Normally gravity aids the descent and the travel time is about one-third of the ascending travel time. Not so on a highly unstable boulder field. You have to carefully pick and choose the placement of each hand and each foot, hoping to find a rock that will stay put for a few seconds. It was very tedious.
The Eerie Sound
As Caleb and I made our descent we heard a very strange sound. Sometimes you can hear water running under a boulder field but this sound was not running water. We became perfectly still and quiet...and as best as I could tell, the sound was the sound of rocks moving underneath the surface rocks. I have witnessed a rock slide from a distance and it was quite powerful. We were about halfway down when we heard this, and when the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, I knew we had to:
- Get out of this gully.
- Get down back down to the basin as quickly as possible.
Responding to item 1, we moved laterally to a shoulder that separated gullies and into to the adjoining gully. This would take us out of the main stream of a rock slide. Movement down to the adjoining gully was just as tedious and slow. We made it down in one hour exactly.
The next crisis - converging storms clouds from the west and east and we were both the tallest things in the basin. We must get to the treeline quickly!
And I still have only one functional shoe...
