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WILD TRAILS

a LOVE STORY FORGED BY WILDNESS

Into the Pioneers

9/21/2017

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Posted by Bob

Autumn Equinox today.  The new season is roaring like a lion in this part of the country.  Chased out of the mountains this past Friday by drenching rain and the first snows. Snow accumulations of over a foot in the high peaks. Snowed right here in town. No problem!  I’m doing recovery therapy.  Lotsa’ eating and snoozing, reading by the fireplace. Twice a day in the hot tub, its jets unbraiding skeleton man’s tight muscles. Got a professional massage too.  I’ve been a slug, brain not sparking. But I’m looking forward to Indian Summer’s frosty mornings and cool days come the first week of October to finish the trek.  I’ll be going solo.
 
So, the Pioneers, the last leg of our Home Country Walk-About !  We entered the range at the Summit Creek trailhead, 2,000 feet above Sun Valley village on a natural bridge between the Boulder and Pioneer crests on Sept 8th. Long-time friends Frank & Birgitta Lamb and Mark Stewart plus the four-man crew of Idaho Public TV’s “Outdoor Idaho” show – Bruce, Peter, Jay and Terry – accompanied us.  The OI guys came along the first day and next morning to shoot a llama trekking clip for their upcoming portrait of the Pioneers (scheduled for release this Dec 7th), which includes Pioneer mining history, sheep ranching, antelope, a horse packing trip, skiing and a mountain bike race through the range.  Plus the solar eclipse filmed from Pioneer Cabin (This will be a helluva’ film story and perhaps the most spectacular solar eclipse shots taken in Idaho!!)
 
Sarah, after a day and morning on the trail, found that her tailbone, injured in the White Clouds, and bum knee still hobbled her, decided to end her participation in the trek. An easy decision especially since we’d done most of the remaining Pioneer route last summer (see blog entry # 2 in the archive). Mark left with her and Frank, feeling the altitude, joined them. Birgitta, who, with Frank, had spent the summer at sea level in her native Finland, trekked on with me. Not surprising.  I visualize Birgitta’s bloodline among the Viking bands that led the exploration and charge in discovering and conquering new lands.  We trailed llamas Bono, Timber and a new guy, Sully, a handsome young fellow whose dark rouge head fur, which surrounded his eyes, gave him the appearance of wearing a mask. Combined with regal manner, he seemed a creature from a Broadway musical. 
 
The residents of Wood River Valley see the Pioneers every day, especially the triad of big peaks – Hyndman, Old Hyndman and Cobb.  They’re pyramids in the Valley’s eastern sky that attract the eye of every skier on Sun Valley’s world famous Mt. Baldy.  When crossing the Snake River Plain, they signal home for Valley residents. Old timers called them the “Three Sisters”.  They’re also part of an alpine country that pulled me away from Baldy, made me realize that this great ski mountain is but a postage stamp size piece of winter. My first off-piste or backcountry ski ventures began in the Pioneers while based at Pioneer Cabin.
 
When railway magnate and statesman Averill Harriman founded Sun Valley in 1936, he wanted to replicate the ski experience that he and his wealthy Guilded Age pals knew in Europe. Sun Valley became the nation’s first destination ski resort.  Harriman’s engineers built and installed the first ski lifts in the world on Baldy and nearby Dollar, Ruud and Proctor mountains. He brought with him a cadre of European ski instructors who also helped build mountain huts beyond the SV village proper. They and the 10th Mountain Division troopers who fought in WWII and became Sun Valley ski instructors after the War established the European tradition of alpine ski touring.  Pioneer Cabin, built before the War, is the first and only remaining hut of an early backcountry ski era at Sun Valley that was eclipsed by a booming growth in lift-served skiing across the United States that started in the fifties.  
 
