H. Mark Weidman

The great mountain above Fountain Creek was called Tava for thousands of years before it was renamed after a 27-year-old Army lieutenant, the first Anglo American to document the region. Zebulon Pike rode up the Arkansas River in 1806 to what is now Pueblo, attempted to climb the peak, then continued past Cañon City to South Park and beyond.

My own expedition across Colorado intersected his and was also a first: hiking an X across the state. I completed the southeast to northwest diagonal in 2020 and northeast to southwest in 2022, and Pikes Peak was my lighthouse for more than 100 miles on each diagonal.

Zebulon and I walked the same lands along the Arkansas River from La Junta to Pueblo and across Park County, but much had changed in 216 years. Pike had only Arrowsmith’s then-renowned map of North America, the Colorado region a blank. I had the Gaia Topo app and the Benchmark state atlas but no gun. What could go wrong for me in this civilized world?

 

“Voilà un savage,” Zebulon Pike’s French guide cried out near the future Manzanola on Nov. 22, 1806, having sighted Native Americans as Pike’s small team of U.S. soldiers made its way along the Arkansas River.

I would have said the same thing, “Voilà un savage,” in Manzanola on June 2, 2020, as I hiked along the Arkansas on my first diagonal. I had set up my tent behind an abandoned farmworker’s cottage with the permission of Rainy Melgosa, who also owned the creaky wooden-floored Manzanola Trading Co., founded in 1869.

I stirred my supper of dried tofu, peppers and pasta on my Pocket Rocket stove and observed a man drive to a neglected house just over a low wire fence from my tent. My hackles rose as he fumbled himself out of the pickup truck and let rip a burp. I scurried behind a tree and cursed at my blue tent that he would see in seconds and hop the fence after me, but the man staggered behind his truck, took an endless pee and stumbled into the house. I breathed deep and slow behind the tree for a few minutes, then resumed cooking with shaking hands. I kept my can of Mace (“shoots 18 feet!”) handy.

Pike, in contrast, was well-armed and had 15 men with him to reckon with the locals. His published journal recounted what Baronie had alerted Pike to: “We found them to be 60 warriors, half with firearms, and half with bows, arrows, and lances.” The Indigenous Americans were likely worried about the U.S. Army’s intentions and attempted to steal Pike’s horses, equipment and food.

Pike’s men had already killed many bison, the mainstay of the Plains Indians. Pike wrote unhappily that his “hunters killed without mercy, having slain 17 bison and wounded at least 20 more” near La Junta. They used only a few for food and left the rest to rot. East of Lamar he observed bison: “The face of the prairie was covered with them, on each side of the river; their numbers exceeded imagination.” That bison-based ecosystem is now gone, replaced with cattle: fields of cattle feed, cattle pastures, feedlots and the roads that take them to slaughter.



H. Mark Weidman

Pike continued west to South Park, looking for the Red River, which was actually in north Texas. He had no map, which must have been a challenge, but at least he did not have to contend with fences, roads, reservoirs and private property.

I had not noticed the high wire fence when I drove my 4Runner through South Park on recon in July 2022. Colorado has bazillions of fences you would never notice in a car but as a hiker they block every path cross-country. Also, land ownership is a checker-boardy collage – “yes” here, “no” there, “maybe” here if you get permission. Mostly “no.” Pike and I both walked from Hartsel to Buena Vista but 216 years apart, and we faced very different challenges.

The route I had drawn on my Gaia Topo app required me here, just west of Hartsel, to enter the Badger Basin State Wildlife Area and saunter along the South Fork of the South Platte toward Antero Reservoir, provided I had my fishing license, just like the Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer had suggested. I had assumed I would wedge myself and my pack under a standard four-strand barbed wire fence here and try not to catch my nylon REI shirt on a barb.

But, no, a seven-foot-high square-wire fence blocked me and any other large animal from reaching the river, its tranquil blue waters curving seductively past grassy banks. Swallows soared over the water, snatching insects. No way could I climb that fence with four days of provisions in my backpack or somehow hurl said backpack eight feet over it and then climb the wire like a lab rat.

I sulked along Highway 24 for two miles, heart thumping in the gusts thrown by semitrailers and RVs, tires whining. Then peace waited behind a gate into the state wildlife area. Gray-bottomed clouds scudded across the sky – blue, gray and white reflected in the river’s silver ribbon. A herd of privately ranched bison grazed on the other side; their wild-cow scent carried to me on the gentle wind.

I picked up the rusted-off head of a railroad spike, like a thick brown thumbnail, remembering my mother telling me about the Midland Railroad, built in the 1880s to carry gold and silver ore, lumber, coal and passengers between Colorado Springs and Leadville. I walked the Midland’s vague grassy hump for a few miles, then had to skulk to Antero Reservoir. Home sweet home for a night, or so I thought.

“NO ACCESS TO ANTERO RESERVOIR. AREA BEHIND THIS SIGN CLOSED TO ALL ACTIVITY – Denver Water.” Only a mile across the damn dam to the campground I wanted. An extra six miles if I obeyed the sign and backtracked a giant C on public roads. I dropped my pack, sighing theatrically, and rested my chin atop the locked gate.

My old buddy Zebulon had camped right over there, across the reservoir at the base of that hill on Dec. 17, 1806. Back then there were no Antero, Eleven Mile or Spinney reservoirs, no Highway 24, no fences about every half mile to thwart him; plus the locals had left for the winter and did not post “No Trespassing” signs.



Fabian Meseberg

Pike wrote in his journal about the South Platte near Hartsel: “Ascended the river, both sides of which were covered with old Indian camps, at which we found corn-cobs ... My poor fellows suffered extremely with cold, being almost naked. Distance 10 miles.”

They ate the few bison that had not migrated to the foothills for the winter. The Native Americans, having summered at South Park for thousands of years, knew enough to leave before December. Pike knew nothing of this area except what his guide, perhaps a French trapper, may have told him. They forged on in moccasins they made from raw buffalo hide, still wet with life, after their shoes wore out. Luckily, I hike in Solomon X Ultra trail shoes.

I turned away from the locked gate and decided to hitchhike. I just could not walk four extra miles with a full pack; hitchhiking was a calculated risk. A nice older man in a van with a pony- size dog who slobbered me dropped me back where I had left Highway 24. My maps showed a county road straight to Antero Campground. Yay! I thought.

Dang. A barbed-wired gate barred the road, now just a grassy ghost. A sign said Denver Water owned the land but didn’t say no walking. I went, just like Zebulon Pike.