Knowing your limits

When you travel alone, like I usually do, its important to know your own physical limits as well as the limits of your equipment.  The latter became an issue for me when I attempted to go exploring in the Henry Mountains of Utah this last summer.

I’ve had my eye on the Henry’s for awhile; a dark , forested sky island rising out of the sandstone canyon country of southern Utah.   Remote and distant, hiding from the crowds that descend on the colorful parks of the Colorado Plateau, they promised hidden treasures.  There was even a bison herd that had been introduced by Utah Fish and Game.  So on my from northern Nevada to southern Arizona in July, I decided to go exploring.

I ran into off and on (mostly on) rain showers the minute I hit central Nevada, and they followed me all the way back to Tucson.  The monsoons had started, which meant I had to be aware of flash floods and the potential for washed out roads.  After driving through the amazing beauty of Capital Reef National Park, I made my way to Hanksville and started the 21 mile ascent to the Lonesome Beaver campground.  What started out as a wide, graded gravel road quickly turned into a narrow two-track and proceeded to get rougher and rockier the further I got into the mountains.  There was even one hairy 1/2 mile stretch where the road was cut into a cliff, only one vehicle wide.  If you ran into another vehicle coming the other way, someone would have a scary reverse around at least one blind corner.  The road crossed the stream a couple of times, and my poor, ancient Honda CR-V took a beating by the time we made it to the campground.  The only other vehicles I saw on the way up were ATVs, and no one else was in the campground.

Not wanting to beat up my car anymore, I decided to stay in the campground for the night.  It was a nice, shady spot in a dense forest of pines; quite the relief from the 95 degree temps in the valleys below.  Recent rains had left numerous puddles and nearby Bull Creek was running pretty wild.   While I set up camp, a couple of small groups of people on ATV’s headed on up into the mountains.  As evening fell, I was treated to a lovely serenade by some Hermit Thrushes.

It was a very quiet night.  Just the whisper of the pines and the roar of the creek; no crickets, no frogs, no owls or coyotes.  But the dawn chorus started just after 4:30 am with the Hermit Thrushes being joined by American Robins and Stellar’s Jays.

On my way to Nevada a few weeks earlier, I had covered close to 200 miles of dirt roads, in northern Arizona (see El Lobo part 2: Greenfire’s Ghost) and eastern Nevada (see Wild horses of the Great Basin).  Some the roads were pretty rough, and it caught up with me in Ely, Nevada, when I discovered I had a flat tire caused by a rock puncture right through the steel belt.  It ended up costing me a whole new set of tires (the fun part of having an all-wheel-drive).  It also shook my confidence a little, and reminded me that I was no longer driving a 4×4 truck.  CR-Vs will go many places, but they do have their limits.  And, as I sat in camp that morning, watching nothing but ATV’s on the road I had driven in on, I realized I had no business being there with a CR-V.  I had hoped to stay in the Henry’s for several days to do some exploring, maybe even hike up one of the 11,000 foot peaks.  But as I watched a few small clouds forming, and listened to the roar of Bull Creek, I thought about the rough road I came in on, with the two stream crossings and the narrow stretch along the cliff.  If the area received a good downpour during a thunderstorm, the roads could wash out to the point that my CR-V couldn’t make it out, at least without some damage.  I didn’t know the weather forecast for the next few days, but afternoon thunderstorms had been occurring every afternoon, which was normal for mid-July, so I could expect more rain.   I made the sad decision to leave the Henry’s while the roads were still good, and head on down the road to Arizona.  Caution trumped curiosity.   But I berated myself the entire trip out of the mountains; I wouldn’t have been so chicken when I was younger.

I had planned to head into the Apache National Forest, back to wolf country, but the weather caught up with me again.  As I drove into Arizona, I could see a massive thunderstorm building ahead – right in the direction I was going.  It got darker and nastier looking the closer I got, with a lot of lightning.  Once again I chickened out, this time retreating to a roadside motel in Holbrook.

There’s a thin line between courageous and stupid; its even thinner when you travel alone.

Recordings made with a Sony PCM-M10, Audio Technica AT2022, and Felmicamps pre-amp.