (roadbed or not). So once we got the sleds out and turned around, we tried the route through the trees to the left of the little meadow or lake or ?, and made another half mile to a mile. From there on, it seemed we never went more than half a mile or a mile before one of us got stuck again. Often it was the leader. After a few of these we decided that the heavy machine was not the best one to lead in and pack the trail under that day's conditions. So we put the Trail Deluxe at the end to take advantage of the other sled's lead. The Trail Deluxe got stuck more than either of the Indy Lites. It was just too heavy for the deep powder. We got stuck so many times it was hard to keep track. Tom counted on the way out -- fourteen "for sure"s.
A few times we seriously discussed giving up and going back. About half-way in we started really finding "challenges". One of the "challenges" we called the Snowdrifts from Hell. Chris took a picture of the first of the series of snowdrifts, but it was from a different point of view and didn't show what I saw. Tom stood in the valley and I could only see him from the waist up; the snowdrift behind him was three or four feet over his head! We almost gave up. How could we get through the Snowdrifts from Hell? They were too big. There were too many. Then, as Tom and Chris looked for an alternate route, Chris found that the surface was very solid to the right. He walked back, sinking no more than an inch or so into the top of the Snowdrift from Hell. So we decided to send Tom through. If he got stuck we would dig him out and go home -- we gave it our best shot and the snow won. But he made it, and we followed. Some times we got two machines stuck at the same time. Only once did we have a case of two sleds augering in together. Tom had gotten a tiny bit too far left and the Trail Deluxe went over. He was motioning me to keep to the right, but as I tried to steer right, the snow sucked me in right behind him. I couldn't reach the kill switch. I was in up to my shoulder, off the machine on the downhill side of it, the kill switch was on the right, of course. I didn't want to take a chance on hitting the throttle as I clawed my way out -- I was too close to the track and suspension. Once Tom got my kill switch I began climbing out of my hole. On the first try I slid back into the hole. I had to kick a step into the side of it to climb out. We got out and went on. One of the "stucks" was near Trap Lake. Chris was in the lead again and his glasses got frosted over and he lost the faint track. That was another of the few times a machine tipped to the right.
And so it went. Until we got to within a quarter mile of Corral Creek Information Station. When we saw the quarter mile sign we were elated. Then we came around the bend and saw where the road wasn't. This snowdrift was not a mere snowdrift. This was a veritable Mountain of Snow. There was no indication that there even was a road in the area. The only way across was to do some serious side-hilling. Big problem for Debbie. I can't handle big side-hills. Fortunately Tom and Chris are both very nice and very patient. They shuttled the third snowmobile across the Mountain of Snow while I postholed. I can do small side-hills, or ones where the worst that can happen is to tip like we had done so many times before. But this was a situation where a person could wind up doing somersaults with the machine for fifty to a hundred feet down into the meadow below. We conferred again. Go back or give it a try? Tom and Chris put both feet on the uphill running board, grabbed the handle and leaned w-a-y out and made it across. I struggled on while they waited. Once we were across that we thought it was smooth sailing all the way to Poudre Pass. Yeah, right.
We got to Corral Creek. Chris checked the cabin. All was well. We pushed on. We were so close. We thought it was only another mile or so. Yeah, right. Just as I was even with the vault toilet about a mile past Corral Creek, Chris, a hundred feet or so ahead of me, got stuck again. I looked back and could just see Tom's headlight around the last bend, stopped -- he was stuck again, too. Chris had attempted a drift that had a steady downhill slope all the way across the road and into the trees below.
I was exhausted. I sat on my machine, waiting to see which one would first realize that he was not the only one stuck this time. Chris walked back to help Tom dig out, then they rode up to me and went to dig Chris out. Again we discussed strategy. Go on or go back to Corral Creek or go back home? It was getting dark very quickly. They decided to try a different angle of attack. Chris slid down the drift and for a moment we all thought he was going to crash into a tree. But he was stuck worse than before. Tom tried to take one more approach. Now we had two stuck sleds, again. As they surveyed the road ahead, in the dark, it looked even worse. Humped up in the middle, drifted across, with a drop off into Long Draw Reservoir. Decision time, again.
We discussed going all the way back to the highway or staying the night at Corral Creek. Tom, Chris and I really hoped there was some firewood. It was after dark. We were exhausted. The wind was light, but it was blowing. It was still snowing. Chris remembered seeing a woodstove, but hadn't noticed if there was any firewood. We got turned around, went back to Corral Creek, and opened the cabin. There was the woodstove, the firewood, the kindling, the newspapers. So we brought in our gear and prepared to camp out on the floor. No sleeping bags, no blankets, no mattresses. But it was out of the wind and snow, and we could warm it up. It was about eight o'clock.
Chris started a fire. It seemed to be drafting OK for a while. Then the smoke started to come out into the cabin. Tom went outside and could see some smoke coming out of the chimney in the moonlight, but not a lot. The cabin got smokier. Tom peeked in the tall black plastic bag. There was the top portion of the stovepipe and raincap. So, Tom climbed the radio antenna tower with the rake that had been left in the cabin, cleared a path in the snow on the roof, and found that there was a box over the top of the stovepipe, and it was screwed down. Thank God for the trusty Swiss Army knife. It has a marginally useful screwdriver. Once he got the cap off we restarted the fire and were warm and toasty all night. We had to feed the fire all night long. Every hour and a half to two hours. The draft control didn't slow it down at all. The fire burned full bore and quickly consumed the wood. All night long, every hour and a half to two hours we fed the ravenous fire. We slept in our clothes. We didn't need to wear our snow clothes. Tom and I had brought sheepskin slippers to wear in the Poudre Pass cabin. They were our night time booties.
