Glacier Sledding

From Troop552

At age 11, during my first High Adventure trip to Cuchara, Colorado in 1970, many of the scouts decided to climb Mount Blanca (14,345 ft). It seemed like a good idea at the time, get a bunch of young kids who grew up at a relatively low elevation on the prairies of Oklahoma, and walk up one of the tallest mountains in the continental United States, I saw nothing wrong with that plan. About the time we hit 12,000 feet (still a half a mile UP to go) we would take about 5 steps, then have to rest for 5 minutes. This went on for about an hour until we got near the top which was covered in snow pack (in the middle of August). When we saw the snow we forgot about the effort required to walk, picked up a hollowed out log, carried it to the top of the mountain, and slid down the snow pack on the hollow log. There is a picture of that somewhere, if you have it, please upload it to this story.

On the way back down the mountain we took a different path, following the stream of melting snow. All along the mountain side were very old log cabins in various states of decay, and probably dating back to the 1800's. We took the time to explore each one as we passed by. In one of the cabins, a family was living and spending the summer on the mountain. The roof of the cabin had long ago fallen in, but the four log walls remained. They had cleared out the debris from the roof and covered the cabin with a large sheet of plastic to keep the rain out. They had apparently been there for several months and were planning on staying until winter. We visited with them for a while then continued following the stream passing numerous beaver ponds and dams until we got back to our base camp. Dfrench 15:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)