Crossing the Rockies: Day Five (Part One) -- McDougal Pass (9/27/09)

It was beautiful.  At 10:30 in the morning, I sat at McDougal Pass and looked east, the direction from which I’d come.  I was at 9180 feet, where hardy grasses and scrubby brush had largely replaced the evergreens.  I could see for miles.  I could see the outlines of the Bear Creek drainage, which wound its way from the crest of the Salt River Range through forested slopes to Grey’s River.  I could see where the river lay -- in the graying distance to the east, the collective peaks of the Wyoming Range formed a north-south wall.  Grey’s ran just on my side of that wall, separating the Wyoming and Salt River Ranges.

I was sitting high on the eastern side of a north-south ridge.  Behind me ran a sheer stone wall, gray and brown with horizontal striations announcing the rock’s sedimentary pedigree.  That north-south cliff formed the ridge’s backbone.   Below it, softer rock had capitulated more readily to the wind and rain, leaving a grassed talus-type slope that mediated between the unforgiving rock wall and the gently-inclining forest below.  Vertical ditches, likely engorged with roiling white water during the spring snowmelt season, ran thorough the grassy slope from the cliff base toward the forests, forming right angles with the cliff’s sedimentary lines.  This was, far and above, the prettiest part of the hike.  I sat on my pack and scribbled the elevation, coordinates, and a quick description of the scene into a notepad.  This was McDougal Pass.  This was what I had come for.

To the south, a trail cut across the grassy slope, then inclined sharply and disappeared where the cliff face petered out.  My route would take me north, where another trail looped into an aspen grove and around the cliff’s northern end.

Which way Walker went was anybody’s guess.  The route to the north looked easier to me, and I figured it might have looked easier to Walker, too.  I stood up and buckled on my pack.  My left ankle was starting to hurt, and Duke’s foot had been sore again this morning.  He wore one of my thickest wool socks on his right-front foot, secured to his leg by electrical tape.  I was short of water, having camped the night before above the elevation at which Bear Creek ran dry.  But I wasn’t worried about Duke or me.  I started up the final few feet of climb before descending on the west side of the Salt River Range.  We’d find water and rest on the other side.

Sitting at McDougal Pass, looking south.

Hiking route for Day Five.