We brought no pans, plates, utensils. All that is in the Poudre Pass cabin. Why carry what was already up there? Fortunately, there was one pan. No cups, no plates, no utensils, except a plastic spoon on the windowsill. We put that pan full of snow on the woodstove to melt for water. There was a propane stove, but no propane. There were propane lights, but no propane. Our only light came from the glass door of the woodstove, except when we turned on our flashlights. We had not eaten since that sample of soup in Rand. We weren't hungry at the trailhead, and after that we were too busy to think of eating or drinking. We ate well that night. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, pretzels, summer sausage, colby cheese, triscuits. We had brought beer for the end of the day. Once there was an empty I used it for water. We melted a panful of water for morning coffee and put the grounds in to steep for the night (camp coffee). As our eyelids were drooping we loaded the stove one more time and lay down on the bare floor. Every time the fire was down to coals one or two of us would get up and load it again. Every couple hours.
About eight o'clock in the morning we got up. We could see light around the windows, through gaps (?) in the roof. Coffee improvisation time. We had the pan to make it in. We had steeped it overnight. How to drink it? Break in the tops of the beer cans! We breakfasted on bagels and cream cheese. Time to start packing.
Shortly after we got up we heard three snowmobiles approaching. Chris stepped outside to see them, and to let the Park presence be seen. It had snowed through the night, and the Park Ranger stickers on the windshield were not very legible. We were so glad to see that our way out would be easier. If they had followed our trail in, they had packed it and it would be smooth sailing compared to the trip in to Corral Creek.
We returned the cabin to the same condition in which we found it. Tom even climbed up and replaced the cap over the stovepipe and screwed it back down.
The Return Trip
We knew we had to face the Mountain of Snow. It was a bigger hurdle for me than for Tom and Chris. But at least we were facing it at the start, instead of at the end of a hard day. We wanted to get a fairly early start so the snow would be firmer than it might be later in the day. Once again, they got the three machines across and I postholed. We were on our way out.
We expected to have to dig out a couple or three times on the way out. That's part of snowmobiling. The wind blew. It kept snowing. There were a couple of times that it blew snow out of the trees and almost created whiteout conditions, but it never got bad. We were back at the parking lot at 11:25am.
Just after Chris brought the truck and trailer to be loaded, but before we had loaded any of the sleds, a State Forestry truck pulled up. The passenger rolled down his window and asked, "Did you know you were lost?" I told him we weren't lost. I thought he was referring to being out of our usual area. He told me, "No, they're about to send out search parties, and we were supposed to come up and see if your truck is here."
Chris had tried several times to call in to let ROMO know we had made it to Corral Creek, but he couldn't reach out of the canyon with his radio. So we could understand why they might have been concerned. We would come to understand the level of concern after we got back to Grand Lake.
As we continued loading and preparing to return home, the snowplow operators gave us unusually enthusiastic waves and smiles. Then the Larimer County sheriff's deputy pulled up. He told us they were ready to send up the snowcat if we hadn't been at the parking lot. He tried to call his dispatcher, and couldn't. We were still unaware of just how seriously concerned folks had been. We couldn't raise ROMO on the radio until we neared Walden.
From the very start we had talked about what an ADVENTURE this was going to be. Little did we know that the storms of the past few days had created the worst avalanche danger of the season; that major highways were closed; that there were several searches going on. We had been exhausted. We had had to make some decisions about going on or turning back. We had stayed in a cabin that wasn't equipped for comfortable overnight stays. But we never felt we were in any danger. We didn't feel that we could make it back to the highway that night. We didn't feel we could make it to the Poudre Pass cabin that night. But never did we feel that we were in any kind of serious trouble.
Once we were in the cabin, warm, fed, looking forward to sleeping on a dry floor, we began to talk about the things that should be carried on every snowmobile patrol trip that we did not have. Deadman Switch: In the event of the throttle sticking the Deadman Switch could be a lifesaver, or at least keep the machine from running off. Or if dumped in such a way that an arm, leg or clothing could be caught in the track mechanism. At least one sleeping bag: What if one of us (or some one else) had been injured and had to be carried out in the sled, how would we have covered them to keep them from freezing to death? At least one pair of snowshoes: What if we had had to abandon a machine and walk? It would have made scouting alternate routes so much easier. It would have made going on to the Poudre Pass cabin a viable alternative. A small backpacking tent: What if we had not been able to make it to Corral Creek and had to spend the night somewhere on the trail? A few MRE's: We were prepared with more than enough food, but many people pack lightly and carry only as much as they expect to use. We also thought of things that should be left in the Corral Creek cabin for emergency winter use. More firewood. If there had been unusually bad weather and we had had to spend another night, we would have had to bundle up and be very stingy with the firewood or it would not have lasted through the night. A hatchet or small axe. If we had had to make more kindling, or cut dead branches from surrounding trees. A small broom. We swept the snow our boots left on the floor out the door with a dishtowel. One sleeping bag. In any emergency a sleeping bag can help stave off shock and cold. A waterproof container of strike-anywhere matches for starting the stoves. A minimum of cooking and eating utensils. If it has to be used in an emergency, it would be nice to have the facilities for cooking and eating hot meals to keep up body heat and energy. A few MRE's. Not everyone has food for the emergency situation. You can only prepare for so much; you can only pack so much.
Copyright © 1998. This site maintained by Deborah Mason, and last updated 8/09/98.