*Intermission*
My Top Ten Wildlife Experiences, #8
The Ptarmigan
February 1970
Montezuma Basin, Dillon Ranger District
Arapaho National Forest
“In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift seen under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness, its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale and of heavenly color, the reflected light intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light”. (Ruskin, in Van Dyke’s The Mountain)
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| Eddie skiing the "Little Professor" avalanche |
That is what lay out ahead of me on that February morning ~ Montezuma Basin, three or four square miles of folding sloping mountain basin above 12,500 feet, above timberline, leading up to 14,000 foot Gray’s and Torry’s Peaks. Not a track, not a blemish, not a sign of a breathing being in the entire basin. And I could see it all as I got out of the Forest Service rig and put on my skis. The sky was set to provide one of those no-cloud Colorado days, so when the sun cleared the Continental Divide, a couple miles east, the day would warm. I’d been waiting for this kind of day to make this trip. This basin was just beginning to get some recreation use in the winter, a few crosscountry skiers, an occasional train of two or three snowmobiles. I was there to look at the avalanche hazard and see if the Forest Service (I) should put up some warning signs and, if so, where. I had been doing that on Shrine Pass west of Vail Pass and on Loveland Pass.
But, I was really there to absorb the undisturbed winter beauty of Montezuma Basin and the grand peaks that defined its boundaries ~ the Pacific side.
It was a good snow year, the 1960’s had been a good snow decade, the snow droughts would come later in the ‘70s.
Vegetation in these alpine basins is in miniature. There are little clumps of spruce trees, no individual gets more than four feet high because of the high winds and severe growing conditions (soil and temperature), they’re called krumholdts. There are willows on ridges that are one inch high. Willows along the streams get a few feet tall. What the grasses, sedges, forbs and browse plants lack in stature they more than make up in pure beauty.
But, on this February day all that was covered. Only the waves of wind and mountain-shaped snow were ahead of me. The route I choose was up a broad little draw that curved gracefully through the basin, always gaining elevation, ending at the base of the steep saddle between peaks on the Continental Divide.
By midmorning I’d tracked a few miles and had time to absorb the aloneness of my situation and the untouched beauty of this place. My skis were sinking six or eight inches into the new light snow so there was no “gliding”, I was just going along slowly striding, breaking trail. Hypnotized by nothing.
Then ~ from right between the tips of my skis a ptarmigan exploded out of the flawless snow chucking a fluttering straight up about six feet to its cruising elevation and made a bee line up the drainage.
I had never been as surprised by anything in my life. Almost all events have some hint, some clue, some lead-in indicating a change is coming. This ptarmigan didn’t give me anything! Neither did the snow.
After I’d settled down from my fright, it began to sink in that change, sometimes, can happen with no advanced warning, so, somehow, always consider sudden change as a possibility and prepare.
What a surprise, what a delight, WHAT A DAY!
Jerry Covault
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