Hell Freezes Over: Elk Calling Article in the New York Times

In today's New York Times (Feb 27th, 2008) there is an article about the elk calling competition in Reno, Nevada at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's 2008 Elk Camp. I don't believe it! Since when do New Yorkers give a rats ass about elk calling, or anything with the word "elk" in it. Amazing. Guess I need to start training the kids for the 2012 Elk Camp...

Crazy Winds

This is the time of the year when new residents of the high country call up a real estate broker and scream “sell it NOW!” If you don’t know why, then you’ve either lived here for more than a few years or you’ve been in Costa Rica for the last week or two. Severely cold temperatures and high winds are the true test of will for anyone “living the dream” just a few miles as the crow flies from the continental divide. With all the wind and cold over the last couple of weeks it was almost impossible keeping the house warm. It was so windy at our house that we’d only let the dogs outside to do their business with a strong rope attached to their collars. One of my buddies living near the Justice Center tells me that he’d measured the wind gusts at 80+ MPH. Maybe that explains why my house was shaking so hard on those crazy, windy nights.

If you ever wondered why it get so windy up here in the mountains, here’s the simplest explanation I could find: As wind runs into a mountain it flows up the side until it reaches the top. It cannot continue to flow upwards because wind flowing above the mountain forces it back down. When the rising air reaches the top of the mountain, it has to all funnel all that converging wind through a small area just above the peak. To allow that much wind through a limited amount of space, the wind speed increases. You can see this same effect in a river. When a river is wide, the water flows slowly, but as it narrows, the water speeds up. This is because the same amount of water needs to fit through a smaller space. This principle of fluid dynamics explains the high wind speeds on mountaintops.

Here’s the explanation that I tell my kids at bedtime: When the earth was born, all the winds gathered here in Gilpin/Nederland to decide who was the biggest and loudest wind. They liked living in the mountains so much that they forgot about the gathering and made this their permanent home. That’s why all the wind in the world starts here and is the strongest, loudest wind in the whole world. My daughter, like her mother, is not susceptible to my tall tales. She just looks at me and scowls.

Then she tells me that the winds are made by differential heating and cooling of the earth and oceans, resulting in areas of high and low pressure. Wind and weather move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Finally she tells me that there’s this thing called the Coriolis Effect, caused by the rotation of the earth. The Coriolis Effect causes wind to rotate clock-wise around a high pressure system and counter clock-wise around a low pressure system. That’s why we get the nasty high winds in the winter and the awesome upslope snow storms in the spring. There’s no fooling that girl.

All I know is that when I went online to find the cities in America that have the lowest average wind for the year I found a few that I were interesting – Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Medford, Oregon, and Missoula, Montana. Oak Ridge was a city built during World War II to support the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was the effort to build the world’s first nuclear bomb. If you think radon is a problem when it comes to places to live, I’m guess that nuclear research is also a big turn-off. Scratch Oak Ridge from the list. Medford, Oregon looks interesting, but I’m not big on living in truck stop towns. Scratch Medford. That leaves Missoula.

The last time I was in Missoula was when we took our camper to Kalispell for the 4th of July a few years ago. We’d just bought the camper and I had no idea how heavy it really was. I was still learning about the gas mileage you don’t get when you pull a camper when I passed a gas station and said those words to my wife that I’ll never forget – “Don’t worry, we’ll make it to the next gas station. We’ve got plenty of gas!” About 10 minutes later the gauge went from half-a-tank to a quarter-of-a-tank. That’s when I started to get a little nervous. 10 minutes after that when we started up a long series of hills and the gauge started to drop towards empty is when I really got nervous. Assuming the worst I looked at my wife, smiled, and said “I just want to apologize now for running out of gas in the next 5 minutes.” Then a miracle occurred. With the needle on empty we managed to drive another 5 miles uphill, only to spot a gas station on the outskirts of Missoula at the bottom of the hill. To this day I don’t know what got us over that hill into Missoula, but I can tell you it wasn’t a tailwind. I can’t wait to retire to Missoula, but I’m not going to take the camper.

If you’re looking to retire to one of the “least windy” places in the lower 48, here are your top choices:

1. OAK RIDGE,TN

2. MEDFORD, OR

3. MOUNT SHASTA, CA

4. LOS ANGELES C.O., CA

5. CHARLESTON, WV

6. ELKINS, WV

7. ELKO, NV

8. QUILLAYUTE, WA

9. SANTA BARBARA, CA

10. CHATTANOOGA, TN

11. PHOENIX, AZ

12. LONG BEACH, CA

13. TALLAHASSEE, FL

14. MERIDIAN, MS

15. KALISPELL, MT

16. MISSOULA, MT

17. FLAGSTAFF, AZ

18. BAKERSFIELD, CA

19. FRESNO, CA

20. AUGUSTA,GA

21. JACKSON, KY

Send me a postcard when you get there. I'll be here, living the dream, telling my kids tall tales about the home of the winds. Wish me luck, I'm gong to need it!