The view from the cabin is a dramatic alpine panorama matching any that I’ve seen including my own home ranges, Alaska, Canada, Europe and the Himalaya. It’s no surprise that someone among the many inspired by the view would paint “The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get” in white capital letters across the Cabin roof.  Birgitta and I arrived at the Cabin just as a rain storm was breaking.  Being inside triggered a flood of memory. I had not overnighted since the early sixties during a spring ski trip into the surrounding peaks. The walls and virtually every place you can write or carve upon inside cabin is covered by signatures. I began searching for testimony of my own visit over fifty years before, but in vain. If we had left our names, they were obliterated by the succession of visitor inscriptions through time, few deeper than the 1990’s. One room of the two-room cabin had been white washed this summer, this new canvass already crowded with 2017 signatures, feelings and epithets from folks all over the nation and world. When the rain stopped, I exited the cabin and climbed the rocky dome to the south, remembered our 1960’s descents off the dome, two young couples frolicking in the sunny morning. Thought of the 10th Mt Division ski instructors I taught with on Baldy and Dollar Mts. The Easter Bowl avalanche that fateful spring day in 1952 that claimed one of those guys. The day a young father and his two boys got off the old wooden chairlift at the top of Baldy and looked down Easter Bowl. He wanted to ski the Bowl, his boys wanted to go the other way. I looked West. Saw Baldy, my Baldy of  countless descents.   Saw the farthermost outline of mountains in the West where we began this trek the second week of July. Turned, admired the awesome crowns of the Pio in the fading light. Looked into the darkening sky and saw forever.
 
Back in the cabin, Birgitta and I skimmed through the messages in the stack of wire-bound Pioneer Cabin journals – all full and none predating this new century. “Most of it inane,” declared Birgitta, who was done after reading one log. I set the stack aside too. Only the words on the cabin’s roof and two other passages caused me pause. One, about Time, is pictured here. It was inked on the bunk upon which I slept. The other words, “The Pursuit is Happiness”, were embossed on the cover of Birgitta’s personal journal, which she placed on top of the journal pile. Before leaving next morning, Birgitta ripped her own pages out, tore most up and threw them in the wood stove, made the first entry in the new journal then cleaned-up our half of the two-room cabin, the side with the stove and crude furnishings - wooden table, benches and shelves, all smooth and worn except the metal-framed bunks which are new. We slept that night, amongst the scurrying of mice and the louder noise of a packrat at work the Cabin’s single door propped wide open. In the morning, Birgitta left the first entry in the new Pioneer Cabin log, a terse, but diplomatic piece about keeping the place clean. We hauled out two llama packs full of trash. My entry was about Pioneer Cabin’s place in Sun Valley backcountry ski history, the fact that backcountry skiing, the new siren, is very much alive today.  Sawtooth Mt. Guides operates one hut in the Sawtooth. Sun Valley Trekking Company, of which I’m the founder and former owner, operates 6 backcountry huts. Two in the Sawtooth, three in the Smoky and one in the Pioneer, the latter, the Pioneer Yurt, Birgitta’s and my final destination for this leg of the Pioneer Trek.
 
Next morning we dropped, quite literally, down the steep switch-back trail to the North Fork of Hyndman Creek. On a slope next to a narrow quartz slot that carried the creek’s cascading waters, Birgitta dictated thoughts on her cell phone for an hour while the boys rested on their legs in that classic sphinx position. I found a route through a wedge of timber beyond the slot. Had to cut only one log along the game trail I followed to a high picturesque meadow I now call ‘Meadow Lake’. What remains of the lake I knew when I first rambled this part of the Pioneers is a shallow pond, its edges trampled by grazing sheep seeking water. It looked like any old stock pond down in the low country. At least the sheep were gone. We’d not be inundated by a tide of a 1,000 woolies or barking guard dogs like we were our third night at another ‘pristine’ high alpine meadow.  Unlike the wilderness ranges of the Sawtooth, Middle Fork of the Salmon, White Cloud, Jerry Peak and Boulder, the spectacular alpine country of the Pioneer is managed by the Forest Service for Multiple Use. Sheep grazing in the high meadows is allowed early in the autumn.
 
