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The Maroon Bells area of the Snowmass National Wilderness is located some 16 miles southwest of the trendy, expensive town of Aspen, Colorado. I enjoyed this area on my fourth Sierra Club service trip. There, a group of seventeen hardy (and not so hardy) souls were US Forest Service volunteers, under the auspices of the Sierra Club. Dr. Rich Patisaul jokingly refers to this as "paying to work on the chain gang.

The Forest Service is responsible for maintenance of national trail systems, but due to budget limitations, they have moved strongly towards a coordinated volunteer system, where as many as 30 groups a year will improve trails within a ranger district. Volunteers pay for their transportation, food, and incidentals for the privilege of toting rock, clearing trails, building water bars, etc., for 10 days in the wilderness area.

Our ranger, Mr. Ed Tickle, is a gaunt, slender woodsman of many years experience, and we were entranced by his stories. (Ed now works at the Dubois WY Ranger District, where I saw him in 1995 and 1996.) He has fought forest fires in Oregon and northern California, and lost a friend to a falling tree in an Oregon fire. Firefighters refer to the aluminized fire shelter bags they carry as "shake and bake" bags. If about to be overrun by flames, the firefighter is to scoop out a shallow ditch, put the bag in it, and crawl inside to wait for the fire to burn past. This trip differed from others in that Ed stayed with us and worked with us instead of making occasional checks on our work.

We waded two icy creeks along the ten mile trip from the parking area, and we climbed steadily from there 3500 feet to our camp. Our trip doctor was an experienced camper, and on the way in, one member experienced the first stage of altitude sickness -- breathing problems and exhaustion from the 10,000 foot height. These two and another member stayed at that level overnight to allow accomodation.

Our camp was in a large, boulder-filled meadow at 11,200 feet, but our work area was nearer the East Maroon Pass, some two miles away and 600 feet up. After a rest day, we worked two days clearing the high trail to Crested Butte to the south. We placed water bars and built a 170-ft long rock retaining wall 2 ft high by 3 ft deep in a rock slide area. (Water bars and check dams prevent water from running down a trail and eroding it.) We then had a rest day, when many hiked up to Copper Pass to Triangle Pass (in the Gunnison National Forest), and to Conundrum Hot Springs for a soak. In two more days of work, we accomplished almost all of the planned work. The ranger didn't press to add any on, so we had a little more time for hiking and exploring.

Colorado was experiencing a monsoon season, and it rained nearly every afternoon. At the pass, pea-sized hail was more likely than rain. The wild temperature swings from perhaps 30 to 85 degrees required continual dressing and undressing to get the right number of layers to feel close to comfortable.

Our cook (Jerry) prepared lots of good food, and as we had only one vegetarian, there wasn't much of the exotic. Most memorable was the tri-colored salad, in which she by the recipe (unsuspectingly) used three jalepenos, nearly poisoning us. We sat around the campfire, gasping, flinging offending pepper slices into the fire. I had to go get my water bottle, set my cup of salad on the ground, and returned to find it buried beneath the dumpings of other cups of salad! My head is perspiring just to remember it.

Our camp was visited each day by a large deer. She liked to get into bread (we brought 27 loaves), and we were often awakened at night by small critters attacking our food boxes. We saw elk and small mammals -- marmots and pikas.

Two other members got second stage altitude sickness, with fluid in their lungs that prevented sleeping other than in a sitting position. They had gotten into a race with each other piling rocks, instead of properly pacing themselves. They left camp a day early, recovering on descent to a mere 8,000 feet. Breaking camp left not a trace of our being there, other than the flattened vegetation, which would eventually recover. This was the most memorable trip I had taken at that time, primarily because of the craggy peaks and deep, glacier valleys, but also because to the new friends met and old friends rejoined.

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Page last modified on 6/14/97 @ 1047                                 Original material © 1993, 1997, by Frank R. Leslie