A Walk on the Reiser's Prairie

September 23, 1998

The early morning air was clear and cold and I was stiff and sore from the previous day's outing. I was reluctant to start out on another climb for this and another reason. The old axiom that you can't see the forest for the single tree applies to mountains. Sometimes you get yourself up on a cliff and lose your perspective.

So... I chose the alternative outing of a long walk on the Reiser Prairie, near the base of Horn Peak which at the Eastern base of the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness.

At an altitude of over 9000 feet, the Reiser Prairie is always cool in Summer and dry and Sunny in Winter.

The appeal of the prairie environment in the Sangre de Cristo range is to have the opportunity to walk on almost level terrain and at the same time have a view of almost fifty miles of the mountain range from wherever you happen to be.

There are no real paths on the prairie, you just meander wherever it seems appealing. Several thousand acres of meandering offers some long walks.

As usual, my two year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppy Shogun was my companion. Shogun had recently lost his leather collar somewhere while playing so he was still wearing my pink cowboy bandanna around his neck. It is always more Fun for me when Shogun is along. Dogs never seem to get tired, always seem to be having a great time and they are always happy to "Be" with you no matter how things are going for you as a person.

Prairie environments are filled with small things... Flowers, grass, field stones, small streams... everything has learned to stay close to the ground. The tallest living thing on the Reiser Prairie is you and the occasional four foot high pine tree that has been shaped by the constant wind.

I decided that a walk of about six miles would be enough for today. By starting early you can complete a walk like this while the air is still cool.

I headed out from the Northwest corner of the prairie and chose a stand of Cottonwood trees that grow along Dry Creek as my first goal. This leg of my outing was about a mile and a half in a Southeasterly direction.

I always look at the small things on the prairie.... little clusters of flowers; lichen growing on the field stones. Sometimes human artifacts lie on the surface from around the turn of the century... old tin cans next to a stone fire ring left over from some cowboy meal. A broken plowshare from a farmer who tried to plow the stony ground of the prairie. We passed by large piles of stones that ranchers pried from the ground to expose more topsoil and encourage grass to grow for their cattle to eat.

You see; the more stones you pick up from the prairie, the more places there are for grass to grow. The more grass that grows, the more food there is to eat for the Hereford cattle that are grown in this area. These piles of stones are sometimes quite large and we sometimes jest with people by telling them that the piles are the burial mounds of American Indian Chiefs!

We reached the line of trees and were surprised to see how much water was running in Dry Creek this late in the year. Shogun ran after things only he could "See" as I walked a slower pace.

I stopped and turned to the West. Broken Hand Peak was the most significant peak to the South that I could see with a strata that reminded me of the Canadian Rockies between Banff and Jasper. In the Canadian Rockies near Roger's Pass is the Glacier House hotel where we sometimes enjoy food prepared by a European trained chef whose name is Clarke.

Clarke told me that he had been a Alpinist for many years and that he had become so good at mountain climbing that he was now able to make a complete and satisfying ascent of a mountain using only his eyes. Clarke would stand outside of the hotel every once in a while and slowly ascend nearby Mount Sir Donald to refresh himself.

I remembered that the 16th century Zen Archers claimed that at the highest ranks, the Archer would set the bow aside and could still practice the discipline of Archery. I knew this could be true when Clarke communicated this concept as applied to the Alpinist. I find that this practice works best when the Alpinist climbs a route physically first; then climbs the route with his eyes as a way to refresh himself mentally and Spiritually. By slowly reclimbing the route with your eyes and re-living the ascent from memory, many of the benefits of an actual climb can be realized.

The next mountain to the North in the Sangre de Cristo range that I could see was the Crestone Needle. Crestone means "Cox Comb" in Spanish and is a natural Medieval rampart. Composed of a wonderful conglomerate rock that contains intrusions of many other types of rocks and minerals; it offers a spectacular and unusual ascent for the Alpinist. Looking like colorful concrete up close, the intrusions are usually round or egg shaped and offer the challenge of staying calm when you are far from the ground and would like something more positive to stand on than a rounded surface.

From "Dry Creek" we turned North with a small pond in the middle of the prairie as our destination. Only a low mound gives a clue of where ranchers around the turn of the century dug a hole to capture the water from a small spring that feeds the pond. Several feet deep and quite clear; Shogun always enjoys refreshing himself by going for a swim. The water is always cold on even the hottest day and Shogun looks like he has a lot more energy after getting out of the water.

The extra water around the pond's outlet spreads out as it soaks into the ground and supports a lush meadow of green grass. I often see a herd of about fifty Antelope grazing in this area. One of the fastest of all land animals and able to run almost seventy miles per hour; we usually enjoy watching them through binoculars as they are quite shy and are difficult to approach closely.

The last leg of the hike back to the starting point is my favorite as I have planned the walk so that I walk West. In this direction I can "Fondly trace the contours of the mountains that were apparently built for Eternity" as Albert Einstein once said.

In the center of the visible range is Horn Peak. At 13,450 foot in elevation, Horn Peak has a vertical relief from it's base on the prairie of almost a mile. Horn Peak is one of the many free standing, pyramid shaped mountains that make the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness so interesting and challenging to the Alpinist. These natural pyramids do not have connecting ridges to adjacent mountains and as such you are forced to start the ascent at the base of each mountain. Horn Peak is big in every respect and the South and North ridges; which are separated by several miles of forest seem to lovingly embrace the Reiser's Prairie.

A stumble encouraged me to look down at my feet and notice the field stones that stick up from the prairie everywhere you look. Pry one of these stones out of the soil and underneath you will find another stone and under that another stone and another stone and another stone for hundreds of feet under the prairie plants. These stones were left for us during the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago when glaciers covered this area. Most of the stones are round or ovoid like river rocks from being rubbed against one another by the movement of the glaciers. Each stone shaped the next for thousands of years until they were nestled together like eggs in a basket.

The deep winter snowpacks in the Sangres begin to melt in Spring and the water runs down the drainage's of the Eastern slope of the range until the water reaches the prairie. At this point some of the water continues out into the prairie in the form of surface streams. However, most of the water goes underground and flows between the rocks as a slow moving sheet. The sandy soil acts as a natural filter for the water that flows between the rocks and offers pure, clean water for those who make the effort to dig or drill a water well.

Shogun and I arrived back at our starting point and shared a hard boiled egg and some bread while sitting on the tailgate of our Ford pickup truck.

Another morning well spent in the Paradise of the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado...