The Skagit Queen: Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Posting from Leavenworth, WA.

This is a long one, you might want to read it in pieces.

Never been here? Well it's a logging town that turned itself into a Bavarian nightmare to attract tourists. Totally worked. Tons of people wandering around pretending they are in Germany. There's an ordinance that everything in the central part of the town must look "German" so you have Der Shell Gasoline. Ha ha.

Our adventure began last thrusday after an epic shopping trip. Horsepacking isn't so much camping as it is lightweight RVing. We bought clams for an alfredo sauce, fresh vegetables, a total of 9 bottles of wine (not much, considering how long we were going). We showed up on Thursday morning to meet Aaron, our packer. This guy was THE REAL DEAL. Chaps, six-shooter, cowboy hat, Marlboros, a string of mules and one piebald horse. I was in love (don't worry kyle).

to ruin some of the fun- i slammed my pinky in the trunk 2 days ago. i am giving up on punctuation and capitalization. my apologies to the grammarophiles.

So we were 8- Jonathan, Bob (sjsu); christine and adam (osu), scott, devon, and georgina (usc/st. andrews), and me. the usc people took off after they dropped their stuff off for the packer- normal procedure. we dallied around, luckily, because shortly after the usc people left the packer weighed everything and proclaimed that we had too much stuff for the 4 animals. so the 5 of us did triage on the food- out went the wine (noooooooooooo!!!!), the bananas, the many cans of salsa. we got to an acceptable weight-still too heavy- and we took off while aaron loaded the animals.

Aaron disapproves of all our stuff.

the trail was divided into two parts- a MISH along the white river and a series of switchbacks to boulder meadows, our destination. because of the heavy snow, the trail had not been logged on the switchbacks, fortunately we had adam and jonathan- they cut 2 blowdowns while bob and i went ahead to look for anything impassable. (horses with heavy packs can't really go off the trail at all- aaron had a small hand saw on his saddle and an axe). having done trail crew (and looked at aaron's dull axe) i had quickly volunteered to scout ahead rather than cut blowdowns.

so no problems bigger than about a 1 ft diameter blowdown (poor adam and jonathan!)- bob and i waited for aaron to catch up, which he did. bob and i crossed boulder creek (crocs- knee deep for a few steps, very refreshing). i went ahead to catch up with aaron at the camp site, bob waited at the crossing for everyone else (scott was recovering from pnemonia and had a torn rotator cuff).

i crossed a few avalanche chutes filled with snow and went up another set of switchbacks and came up on aaron- unhorsed- and his pack mules. his mule mare had dropped him (he "stepped off", love it!) at a snow bridge that had partially collapsed. the snow had been eroded below by a stream- so it was about 4 feet from the stream base to the top of the snow. i found his mare tangled in some pine trees and led her down to poor aaron (he had been kicked by one of the pack mules as they passed him by). she was a very pretty little lady and very sane- no panicky baloney that east-coast horses are known to pull. she just stood there and let me untangle her and followed me down.

Aaron on Little Foot

so aaron and i got to the campsite- which was of course covered in snow. we each have a nip of whiskey, aaron has a marlboro, and we wait for bob- who showed up with bad news. Scott had taken a tumble in the stream and turned around so all the usc stuff had to go back down with aaron. bummer. at this point it's probably 5:30 in the afternoon and aaron has a 3 hour ride back. bummer bummer. we unpack everything repack the usc stuff. aaron and i go back to try and make the snow-bridge crossing more animal friendly. we say goodbye and i headed back to camp, where bob and i awaited everyone else and unpacked the stove and group equipment.

next, mule-mare (little foot) comes trotting back to our camp with the whole train in tow. aaron limping behind. i grabbed her reins (she and i are friends now) aaron gets re-horsed and we say goodbye again. this image would be funny if i didn't know how much pain he was in.

*********HORSE PEOPLE- I WILL NOT LEAD YOU INTO SADNESS************

The whole way up bob was talking about what happens if one of the animals gets badly injured. obviously you have to do some very tough things, like shooting it, gutting it, and carrying as much out as you can (and coming back for the rest). this weighed heavily on me as we worked on the snow bridge.

About 5 minutes after we said goodbye to aaron for the second time i heard a gunshot. as i started to cry, i ran to the snowbridge. all i could see was a pair of long ears sticking out of the buried stream. sobbing, i grabbed aaron's shoulder and told him i was so sorry- just as Little John (the mule) groaned. He hadn't shot the mule! He just needed help. Little john had gone a different way than everyone else and the snow had broken under him. LJ was caught between a pine tree and a bunch of snow. He was curled into a "C" and was having trouble breathing with the girth on. We cut off the pack that was accessible to us and started on loosening the girth- i was lying under the tree hoping LJ was sensible enough not to start kicking while i tried to get the girth loose. being a mule, he was indeed sensible enough not to do this.

Bob arrived and he and aaron started sawing the snow holding LJ's back end (he was lying on the axe) and finally he was ungirthed and freed. the only thing holding him down at this point was the chest harness- aaron gave me his knife and i cut this off. LJ popped up onto solid ground and took a big poop. aaron had another nip and a cig. just another day for a real cowboy.

we packed all the stuff that was on lj onto another mule and got lj across the chasm of attempted death. One last time, we said goodbye to aaron- who just had his foot in the stirrup when the rest of our group showed up over a little hill- spooking Little Foot. This mule went back across the snow bridge. Seriously. What a knucklehead. She stopped for a drink in the stream, maybe as an excuse not to be a total idiot. i was closest to her, so i grabbed her again. We said goodbye to aaron for good. he made it down fine and nobody had anything worse than a scratch.

After all this, you would think that we would get the most amazing geology ever. i have a picture for you.

mostly low-temperature crystalline hydrous oxygen.

we left 2 days after we arrived. we had to leave most of our food and gear for the packer to take out 4 days later. the scenery was amazing, though.

a view to little giants pass and the napeequa valley from boulder pass.

Instead we went and studied a very fun and interesting sheeted zone- light rocks and dark rocks layered like a cake. This isn't especially normal for magmas, so we are very interested in this! So cancelling the pack trip turned out fine. Christine and i are both super-excited to get these rocks into the lab. this layering could really tell us something interesting about how big granite bodies are put together.