By Bruce Becker.
Anyone can do the things I’ve done if they’re willing to live the life I’ve led.
~ Fool’s Crow
Summer in the high country. It’s a short season, two and a half months long, three and a half if you’re lucky. After a long hike up, I always hate to come down. So one summer, I didn’t. I’d planned to stay out this time before I left Aspen, where I lived. I knew I’d never pack enough food for the whole summer, so I brought only a little that I would ration out for a while.
My old standbys: rice, oatmeal and tea bags. I brought my fly rod and tied enough flies to last me. Nymphs, wets and some dry flies, caddis and mayfly spinners. Spinners represent the spent fly that dies and falls flat on the water, a deadly fly in early morning and evening.
I hitched up Independence Pass to the Lincoln Gulch road, where I walked up Lincoln Creek, then headed up the valley toward Tabor Lake where I planned to fish for a few days. I’d been here before and looked forward to spending some time there. Tabor is a hanging lake that has a beautiful ribbon waterfall a good 150 feet high that spills out of the lake, down to the valley below.
Over 11,500 feet high, Tabor Lake sits above timberline in the very remote high country of the Sawatch Range. This is where I perfected my method of fly fishing a lake. Most of the time the fish are just beyond casting range of a fly rod, so I strip down and float out on my back, feeding line out between my feet. Then I raise my line, shake the water off and flip the line up and over my head behind me. It’s a bit chilly, but I rarely have to cast more than once to catch a fish.
The cutthroats are quite large in these high lakes that are seldom seen by more than a few intrepid fishermen. Too big to roast on a stick, I broil these fish in tinfoil over a bed of coals made from dead branches found in the krummholz. The Sawatch is so remote here that it is common to watch bighorn sheep and mountain goats on the mountains as I fish.
Most days are bright blue skies and cloudless, with an occasional snow or rainstorm in late afternoon. I pitch my tarp in the protection of the krummholz and wait out these brief but heavy showers. I’m watchful for the inquisitive marmots that like my unattended boots and whatnot. In spite of the hassle they may create, I like their company most of the time.
One great benefit of the tundra is there isn’t any cactus. Walking around barefoot is such a joy. When down below, boots are a must. I supplement my diet with tiny greens that grow up high. These plants are only a couple inches tall, with reddish stalks, and are tasty. I stuff my broiling fish with them. I gut my fish in the lake and leave a clean camp, with no trace of my presence when I depart.
A unique and interesting feature of Tabor Creek, way down in the valley I hiked up, is the ice dome that forms over the creek like a tube, hollowed out of the deep snow and left as solid ice in the summer. Arched high enough to walk under in the creek, it is translucent above, allowing a beautiful blue glow to show through as I look up. Worth the hike just to see that.
Maybe the best part of the summer, up high, are the wildflowers that abound everywhere. Alpine harebells, forget-me-nots, rosy paintbrush and wallflowers, with their strong and lovely fragrance, are only a few. This is the subalpine zone, where everything grows short and hugs the ground. Ptarmigan eat the buds of subalpine willow and find shelter beneath their branches. Blueberries ripen in late summer up here and can be abundant. Engelmann spruce in the krummholz offer its needles for tea, providing vitamin C. I make pouches of cheesecloth to boil them in.
My days are spent in deep peace. This vast tundra, off any trails, is so remote I didn’t see another person up there all summer long. I spent days hiking to other small lakes, most of them nameless and all above timberline, catching and eating cutthroat trout — the only trout native to Colorado.
These “cutts” are pristine, clean and rich in color, with brilliant crimson slashes on each side of their jaws. Born and bred in these pure, snowmelt-watered lakes, they can grow to three feet long and have never seen a hook. I always release the big ones but sometimes it’s difficult to catch smaller, eatin’ size fish.
Some of these lakes are very deep glacial tarns that hold ice well into July. These high tundra valleys can be breezy and usually have elk in them escaping the pesky flies down below. Colorado is truly an outdoorsman’s paradise and the mountains around Aspen — the Sawatch, the Elk Mountains, the West Elk Mountains — take my breath away no matter how many times I’ve been hiking and camping in them.
From a krummholz blind I love to observe the elk calves exploring and playing with each other. Krummholz is a German word meaning “twisted wood” because of the short, gnarled clumps of conifers that are only six to eight feet high and are hundreds of years old. Stunted by the short growing season, they offer shelter for me and for ptarmigan. So if you long for a real Colorado adventure, leave the world of high tech, cell phones and your GPS at home and discover the peace of our high country. With only a topo map and compass to guide you, it will be the trip of a lifetime.