That evening the boys were on their feet, watching elk cows and calves who had come to water at the pond. They were especially alert to the coyotes calling and yipping as they ringed the meadow when darkness fell. And Timber, who was sleeping, sphinx position, next to my tent mewed pathetically when the heavens burst open at 4 AM next day, a drenching rain that was preceded by incredible bursts of lightning and ground shaking claps of thunder. I could not sleep, awed by the spectacle and thinking of Meadow Lake flooding. The rain continued through the next morning. Finally convinced it was an all-day event, we collapsed and packed camp and trekked off. By the time we made it to the Pioneer Yurt our boots gushed water and the llamas thick coats looked like wet mops. We were grateful to have the yurt as shelter that night to dry out, but for the llamas, the fireworks of another deluge broke.  Early next morning, wet snow falling, we saddled and packed shivering llamas. Both llamas and their packers kept a brisk pace all the way to the trailhead.   
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Week 11: The End (for now)

9/17/2017

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Posted by Sarah

Sept 14: Where's Bob?

After months of no rain, I wonder how Bob, Birgitta and the 3 llamas are doing with the past two days of heavy rains, thunder and lighting.

Sept 15: Found Bob!

At noon, four of us hike in the rain the Hyndman Creek trail to look for them and to welcome them home! We haven't heard from them for 3 days so we aren't sure of their final schedule.  After 10 minutes of walking up the trail, Bob, Birgitta and the shivering llamas showed up! We are relieved! 

Bob has more stories to share in his future posts. In the meantime, he will take a break until October 1, 2017, when he plans to finish the last leg of the Pioneers.

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Week 10: The Pioneers – The Himalayas of Idaho

9/13/2017

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​Posted by Sarah

Sept 5-7: Llama Uber Driver

The smoky conditions were so bad at the end of the White Cloud trip, that Charlotte and Reuben had had enough and left the trek on Sept 5th. With a truck and horse trailer, I retrieve them and 3 llamas (Timber, Milton and Russell) for a 15 hour road trip returning the llamas to Idaho Falls and the hikers to Ketchum/Sun Valley. Being a gentleman and grateful not to be hiking through heat and smoke, Reuben did most of the driving! 
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Louise and Bob head for the Boulders together with Apple and Fred. ​
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After two days, even they can't handle the smoke. Instead of hiking to Park Creek, they stop 10 miles short where I pick them up for an overnight llama bivouac in Hulen Meadows and a nice dinner at the Grill at the Knob Hill Inn. Bob gets a bed, clean clothes before hitting the Pioneers. Louise's husband is happy to have her home again.
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Sept 8-9: Pioneer Mountains (the sixth mountain range since July 5th)

​Thick smoke and unhealthy air quality lift for the beginning of the Pioneer Traverse. For the Pioneers, we are joined by the Outdoor Idaho PBS TV crew for a day and one-half of filming as part of the December Special on these iconic mountains.  
I call the Pioneers, the Himalayas of Idaho. Good friends Frank and Birgitta Lamb and Mark Stewart join the trek.  I am still sore so will only join them at the top of Summit Creek, an easy 4 miles hike.
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Beau from Wilderness Ridge Llama Trekking meets at the Trailhead with three fresh llamas: 2 very familiar boys: Bono, our champion, Timber, our hard working pal, and Sully, possibly the most photogenic llama we've had.
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Raining and hail meet us at the top of Summit Creek and we hunker down.
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The afternoon clears and the filming begins. The views of the Devil's Bedstead are beautiful. 
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​After a rest day, Bob and Birgitta Lamb continue the Pioneer Trek. Frank Lamb who has altitude sickness hikes out with me. We will pick up Bob and Birgitta on September 15th.
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Week 9: White Clouds Wilderness

