On the Trail of the Cougar

An immense valley stood before us. It's endless grasses forming a formidable expanse between us and the cougar's kill site. It's no wonder the Spaniards nicknamed this place the "great valley". Sensing the wet mushiness of what lay head, I wasn't considering this place to be so 'great', especially since I only donned ankle high boots. The melt from the snowpack kept the entire valley moist and the meandering tributaries of the river that cut a swath through the heart of it were bound to be colder and deeper than usual. Oh well...at least it was a beautiful day, I was bound dry quickly.

Recent snows turned the floor of the valley into mush.

Art and I were about to strike out across the valley. Our destination, a potential kill site from Max, a large male cougar that resides deep within the forests of the Southern Rockies. Art is the graduate student tasked with gathering the field data and as my luck would have it, he's about six foot four and all leg. Keeping up with him on the trail was going to be a chore. In all actuality, it mattered not what my hiking partner looked like, I'd come up with some lame excuse for being slow. I guess being fat and out-of-shape is simply the excuse I always try to avoid.

The trek begins...

Having to walk across the grassy expanse to start the day wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. If you selected your footsteps carefully and aimed for the mounded tufts of Arizona fescue you could reasonably prevent sinkage. But alas, some sections were just too liquidy or the grass simply too sparse it wasn't long before both feet had been completely submerged. Fortunately for me it wasn't nearly as cold as I anticipated and I knew that although it was bothersome, the "wetness" would dry quickly. For one thing that is not only comforting, but reliable at high altitude, is that radiant heat on a warm sunny day dries things in a very short period of time. But then came the river, a meandering pesky little river at that, and it was smack dab in the middle of the grass valley we were crossing.

The river seemed so small...until we needed to cross it.

It is barely visible from a distance. In fact, from the road it looks like a big ol' black hair that has fallen on a large blank green sheet of paper. It's noticeable but not overwhelming. That is of course until you have to cross it.

The water feature itself is a typical southwestern river, barely wide enough to actually call it a river yet wider than your best jump in most places, hence the word "pesky". No worries though, upon finally fording the main channel and its multiple tributaries meant my boots could finally catch a break and begin their drying process.

What thrilled me most though upon on each crossing was the sheer number of trout that darted from each and every shadowy undercut. I took a mental note for when the fisherman in me begins to grow restless. And as romantic as it would have been to glimpse the native cutthroats flashing about in this high sacred place, wisdom told me that the non-native rainbows now dominated most of its current stretches. Alas, man and his infinite wisdom.

 

The climb...

It took about 45 minutes to cross the wet grassy expanse and reach tree line. As glad as I was to be walking on firmer ground, I knew things were about to get tougher. We paused for a moment while Art checked his equipment.

A mile up the drainage to the kill site. At least that's what his GPS said.

His other piece of equipment, a radio antenna and receiver, suggested Max was nowhere to be found, at least not in this drainage. It was both disappointing and reassuring all in the same breath. So upward we climbed.

The Southern Rocky Mountains...one of the most beautiful places on earth.

The first half-mile or so wasn't too bad. Art only paused twice to let me catch up. The gradient was enough to make my lungs strain but not enough to make them burn. That burning sensation was sure to come later.

At one pit stop early in the climb, Art mentioned the abundance of obsidian. My focus on the hike blinded my sense of awareness and I hadn't even noticed. Upon rousing me from my walkers' trance, I noticed the black shards at my feet and marveled at the abundance of the smooth shiny rocks. Art then assured me that had we gone one more drainage over I would truly marvel at the site, for it was nicknamed obsidian valley for a reason.

The next peak held Max's kill site.

The mountain was predominantly Ponderosa pine and a bit of mixed conifer, the only difference was that the lower reaches were untouched by a massive fire a decade prior. After about thirty minutes into the climb we crested the hill and there it was before me, in all its glory...another freaking hill, this one taller and steeper than the one we just summited.

Sigh.

"Please don't tell me the kill site is on top of there?" was my immediate question.

Art's facial expression said it all. I immediately began apologizing and told him I would "meet him up there" but he would have none of it. He said we had all day. I didn't have the heart to tell him I just might need it.

So did I mention burning lungs?

Notice the elk poop!

The last 200 yards of the climb was a good bit of rock climbing, like the don't-lose-your-footing kind. Besides that, I was sucking wind...big time. And I was fast and furious with the excuses, altitude always being my fall back. If I was lucky, Art wouldn't notice the extra thirty pounds of fat I was carrying.

At long last we summited. And I rested.

The landscape here was much different than a few hundred feet below. Most trees were scorched, with nary a live branch. It would have appeared that this lunarscape would be desolate and devoid of life, that is of course until you looked down. The amount of elk scat scattered about the hillside was almost unfathomable. If one were to stumble on a deadfall you would almost assuredly land in a fresh pile. Heck, even some of the deadfalls had fresh deposits on them. Whatever it was about this mountain it sure attracted the elk. It's no wonder Max dined here frequently.

Now to find his dinner table.