Vestal Basin Redux
It was a trip during which youthful and adolescent bonds of friendship were further forged into unbreakable, lifelong ties that show little or no wear and tear after 45 years.
Memories still vivid after 45 years.
Words and pictures by Doug Freed
Vestal Peak 1977. From left to right, Kurt Lankford, Doug Freed, Dan Stone (seated), Glen Ruckhaus, Brian Litz and Brad Stone on the summit of Vestal Peak, 1977.
Glen Ruckhaus arrived in Vestal Basin about one week later than the rest of us back in mid-August, 1977. He announced that Elvis Presley had died. I can’t speak for the others on the trip, but I didn’t believe him.
Just one month shy of 45 years later, I stood in Vestal Basin looking up at iconic Wham Ridge remembering the news of Elvis Presley’s death and the rest of a two-week climbing trip that stands out in my memory as an important coming of age trip for a group of 17- and 18-year-olds. It was a trip during which youthful and adolescent bonds of friendship were further forged into unbreakable, lifelong ties that show little or no wear and tear after 45 years. In at least one case, a new friend joined the group, and 45 years later is practically a family member.
What makes memories from a trip endure over the decades, while memories from so many other trips have jumbled and emulsified into a cluttered collage of laughably inaccurate reminiscences?
The people? The place? The weather? The time of life? All of that, and I think a sense of life’s opportunity and the knowing we were at square one in what we all expected to be charmed and successful adult lives. Upon returning to Denver at the end of the trip, we would, within a day or two, become college men and women. For this group of privileged young people, we could feel our independence and sense our imagined bright futures. It was all there for the taking, and this trip was a celebration of the foregone conclusion that the members of this group would find their groove and make a mark, or at the very least enjoy well-furnished and sheltered lives.
I remember many distinct vignettes from this trip in a clear-eyed fashion not generally experienced when thinking about long-ago adventures. Other trip memories of the era are so badly mangled by time, I feel certain accurate trip narratives are now laughably out of reach. But this trip is different. I recently talked with two friends on the trip and like me, they mostly enjoyed clear memories of Vestal Basin, 1977.
We were so calorie starved at the end of the two-week trip (this is a guess; none of us can remember the exact length of this trip), we saved bacon grease from breakfast so we could dip our bread in it at lunch.
It rained for most of the first week. Dan Stone and I had elected to forego tents in favor of a large tarp. The tarp at least gave the camp-bound climbing group a place to convene while waiting out the storms, but it’s effectiveness at keeping us dry was limited. After days of dampness, I executed a terrible mean move on my best friend, Kurt Lankford, and his girlfriend, Lisa Jones. I piled my wet self in their dry tent, rendering their tent no longer dry. Lisa, allow me to offer a 45-year-late apology.
Dan brought along a book of Edgar Allen Poe stories. We took turns under the tarp making theatrical reading of The Tell Tale Heart to kill the time.
Tim K., a friend of mine from high school that did not know anybody else on the trip, had insufficient gear, especially his sleeping bag. We taught him to heat rocks in the fire, wrap them in clothes and put them in his sleeping bag when going to bed. It worked. He called the hot rocks his little buddies.
After days of mud and rain and cold, Dan built a frame of willow branches for the tarp and we made a sauna by splashing water on hot rocks. It worked magnificently. It warmed us and cleaned us, and had the added bonus of making girls and boys take off their clothes. This is a coming of age trip, right? But no, there was no heat generated by anything other than hot rocks. This was a group who routinely went skinny dipping in high mountain lakes and streams to A) get more clean and less stinky and B) prove our nordic toughness. Losing clothes was never more than that, to the chagrin of some, I suppose.
Once the weather cleared, we were able to climb Arrow, Vestal and the Trinities, but afternoon monsoon-driven storms continued to add excitement and drama to some of the climbs, especially in the form of lightening. Dan remembered one climb on which he and I and most of the girls were chased from the summit by lightening. We down-climbed quickly to a point where we figured we were low enough to be relatively safe. We hunkered in, sitting on packs and trying to keep the soles of our boots on the rocks (does that even help?). We felt like we were low enough to be out of critical danger until a lightening bolt slammed in to the mountain below us. When the A-team climbers returned to camp from their day’s adventure, the girls somehow gave credit to Dan and I for keeping them safe in the lightening. Nothing could hardly be farther from the truth, but we did not protest much.
Craig Gaskill showed up several days later than the rest of us. I had never met this fellow who, along with Kurt Lankford, already enjoyed legendary climber status. Tall and gangly, and maybe a little shy and awkward, he ignited a grease bomb one night as we huddled around the campfire. Despite nearly blowing our faces off with flaming grease, he taught us a trick we still use to delight and annoy our fellow campers. A few weeks later, Craig and I found ourselves moving in to the same dorm at CU. The rest, as they say, is history.
Little consideration was given to backpack weight. We made two trips in to the basin just to get all the food in to the base camp. Those packs were brutally heavy. While we made one nod to weight by bringing along textured vegetable protein, we also packed canned hams, boxes of mashed potatoes mix, cheesecake mix, Wylers lemonade mix and bacon, among hundreds of pounds of other food, much of it in cans. I can’t remember if we had a watermelon on this trip or not, but we often did on trips — and opened them with our ice axes. This is not to mention climbing equipment, which was not ultra-light in those days. Having a pack so heavy one needed help to put it on, was not unusual, and, in contrast to today’s ultra-light mania, was a badge of honor.
We cooked all that food exclusively on an open fire. Everybody always knew what needed to be done and did it. We did not have elaborate camp chore duty schedules. We washed our blackened pots and pans in the stream and did not leave a dirty camp that I can remember. Nobody in those days worried about bears. They had been nearly eradicated in the 1970s and it would be another twenty years before they started making a comeback.
This being an official Colorado Mountain Club Denver Junior outing, we had an adult sponsor. It was Polly, Craig’s older sister, who couldn’t have been more than 21 or 22. I do not remember her playing much of a role in our decision making, but I am sure we tested her with our puerile antics.
We rode the Durango-Silverton train from Silverton to Elk Park to start and end our trip. I remember the cost being a token $1 or $2. Dan thinks it was more like $7. Craig guessed $6, but said he would believe it if somebody said it was under $6. Whatever the meager cost, the railroad back then seemed to give backpackers somewhat special treatment. We could sit either in the baggage car with the pack, or in one of the open air cars. Today it’s $48.50 for the short one-way ride from Elk Park to Silverton, plus $5 for your backpack. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about double what we paid. In 1977 we feared missing the train. We all remember running down the trail with packs on to make sure we made it. None of us wanted to hike up the switchbacks to the top of Molas Pass.
If you haven’t hiked the trail from Elk Creek to Vestal Basin, you are missing out on an absurdly steep climber’s trail that was not built by the Forest Service, but rather developed socially by the boots of thousands of climbers. Today, with beetle-kill downed timber everywhere and no Forest Service maintenance, the already difficult trail is taking on another dimension.
So there I was, 45 years later, standing in the middle of Vestal Basin in the rain, which seemed appropriate. The difference was my modern rain gear was bullet proof and my light-weight tent was keeping everything mostly dry except for condensation. Being one who tends to look forward rather than back, I was surprised at the flood of memories. Several of the friends on that trip are still friends. Dan and Craig and Kurt’s wife, Karla, are practically family. Kurt died of a sudden heart attack in 2002. I still miss him and still carry some of his ashes in my backpack, daypack or dry box on every trip I make. He was there with me, as always, as the memories flooded back.
This time I was there with Brian and his 17-year-old son Clay. I had, more or less, invited myself on this father-son trip with the idea that climbing Wham Ridge again after 45 years would be tons of fun. But everything is different now. I am no longer enthusiastic about exposure. Never a great climber, I have certainly gotten progressively and notably much worse. And most importantly, I no longer enjoy putting myself in those kinds of positions. Older and perhaps even slightly more sagacious, I can say no, which I did to climbing Wham Ridge again. It seemed right for the father and son to make the climb.
Brian, Clay and I for years have shared outdoor adventures, but I felt that Vestal Basin was working its magic once again. The bonds we share are stronger today than they were before Vestal Basin.
While Brian and Clay climbed, I spent the day looking for our camp of yore and hiking up to Vestal Lake and on up towards the end of the valley. As for the camp, I convinced myself I had found it, but I could have been wrong, and probably was.
The hike up the valley was maddening. Willows now clog portions of Vestal Basin and pose a decided impediment to the hiker. Route-finding skills are needed just to make it through and around stands of willows. None of us remember the willows being an issue 45 years ago. I can only wonder what changes to the ecosystem are responsible. Fewer elk? Or perhaps faulty memory?
Most likely it’s faulty memory. But faulty or not, these memories are precious.
Wham Ridge and two of the Trinities of the Grenadier Range.
Modern equipment kept the 2022 rains at bay.