9/4/2017

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Posted by Sarah

Aug 27: Rendezvous at Redfish Lake

Sunday 12:30 pm rendezvous with Beau Baty from Wilderness Ridge Llamas  is quite the llama drama reunion! Beau brings 5 new llamas and came to take Bono and Johnny home. What a ruckus when our "big boys" see their pals in the trailer. Johnny just wants to be in charge and when Beau unloads the 5 llamas, sniffing their butts, totally in their faces, so to speak, playing the big man on campus. Bono was excited but calm. Beau puts both Johnny and Bono in the trailer with hay to calm things down!
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Companions

We are also met by 3 folks joining us for the next ten days. Louise Noyes, who was with us in the Sawtooths, and Charlotte Unger and Reuben Perrin, great hikers but new to llamas. We form a car and truck llama caravan to the Livingston Mill to camp, have a tour, then in the morning, start our trail to the White Clouds.
Charlotte, Louise, and I are friends through backcountry skiing with Sun Valley Trekking's Powder Divas, and we've done other trips since. Louise was with us in the Sawtooths, Charlotte and I hiked the Haute Route in 2015 from Chamonix and Zermatt.  Reuben is a legendary hiker with few places around Idaho and the world he hasn't trekked over the past 20 years. This is Reuben's first trip with Bob and me. 

Livingston Mill tour with owner, Ron Swanson
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As background, the silver-lead-zinc deposits of the Livingston Mine were discovered in the White Clouds in 1882 and ore was taken out by pack train until 1922 when a road, a 200 ton Mill  and 3 mile tram way were built. According to some reports, more than $2 million was extracted and  in the late 1920's, Livingston Mine and Mill had the largest payroll of any mining site in southern Idaho even though the mine tunnels were located above 9,200 feet; the mill was at 7500 feet where we camped. 

It has had various owners and only operated intermittently after 1929. Besides being a predominately silver mine, the Mine produced a little gold and a lot of lead and zinc.
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​Elmer Swanson, Ron's father, bought the Mill and Mine in 1960 when Ron was about 8 or 9 years old. In 2008, the Mill became an EPA clean-up site, capping the mine tailings while maintaining the historic buildings.
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Ron, who lives at the Mill during the summer, loves to share the mine's history, his philosophy of life, and give tours of the Mill site and his rock art cairns.
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Ron enjoys visitors so for people going to the East Fork of the Salmon River, you should take the time and drop by. 

I met him two summers ago when I saw him from the road working on his art cairns.  I was interested in his rock art and the large TRUMP sign painted on the roof of an old mining building which serves as the gateway to the historic Mill site. I found him delightful and a real Idaho persona.

​Now to the story of our wonderful llama companions.

​Our 5 Llama Cast of Characters

Russell the Rascal is a contemporary of Johnny llama's and is, in equal parts, charming and a brat. He has "attitude" which he struts with the other 4 big boys who are definitely not enamored. Truly an independent spirit, he is cute and feisty! The number of small scars and his floppy ears indicate just a small percentage of of all the scraps he gets into with other llamas. But by day three, he is settling down, is cozying up to us for llama cookies, and we're enchanted.
​Milton was with us in the Smokey mountains during our very hot July trip but left before we got to know him.  Despite his ugly mug insert photo (Charlotte will adamantly disagree), Milton communicates very well.  His saddle slipped a couple of times. He let Charlotte know immediately and then stood patiently while major adjustments occurred. He is steady, hardworking and seemingly unflappable.
Apple is still the Apple of my eye. He was with us in the Smokey Mountains also but now seems a little fat when compared to the other llamas. It is clear, however, that he enjoys the good life of lots of food and easy trails. Calm and surefooted, Apple keeps up but is not terribly energetic. Reuben has been leading him and feeding him. During dinner, Apple has no problem joining Reuben and asking for treats.  Like all llamas, Apple can scratch his ear with his hind foot. 
Timber is a talking llama, making mewing noises on most any occasion...when he is in a new spot, when he is hungry, annoyed, or whenever.  Beau suggested that this may be the llama version of whining. He does not like to be left behind. I led him and often had him literally on my heels trying to catch up! Fortunately, Timber, like all the llamas, STOPs in his tracks going down steep slopes when I slip and fall.  He doesn't keep walking and run over me while I take time to get up and dust myself off. By the way, steep downhills are not my forte. 
Fred, the tuxedoed llama named for Fred Astaire, likes to be with Timber.  To reduce the impact of 5 llamas at Walker Lake, we had two separate camps. Fred was not having anything to do with being away from Timber, got loose from his camp, joined us on his own, happy to be settled next to Timber.  Fred dances over the rocks and is a strong team player. He became sore on our Smokey trek, so we put Louise's lighter load on him. So far, he has had no problems and is a delightful pal.
Aug 28: Livingston Mill to junction between Island and Goat Lakes

An easy first day with camp between Goat and Island Lakes. 
Aug 29-30: Walker Lake with a rest day hike through the Big Boulder Chain of Lakes
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Aug 31: A Short Day

The memorable event of this day is my slipping, landing hard on a granite rock and badly bruising my tailbone.  Besides the pain, it has been tough deciding whether I should continue.  The options are either a short hike out (hoping I can find someone to pick me up) or another 4 days of strenuous climbing and descents. 

Considering the discomfort and the fact that the Livingston Trailhead is only 3 miles from our camp, I know that going out is the best option.  The trailhead is approximately 2 1/2 hours from Ketchum -Sun Valley, with at least 10-15 miles on very bad dirt roads.  Besides Heather who is not at her ranch, I have 2 other friends who live relatively close by.  My friend, Colleen, who resides on the East Fork of the Salmon River is only 17 miles away.  Amazingly, she received and responded right away to my message requesting help tonight. She said she would pick me up at noon.  Polly also responded affirmatively but she lives at least 30-35 miles away, so Colleen got the nod. 

I feel so lucky that friends are close by, that they read their e-mails, and are willing to change plans to help out! 


Sept 1: Sarah's Retreat


I wave good bye to my pals and painfully start walking.  Fortunately, I cross paths with Colleen and her two dogs at 11:30 am this morning on the trail looking for me. I am so happy and relieved to see her that I give her my day pack to carry out!   It is smart to leave the trail to nurse my bruises and per Colleen's recommendations, I am spending considerable time soaking in the cold East Fork River. Resting and soaking are excellent remedies, particularly at Heather's East Fork Ranch. Thank you, Heather.  
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​Before leaving the trailhead, Colleen and I detour to the Livingston Mill to look for Bob's Tenkara fly rod (MIA), possibly left the night we camped there, and to say hi to owner Ron Swanson.  I have wanted Colleen to meet him before, but she was not particularly eager as Ron's mother had a reputation as being quite fierce, maybe shooting a gun on occasion when she was tired of people coming uninvited. 

Some of Ron's East Fork neighbors give the Livingston Mill a wide berth as a result,  and the large TRUMP roof top sign may deter others even more. 

It is an enjoyable introduction for Colleen (no guns and good conversation) and a big plus to Colleen's rescue duty. Her husband, Ron, she feels, would also enjoy meeting him to share stories, philosophy, and history of the place.

Bob, Reuben Perrin, Charlotte Unger and Louise Noyes, plus 5 llamas are en route to Chamberlain Basin and are expected at Heather's  on 9/3 or 9/4.  Bob will be reporting on the map on his location each night....I hope.

Heather and her husband Ron (do you have to be named Ron to live on the East Fork?) arrive on 9/3 .at the Ranch.  In the meantime, I get to enjoy this beautiful spot, read, nurse my aches, feed the horses, and get ready for the trail to Summit Creek across the Boulders. 
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    Bob & Sarah fell in love during a 1996-98 traverse of Alaska, the subject of Bob’s forthcoming memoir. Twenty years later another wilderness siren calls: a 'walk about' in their home country with llamas.  

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