Satuday, February 25, 2012---that will be a day I will remember for a long time to come, to be sure.
It began like an ordinary Saturday. I had chosen not to go on the /r/coloradohikers group meetup this week. The organizer had scheduled a second trip up Bear Mountain outside Boulder---by popular demand he said---and although the "bear" theme was of course tempting to follow, I didn't feel like climbing that particular mountain again this week. For one thing, it's quite a steep and long ascent. Although I don't mind strenuous efforts, I was clearly the drag on the group last time and didn't feel like being in that spot again this week.
So I wound up dawdling away the early morning and didn't get out into the sunshine until after ten. All I had was a general inclination that I wanted to go snowshoeing, and my further inclination was to go up the Poudre Canyon to the summit at Cameron Pass. It would be a long drive, probably almost two hours, but driving up the Poudre is almost always a serene and beautiful experience, so I didn't mind how long it would take. Also there would surely be enough snow up there for a good snowshoeing trip.
The destination I had in mind was the Michigan Ditch trail at the very summit of the path. It is nearly flat and goes in for several miles. It would be a nice easy trip in and out, without too much exertion. But the scenery would be beautiful.
The roads in the canyon were almost completely clear, with ice in only a few places. I reached the summit of the pass around noon, parking in the parking lot at the trailhead at the summit. There were only three other cars there. It was indeed beautiful and sunny, but the wind was blowing ferociously in gusts, sending snow in great waves like mini blizzards. I sat there for several minutes contemplating my choices.
While I was there, I had the inevitable flashback that I was always have, when I parked at the summit of Cameron Pass, back to January 1987, when I was driving back to college in Oregon in my red Volkswagen Rabbit, the first car I ever owned. I parked at the summit of the pass on that trip, almost in the same spot, before going westward. It was one of those incredible road trips of my youth, during which so much happened in such a short time, and helped define my college experience. Among the things that happened was that later that day, on that same highway much further west, I spun out in my car for the only time in my life. The car landed in the ditch in the middle of nowhere. I was rescued in only a matter of minutes by pure chance by a passing truck, which pulled me out of the ditch without a scratch on me or the car.
After reminiscing like that for while, I finally decided that the wind was blowing too hard for a decent trip on the Michigan Ditch trail. So I headed back down the pass in the direction I had come, about a half mile, to another trailhead, which was sheltered from the wind. The parking lot was packed with cars.
I took out my Trails Illustrated Map of Cameron Pass and looked at my options. I could take the relatively flat trail on the south side of the road---that's what most people were probably skiing on that day, or I could take a trail across the road that went up a very steep incline a few miles to the summit of Montgomery Pass at the south end of the Medicine Bow Mountains.
My inclination was to take the high road. It would be strenuous, but I could go at my own pace, and it would surely be an awesome view once I got to the top.
So I took my snowshoes across the highway to the trailhead and put them on at the edge of the snow. Then I began marching into the trees and up the hill. It was indeed a beautiful trail, with the sun trickingly through the trees. On the way up, I passed several cross-country skiiers on the way down. One of them, an older gentleman, spontaneously warned me: "It's pretty windy up at the top."
I set a nice slow pace and after about two hours I could tell I was reaching the top. The snow grew very deep and in a few places I began to wonder if my snowshoes would provide enough flotation, but I never sank more than about eight inches downward, even in the powderiest section.
Just when I was wondering if I would ever reach the summit, I saw the tricking edge of the trees and a large snowfield ahead, with a peak behind it. This was surely the summit.
When I came to the edge of the trees, all of a sudden I could understand the warning I'd been given about the wind. It was blowing hard and steadily, with gusts that felt like a gale force coming right down off the top of the pass along the snowfield.
As I rounded the trees and came out onto the snowfield, I thought I was going to be knocked down in my snowshoes. At that point, to reach the top of the pass, I had to walk on the crunchy snowfield upward on the incline, straight into the wind. It was impossible even to keep my face upward. I had to look down at my feet and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, occasionally stealing glances upward to see how far I had to go.
Finally I reached the summit, where a small wooden sign indicating the top of the pass rocked back in forth in the constant wind. To the west, over the top of the pass, was a view over North Park toward the Rawah Range in the distance. It was incredible, but I could not look at it for more than a few seconds at a time because of the wind. I knew I had to get at least one good shot with my camera. My fingers nearly froze in place when I took my gloves off and held my smartphone up into the wind just long enough to attempt to get a shot. I couldn't even tell if I had gotten anything on the display.
At that moment, while putting my gloves back on, I looked around and saw beside me the towering summits of the mountains flanking the saddle of the pass. They were rocky and barren, covered with snow. As the wind blew around me, I had a sudden enormous feeling of the presence of the Creator, and understanding (yet again) of how one can experience the Creator this way so directly in the most barren of places, as Abraham surely did, so long ago. I felt humbled and the same time so lifted up by the presence of God. It made the trek to the top of the pass so completely worth while. Overcome by the emotion of it all, I struggled and knelt in the snow in prayer and thanked God for letting me experience this.