The 2008 Colorado Big Game Application is Here!

Run to the mailbox! The 2008 Colorado Big Game Application is here! Hooray!!

Swimming with the Geese

My track record for goose hunting remains unchanged: zero, nada, zip. I went home after sunset on Super Bowl Sunday empty handed. Too bad we don’t have pizza delivery around here. The bad news is that this past weekend was very different then any other goose hunting trip I’ve done in the past two years, despite not dropping any birds.

What started with the usual early morning start was only complicated by the fact that I’d stayed out a bit later than I wanted to the night before playing poker with some buddies. By buddies I mean the guys that took my money and sent me home a few dollars poorer. Four in the morning isn’t so bad, as long as you don’t forget to set your alarm like I did. For some reason I woke-up 20 minutes after my unset alarm was supposed to go off. Luckily my goose hunting buddy knows me pretty well and doesn’t get bent out of shape when I show up 20 minutes late each and every time we get out. I’ll have to work on that.

After a quick pit stop for gas and picking up my buddy’s son in Longmont we pulled into the parking lot at the Simpson Ponds State Wildlife Area (SWA) just northwest of Johnson’s Corner. I think they should rename it “Goose World”. Seems that we picked the one day when everyone else also thought it would be fun to go goose hunting. The parking lot had at least a dozen trucks and half a dozen trailers. The trailers are important because that’s where the dozens upon dozens of decoy were stored before the twenty something hunters set them up on the frozen ponds in preparation for the first flights of geese at sunrise. We were too late to grab a great spot, a good spot, or even a crappy spot. We resigned to take a really crappy spot and hope that we could pick off a bird that didn’t respond to the billions of decoys. That’s when the fun really began for me.

I grabbed my shotgun, my gear bag, and hotfooted it toward the really crappy spot, just in case someone else grabbed it and we had to give up the hunt altogether. On my way across the ice I came to a spot that must be a shallow channel between two of ponds. With sunrise just minutes away I neglected to notice that the ice was particularly clear and thin and charged straight ahead, dead set on getting into position before the geese started to fly. As I plunged up to my waist in the icy water a few thoughts crossed my mind. None of them can be published in this paper or any other paper with standards for decency. Fortunately, as I already mentioned, the spot where I fell in was shallow and I was able to jump out almost as fast as I fell in. Drenched in frozen water I made a beeline for the truck where my buddies were still gearing up.

Imagine the most you’ve ever laughed in your life, multiply it by two, and that would the amount of laughter I heard from my buddies as I stripped off my soaking wet clothes and dove into the truck to warm up. Cold, wet, and embarrassed I wondered what karmic sin I’d committed to be rewarded with a refreshing dip in the pond. I told my buddies to keep going and I’d figure out something to keep hunting. I tried braving the cold with just some long johns and my sockless boots, but that got embarrassing quickly after a carload of folks on their way to church pointed in my direction and started laughing. The something I figured out was a quick trip to Sportsman’s Warehouse in Loveland to buy some dry socks and pants. Returning to the SWA, the fun just got better.

Moments after I pulled into the parking lot a Colorado Department of Wildlife officer pulled in behind me and proceeded to check our hunting permits, shotguns, and shells. In my haste to be only 20 minutes late picking up my buddy I neglected to grab my permit. On the bright side, I did have my current fishing/small game license which showed that I’d paid for my Colorado waterfowl permit. On the not-so-bright side I didn’t have my Federal Duck Stamp with me. Seems the computer system that tracks Colorado permits doesn’t keep track of the Federal permits. More thoughts that can’t be published in any respectable newspaper ran through my head. Since the DOW officer hadn’t actually seen me actively hunting I got a break and she didn’t issue me a fine; instead she gave me a stern warning and made it clear that if I even thought about pulling my shotgun out of its case she’d write me a ticket. Not wanting to waste the time and money I’d already invested in this goose hunting holiday I jumped back in the truck and drove to Sportsman’s Warehouse again to purchase another Federal Stamp. Thank goodness they’re cheap and the money goes to protect wetlands and other waterfowl habitat.

