buckyball1
New member
Winter can't be far away when I drive for 3 hours in inky blackness to the hike(s) and it's dark when I arrive home.
Beaver(between Rts 17 and 4 south of Rangely and thanks to OneStep for advice)-I drove up Rt 17 from Mexico and turned toward Beaver on the Cross Town Rd (dirt-not signed). If you do Beaver, use Delorme and Sat pictures as the topos do not reflect the current state of roads back in there. After a few miles on Cross Town, I turned left on the road that runs north, then east to approach Beaver from the NW. The road is no loner barricaded and I parked about a mile from Cross Town Rd just before some deep ruts filled with water. I could have driven another 0.5 miles to the new cell? tower site. Yes a brand spanking new tower that from site condition appears to have been finished very recently(like yesterday). Affter the tower, the dirt road is filled with grass and there are numerous "no-go" ditches.
I followed this road to a spot at 2500' WNW of Beaver and started up through a combination of old logging roads, cut over areas and mild wacking. This were pretty easy until about 0.15 from what I thought was the top. The woods became extremely thick with close together dead balsams and blowdown-slow and ugly. I came up onto a series of steps/ledges/"possible summits" in thick woods and started searching. After spending more time on the last 200 yards and the jar search than on the first 0.6 of the wack, I considered giving up hoping there was no jar. I was "right there", searched 3-4 humps twice and nothing. Being anal about finding jars. i decided to wander NE? toward a spot where the trees looked "right" for a top-i am guessing this was about 150? feet from where the summit appears on the topo. Guess what, a Skippy jar and a higher elevation on my Thomen. Yes, I know this seems to happen now and then with me, but the jar was not where the "x" on the topo is, but more toward that single contour circle NE of the "x". I'm not the only one who's been in the thick crap and that's caused by shooting for the "x" as the approach to the Skippy jar from below is easier.(the 50-100' rule again). And the jar is not always found by experienced hikers. The jar was filled with water, none of the paper readable-nothing to salvage. Much easier going down from the jar.
Now that "local knowledge" was awake, I headed back down 17 to Byron in hopes of doing Old Turk. I had no info on this and hoped to drive in a "road/trail?" from Coos Canyon as far as I could and then wack direct to the top. I stopped at the local store and some nice people told me the road was pretty much ATV only and they weren't sure there was "anything" to ease my way to the top after I left the road. I did drive in about 0.25 miles and parked near the power lines, but driving any further would have been stupid. I trudged up the road for about a mile or so to a great outlook (superb and different views all over the area I covered today) which was also a height of land and considered my options. I decided on an opening/old road/skidder trail? and got lucky. I was able to follow this network of overgrown "roads" with stretches of decent wacking almost to the summit--only a long horizontal stretch of blowdown near the top caused any problems. With just a little searching, I found a pole with surveyor's tape wrapped around it and about 50' away a real glass jar at what I felt was the top. The jar was bone dry with lid rusted shut. After some work with my poles, I got the jar open w/o breaking it and read some papers inside a plastic bag which literally crumbled when i touched it. It would appear nobody has signed in on Old Turk in over 7 years
--I may call the phone # on the paper.
That was to be it for the day, but since everything had gone pretty well, I decided to whip myself a bit more by doing Jackson near Tumbledown NW of Weld. This is not the frequently climbed Little Jackson, which I had done before, but a higher neighboring peak which now has a trail branching off the LJ Trail from the col between the two. Nothing special, a good stiff workout climb and a nice spongy, steady elevation gain on the new trail section. What was cool was that I met a hiker near the top of Jackson who thought I might be a bear (solitary 'wackers do get a bit crazed). It turned out to be Albee blasting through the 3ks and we had a nice recline in the sun on a "platform" on the top -there's also a building and solar panels.It was great to share stories/perspective with Albee and he made the trot down to the car go by really quickly
(as always, PM for more details if you want them)
jim
Beaver(between Rts 17 and 4 south of Rangely and thanks to OneStep for advice)-I drove up Rt 17 from Mexico and turned toward Beaver on the Cross Town Rd (dirt-not signed). If you do Beaver, use Delorme and Sat pictures as the topos do not reflect the current state of roads back in there. After a few miles on Cross Town, I turned left on the road that runs north, then east to approach Beaver from the NW. The road is no loner barricaded and I parked about a mile from Cross Town Rd just before some deep ruts filled with water. I could have driven another 0.5 miles to the new cell? tower site. Yes a brand spanking new tower that from site condition appears to have been finished very recently(like yesterday). Affter the tower, the dirt road is filled with grass and there are numerous "no-go" ditches.
I followed this road to a spot at 2500' WNW of Beaver and started up through a combination of old logging roads, cut over areas and mild wacking. This were pretty easy until about 0.15 from what I thought was the top. The woods became extremely thick with close together dead balsams and blowdown-slow and ugly. I came up onto a series of steps/ledges/"possible summits" in thick woods and started searching. After spending more time on the last 200 yards and the jar search than on the first 0.6 of the wack, I considered giving up hoping there was no jar. I was "right there", searched 3-4 humps twice and nothing. Being anal about finding jars. i decided to wander NE? toward a spot where the trees looked "right" for a top-i am guessing this was about 150? feet from where the summit appears on the topo. Guess what, a Skippy jar and a higher elevation on my Thomen. Yes, I know this seems to happen now and then with me, but the jar was not where the "x" on the topo is, but more toward that single contour circle NE of the "x". I'm not the only one who's been in the thick crap and that's caused by shooting for the "x" as the approach to the Skippy jar from below is easier.(the 50-100' rule again). And the jar is not always found by experienced hikers. The jar was filled with water, none of the paper readable-nothing to salvage. Much easier going down from the jar.
Now that "local knowledge" was awake, I headed back down 17 to Byron in hopes of doing Old Turk. I had no info on this and hoped to drive in a "road/trail?" from Coos Canyon as far as I could and then wack direct to the top. I stopped at the local store and some nice people told me the road was pretty much ATV only and they weren't sure there was "anything" to ease my way to the top after I left the road. I did drive in about 0.25 miles and parked near the power lines, but driving any further would have been stupid. I trudged up the road for about a mile or so to a great outlook (superb and different views all over the area I covered today) which was also a height of land and considered my options. I decided on an opening/old road/skidder trail? and got lucky. I was able to follow this network of overgrown "roads" with stretches of decent wacking almost to the summit--only a long horizontal stretch of blowdown near the top caused any problems. With just a little searching, I found a pole with surveyor's tape wrapped around it and about 50' away a real glass jar at what I felt was the top. The jar was bone dry with lid rusted shut. After some work with my poles, I got the jar open w/o breaking it and read some papers inside a plastic bag which literally crumbled when i touched it. It would appear nobody has signed in on Old Turk in over 7 years
--I may call the phone # on the paper.That was to be it for the day, but since everything had gone pretty well, I decided to whip myself a bit more by doing Jackson near Tumbledown NW of Weld. This is not the frequently climbed Little Jackson, which I had done before, but a higher neighboring peak which now has a trail branching off the LJ Trail from the col between the two. Nothing special, a good stiff workout climb and a nice spongy, steady elevation gain on the new trail section. What was cool was that I met a hiker near the top of Jackson who thought I might be a bear (solitary 'wackers do get a bit crazed). It turned out to be Albee blasting through the 3ks and we had a nice recline in the sun on a "platform" on the top -there's also a building and solar panels.It was great to share stories/perspective with Albee and he made the trot down to the car go by really quickly
(as always, PM for more details if you want them)
jim
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