Crew 612-M3 2006
This morning Jared, Thomas, Galen, Ian, Daniel and I got up really early to hike up Trail Peak. It took longer than I would have thought to get out of camp, but we were on the trail by 6. The stay-in-camps had volunteered to take down the tents when they got up. The trail up to Webster Pass was pretty tough, even burdened as we were with only water and breakfast. But we got over the pass and descended to Bonita Canyon for breakfast.
The canyon was really pretty. It's a long, lush, green meadow. Seeing green grass was a switch from all of the parched meadows we've been in so far. And there wasn't another person as far as we could see up and down the valley.From there, it was a fairly easy hike up to Fowler Pass, and then on to the assault of Trail Peak. ("Trail Peak" is so named because it was the the major peak on the 
trail between Crater Lake and Rayado Lodge.) The climb up Trail Peak was pretty rough, too. There were switch backs, but steep, and lots of loose rocks. It took about 1.5 hr to climb. At the peak there was a message pipe where crews leave notes recording their presence, with comments. I was surprised. There were notes going back 2-3 years, and the paper was still in pretty good shape.
trail between Crater Lake and Rayado Lodge.) The climb up Trail Peak was pretty rough, too. There were switch backs, but steep, and lots of loose rocks. It took about 1.5 hr to climb. At the peak there was a message pipe where crews leave notes recording their presence, with comments. I was surprised. There were notes going back 2-3 years, and the paper was still in pretty good shape.We then continued down the other side of the peak to the site of the B24 bomber crash. Seventeen airmen were killed there in April '42 in bad weather during a training flight.
I had been led to believe that a part of a wing was about all that was left, but there is quite a bit of debris spread down the side of the mountain. We can now honestly all say that we've jumped through the door of a B24 bomber at 11,242 feet altitude, without a parachute.
It started to thunder, so we decided that it was time to retreat. We headed back down the mountain. It took 15 minutes to get back down to Fowler Pass. The guys were running down the trail, pausing every few hundred feet to let me catch up. I was worried that someone might get hurt, but they did OK. I took it easier to protect my knees, which have a few more miles on them than the scouts'.
Back at Fowler Pass we met a crew that was hiking from Agua Fria to Crater Lake, having passed thru Fish Camp. That's a lousy hike with packs. One of the advisors told me he had left a nice shirt drying on a tree at Agua Fria and asked if we'd look for it on our way to Apache Springs. He gave me his name and crew number. (I did find the shirt later that day, and turned it in at Fish Camp to be sent to base camp.)
As we passed back through Bonita Canyon a herd of cattle was grazing there. We got to watch the wranglers wrangle them around.
The hike back to camp went quickly, and we returned just after noon.
After lunch at Fish Camp, we headed up Agua Fria Canyon toward Apache Springs. It's a nice hike up the canyon, pretty easy most of the way. There are lots of crossings of Agua Fria Creek. The last 3/4 of a mile climb up from Agua Fria to Apache Springs is steep with rough switchbacks. I prefer hiking this trail in the other direction. This is the section of trail that we'll be working on replacing tomorrow.
We got to camp, and they took us to our campsite. Surprise! Out of 18 sites, we ended up in the same site I was in in '94. Of the two camps we've hit so far that I've been in before, in both we've been in a campsite I've been in before. Low probability, indeed.
The evening meal was yummy. A Mexican slop.
The weather was less than pleasant. Cloudy, with off and on drizzle, and chilly. I ended up wearing most of my clothes to keep warm.
After dinner the advisors went to "Advisor's Coffee" for a chance to chew the fat. There's a hummingbird feeder on the porch of the staff cabin, and the birds were going crazy. There must have been a dozen of them, at least, buzzing around vying for the feeder. They were quite unconcerned with people, flying around and between us. You could stand two feet from the feeder, or even hold out a finger for them to perch on. There were so many it like being near a hornets' nest.After "coffee" it was cold and drizzly, so I climbed into the tent, wrote in my journal for a while, read for a while, then zonked.
A B24 bomber crashed in fog near the top of Trail Peak in 1942.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Day 5: Trail Peak and then to Apache Springs