The insult to injury was finally getting our decoys out on one of the ponds for the late afternoon flights only to see every possible goose we could hit shot down by the hunter in the adjacent pond. So what if he had more decoys and knows how to use a goose call. Our meager spread of decoys could easily fool a half-blind goose any day of the week. I can’t really say I was too surprised. Whenever one of my buddies or I tried to call in the geese we sounded like a bunch of American Idol rejects. The 4^th chair oboe player at the elementary school could call a goose in better than any of us. At least now I know what I have to do for the next goose hunt – stay away from the thin ice, don’t forget my permits, and learn how to use a goose call. What could be easier? I think I’m going to take the rest of the goose season off and start getting ready for next year. That way I have a shot a regaining the circulation in my lower extremities sometime in the next twelve months and maybe those poor folks that saw me on their way to church will recover too.

Colorado's Top Fishing Towns

As reported in Field & Stream and reprinted with minor commentary in Charlie Meyers' outdoor column in this past Sunday’s Denver Post, Glenwood Springs was selected as one of America’s top fishing towns. From the article - “The town at the confluence of the Colorado and Roaring Fork rivers won out over Mountain Home, Ark.; Traverse City, Mich.; Bozeman, Mont.; and Minocqua, Wisconsin. In 11th place, Missoula, Montana, is the only other Rocky Mountain location on the list. What about Gilpin/Nederland? How come we never make it on the list?!?

I believe that the Peak-to-Peak stretch between Black Hawk and Ward is the best place to live. (I’d say Gilpin/Nederland, but I’ve got friends in Ward and points beyond.) Forget about just fishing, we’ve got much more. There, I wrote it. Now I’m hosed. Like the curse of Chief Niwot, I believe there is some spell that the high country has cast over me. As cold as it gets, as much as the commute to Boulder/Englewood is a pain, I doubt I’ll ever be able to leave. I tried once, before I was married, but here I am - living the dream above 8,000 feet. Something tells me I’m not alone with this curese/blessing.

What doesn’t living in the mountains have? Pizza delivery? Sure, but who needs pizza delivery anyway! The delivery guy always brings the wrong pizza and then looks at you with those sad, red, watery eyes that says “dude, I’m so fired if you don’t pay for this pizza that you didn’t order”. So I pay for the pizza and scrape off the artichokes, black olives, and all the other stuff I didn’t want, until I get down to the cheese, sauce, and dough that I did want. Yummy. Something tells me that if we ever did get pizza delivery in the mountains there be even more delivery guys with red, watery eyes delivering pizzas that I didn’t order. Oh well.

Here’s what we do have, all out our backdoor or within a few minutes: skiing, snowshoeing, hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, four wheeling, mountain biking, hiking, dirt biking, camping, trail running, swimming, and ice fishing. I still don’t give a hoot about ice fishing, but it makes the list longer. Not only do we all those things that we can do, there are actually folks that do them. The canyons that come up to Hwy 119 are the training ground for international cyclists. Magnolia Road is the training ground for Olympic runners. Eldora is the training ground for the national champion Colorado Buffalos ski team. My driveway is the training ground for future bobsled champions… or snowboarders. It depends on whether or not the kids sit or stand in the sled while taking turns sliding into the cul-de-sac. Until you write it all down, it can be easy to forget how much living in the mountains has to offer, summer or winter.

While I may not have grown up around livestock, I did grow up in the woods with a creek flowing through it. I got to do all the things kids do in the woods – climb trees, build tree forts, hunt for snipe, and have acorn fights. I can’t remember a summer day when I didn’t play in the woods or go fishing in the creek. Well, there were a few, but those were the days that I had to cut the lawn or pull weeds. I’ll never understand my mother’s complete infatuation with weeds. Anyway, the fish we caught were nothing to shout about, mostly catfish or sunfish, but they did provide use with hours of entertainment and kept me out of trouble.

Lucky for me I’ve got lots of woods to play in now, a few creeks, and a lake. The lake is stocked with trout every spring and by fall the bigger ones tend to tip at 3+ pounds and measure almost 22 inches. Yes, I said 22 inches! I’ve fished the Roaring Fork River by Glenwood. It is a great river and the hot springs make a nice rest stop after fishing all day long. I’ve never caught a 22 inch Rainbow or Brown in the Roaring Fork. I’d rather save the time, gas, and money by fishing in my own neighborhood than schlepping all the way out to Glenwood. Perhaps one day Gilpin/Nederland will top the list of Field & Stream’s best places to fish next year. Until then, I’ll just enjoy everything we have and appreciate all the wrong pizzas I don’t have to pay for.