Los Valles – Fall Crew Adventures

No one can know the pain, the joy, the inside jokes, the exhaustion, or the ultimate satisfaction that a seasoned trail crew has experienced together.  For one short season leaders and crew members are like family.   My crew for the last two months has out-laughed any family I’ve ever known.  We’ve taught each other how to build trail under the golden aspen canopies of the Sangre de Cristos.  We’ve witnessed a thousand elk gallop through the misty sand hills of the Great Sand Dunes that had been divided by barbed wire until our arrival.  We’ve slept under tarps on 11,000 ridges clearing trail with crosscuts and axes.  Through all of this we taught each other poetry, traded books abd stories, shared bomber meal recipes and cooking skills, and created bonds that will stay with all of us as we move on in the world.

We weathered dinner-time blizzards, we swam in the snow-cold Arkansas River, soaked in hot springs, and climbed 14-ers.  We all grew as human beings- all of us now more capable of navigating through our lives happily and healthily.

While it hasn’t all been sunshine and daises, every crew member and leader of this crew will look back fondly.

 SCC-Los Valles Crew Leader, Alex Johnson