I wanted to linger, and looked for a place to hide from the wind, but the snowdrifts were sculptured so perfectly to provide no wind break. So having received the filling of the Spirit, I headed back down the snow field, now with the wind at my back. I noticed that my snowshoe tracks were almost completely invisible already from the blown snow that had covered them over, like sand at the beach.
In about five minutes I was back into the trees. At that point, my fingers began to warm up almost immediately and I was comfortable and relaxed all the way back down the trail at the road. I noticed when I got to the parking lot that the wind there had picked up quite a bit, and the snow was blowing there with the same force as it had been at the parking lot at the top of Cameron Pass several hours earlier.
I figured it had been a very good trek for the day and looked forward to a good meal. I knew there was a little hamlet called Gould on the other side of Cameron Pass where there was a restaurant, so I drove back up to the summit on the road and down the other side, at one time having to navigate a snow slide that had blocked half of the road.
When I got to Gould, I saw that the restaurant was closed for the winter with snowdrifts in front of it. So I turned around and went back up over Cameron Pass yet again and head down the road back towards home and civilization, thinking I would stop and get a bit to eat at one of the restaurants along the canyon highway.
As I drove down from the pass, I noticed that the wind had picked up even more. It began to feel like driving in a blizzard. Then all at once the wind would cease and it would be a sunny day again.
I was thinking about the day and how nice it had been, when I began to approach the trailhead where I had parked to reach Montgomery Pass. When it was still visible just head, all at once I felt my car begin to slide on the road on a patch of ice. At the same moment that my car began to slide out of control, the wind threw an incredible blast of snow over the road and within a half second, my car was completely shrouded with a whirlwind of blown snow. I could see only a few feet out of the car in front of me. It was as if I were inside a snowglobe.
In the midst of this blindness, I could feel the car sliding to the left, and I knew I was now in the wrong lane, helplessly moving forward down the hill at a fast clip, directly into blind snow without any sense of what might be ahead of me. I knew in an instant that if any car were in the oncoming lane, then I would see it only in a flash of an instant before we hit head on.
I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew that my life could end in an instant, and yet I felt completely at peace about that. Instead all I could think about was how I might be about to ruin someone else's day/month/year/life by my own stupidity, and how ashamed I would be about that.
Then after a few seconds of hurtling in the blindness of the oncoming lane, I felt my car begin to rotate, and to slide further to left. Now I knew that I was spinning off the road. In some ways, it was a relief, because I knew that at least I would be moving out of the way of any oncoming traffic.
Of course the idea of sliding off the road was not much appealing at all, especially since I couldn't see at all where I was going. Yet again I felt no panic---just resignation and a sense of "well, I guess we're going see where this goes."
The car spun completely around, so I could tell I was now facing uphill and moving sideways off the road. Just when I thought I was going to go off the edge of some embankment and was already calculating in my head about having to get my car out of the snow, my vehicle came to a gentle halt, as softly as a lamb lying down, halted by the snow at the edge of the road.
Finally it was over. After another second, the wind suddenly ceased and the snow around me dropped down and everything was clear. I was essentially parked along the road, facing uphill. It was as if I had simply pulled over beside the road, ironically only a few dozen feet from where I had put on my snowshoes a couple hours earlier.
I turned the key and the car started right up. With a glance along the clear road, I pulled out and turned around, to head downward away from the top of the pass.
You would think I would have felt all shaken about it, but I didn't feel anything of the sort, only great peace, and thankfulness above all that I hadn't ruined anyone else's day.
Of course I drove extra slowly as I descended down towards to the Poudre. It took about another minute until a car passed me in the opposite direction---a large pickup truck. I laughed when I saw the license plate---the unmistakable initials of a friend of mine with whom I had been recently corresponding by email.
I drove onwards about a half hour before I reached the first open restaurant, at the Glen Haven resort. After I pulled over into the muddy parking lot beside the highway and walked up to the door I was welcomed by a standing bear carving. Inside there were little bears on every day holding the salt and pepper shakers. I used a bear-shaped honey container to sugar up the hot tea I ordered.
While I waited for my burger and fries to arrive, I took out my smartphone and opened my Bible application. Since there was no connection in the canyon, I knew I wouldn't be able to access the particular translation I had been reading, since I hadn't downloaded it to the phone. I figured the application would simply open to a blank menu of the Bible, but instead, when the screen came up, I found myself looking at a passage that had loaded from the King James version that I downloaded and which was on the card in my phone.
The passage that came up was one I had not read in weeks. It was as if a passage had been selected for me at random. It was Psalm 121, which begins...
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