How to Make a Friend- One Mile on Snowshoes

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Tumbling down from the reservoir above, the Taylor River is bone chatteringly cold, clear and calamitous. Riddled with boulders and trout, the busy little creek forever fights its way through a Jenga tower of pre-Cambrian granite making short work of its twelve mile descent to meet the Gunnison and the East Rivers in Almont. In 1937,  a great concrete plug was installed upstream to regulate the snowmelt for agriculture and, eventually, electricity. Without the dam to temper its passions, the Taylor’s unimpeded spring flows must have been like a high quality high school love affair– unpredictable in its nature, intimidating at its apex, short lived in its duration. 

Shaded in perpetuity, the jumbled walls of Taylor Canyon reach over one thousand feet into the sky. The Fossil Ridge Wilderness area lies just to the southeast and the many creeks of this prominent uplift run down to meet the Taylor River, cutting deep gulches and gullies along the Southern rim. The tiny creeks do a tremendous job of gouging their way through small cracks in the canyon walls, the sun lighting up their mossy rocks for just a few hours a day. 

Ringed with garlands of barbed wire, private property lines both sides of the two lane Taylor River road, the tracks of land a strip of white in a great sea of federally managed green zones. Expansive lands lie just beyond the palatial second homes and, despite their protracted absences, the owners of these fantasy ranches have taken many pains to communicate their “hands off” approach to public access. Despite their best efforts to create a border wall, there are a few well established entry points to the thousands of acres of public lands that their properties abut.  

One Mile is one of my favorite ways to access the meadows and pine forests that sit atop the walls of this sudden, deep river canyon. Following a busy little creek, the steep road hugs the mossy rocks that see less than two hours of sunlight a day.  

At the rickety fence that demarks the entrance into the management area, the road splits, one fork doubling back towards the canyon rim and running east, meandering along gulches and alpine forests. The main artery continues south until it crests at a little over 9,000 feet, providing a jaw dropping, panoramic view. To the west, the fluted snowfields of the Anthracites reflect just beyond the gentle uplift of ancient Flat Top Mountain; to the north the Collegiate Peaks forever stand guard, their stone walls as impassive and cruel as the pharaohs of old. Sunset at this clearing lasts for hours, pinks and yellows streaking across the sky like spilled paint. 

Today, my friend Karen and I have found ourselves on snowshoes, setting out for the headwaters of Beaver Creek, which lies about four miles to the southwest. The early March snow crunches under our feet, the whispers of a months old snowmobile track providing just enough compression that we move deftly atop the snow. Karen is a born athlete and so we move at a steady clip, making the ridge that separates One Mile and Beaver Creek in less than twenty minutes. We take a quick water break and continue south, following the rolling contours of the seasonal waterways. The naked face of Fossil Ridge, temporarily coated in white, rises in the distance- a subtle but omniscient presence in this end of the valley.

This is my fourth trip this winter to this area and the first one with human company. Karen is more than up to the task and our conversation is an easy loop of life, love, children and notes on the changing of the seasons. Although we have known each other for nearly twenty years, this is the longest unbroken conversation we’ve ever had. In a small town, there are an abundance of these types of acquaintances, especially among the moms. In the swirling waters of social life in Gunnison, Karen has always existed somewhere beyond a wave at the grocery store, but not so far as a weekend girls trip.

We are so similar in experience and temperament, though, that it’s as if we have been meeting for coffee every Saturday for years. So fluid is the back and forth that the miles click by and we’ve barely acknowledged our rapid loss of all that hard won elevation as we make our way to the beginning of Beaver Creek. Sitting on a rock outcropping, considering the view to the south, we feel strong and ambitious and so wind around the drainage, climbing up and onto the next ridge.

Snowshoeing is a laborious affair and offers little in the way of thrills. The sun baked March snow craters with each step and I find myself leaning heavily on my poles as the day wears on. Standing atop the western ridge of Beaver Creek, we can see the road across the valley. It rises matter of factly and with intent– it will be a good deal of work to get back to the car. After a few wide grinned photos, we decide against the next steep drop off and turn back. 

In every other sport, a descent is the happy consequence of a persistent effort. There is an essential and elemental justice in it– at the top, you are rewarded by directly reaping what you have so diligently sewn. In the case of snowshoeing, however, this axiom of outdoor pursuits is only marginally true. While it is decidedly less cardiac arrest-y to come down a steep hill on large plastic platters, it is not markedly different in skill or aesthetic than it was to ascend it. On snowshoes, you plod up and, when you decide to, you plod right back down. 

Coming to where Beaver Creek crosses the road, we begin the steep climb out, assuming it will be as simple as getting to the top of the hill we can see. Just to that rock outcropping up there, we say to each other confidently. A few minutes later, huffing and puffing, we concur that  this may be a little steeper than we remember and the snow a little wetter. And heavier. And stickier. 

We get to the top of the first knoll and are faced with another and another. And another. After an hour and half, somehow, we were still climbing, still breaking through the top layer of snow, still breathing heavily. As easily as we had plunged down these hills on a stream of conversation, we came back up in a fog of grit.

As the quiet of hard work set in, a tinge of guilt flickered in the back of my mind. This excursion could not really even be described as Type II fun. I’m not sure what category of amusement this adventure falls into, but it is not an obvious one. Karen’s original invitation was for downhill skiing and I had responded with a proposal to do the exact opposite of an adrenaline filled, lift served huck fest. Who needs apres ski cocktails and the thrill of wind in your face when you could lumber along a forest service road all day? Why let gravity do the work when you could do all of it?

By anyone’s definition, I am a very friendly person. I can be counted on to sit next to you in the bleachers, wave to you on the street and say hi at a restaurant. But, despite my outward appearance as an ultra extravert, I was raised as an only child by Midwestern parents in the 1980’s. Problematically, I never truly shed my middle school, cringy, a little too excitable band kid persona. As an adult, my adventures are spontaneous, time consuming and push the envelope of what most people would consider enjoyable. All of this has led me to spend an inordinate amount of time by myself. As we labored out of the drainage in silence, I wondered, between ten second breathers, if my new/old friend would meld back into the well of small town mom acquaintances, deciding that while I was friendly enough and had managed to raise decent children, I was clearly some sort of overly enthusiastic, masochistic weirdo. 

As we reached the top of yet another hill, we took a break on a patch of dry ground underneath a tree. Sharing a bag of trail mix, the chit chat started immediately back up. Staring across the valley, leaning against a fallen log, we talked about silly things and laughed the way women do when they are happy. We propped our feet against the snow, letting the softening afternoon sun warm our faces. We swapped favorite-places-in-the-valley stories and the conversation again braided and connected like the channels of a river.

Finally, the road gently sloped downward and the whole venture became markedly easier. We made our way to the clearing and I recounted to Karen the many emotions I have felt in this exact place. The day's shared work in this beautiful place has created space for truth in a friendship that has hitherto existed in small talk. We chatted all the way to the car– wet, cold and increasingly tired. Unloaded and in dry seats, we immediately agreed that we were fulfilled, but happy to no longer be toiling through the snow, no matter how picturesque the journey. 

And on this day, on One Mile, I was reminded of the tremendous value of sharing a bit of life with a sunny, easy going friend, who is just glad to be along for the ride, even if it is uphill both ways on snowshoes.