Kevin - Guadalupe - Blog 2

Sorer than the first day, but a little more acclimated, we grabbed tools from the shed and met up with Bridget who informed us that we would be hiking a closed trail with another ranger, Joel. Starting from the visitor’s center, we hiked 1.5 miles on the Frijole trail until we merged into the Bear Canyon trail which took us another 1.5 miles. These 1.5 miles, however, was considered as the most arduous path in the whole park. The Bear Canyon trail took us 3 hours to get to the summit while climbing 3000 feet. This difficult trail was not without its rewards – we enjoyed our lunch at the top of one of the mountains at 7200 feet. After lunch, we worked our way down the mountain, tools in hand, and restored the damaged trail that we had just conquered. One of the most challenging, yet exhilarating tasks I had to do was essentially recreate part of the trail that had washed away from the flood. This part of the trail, however, was right next to a shear in the mountain with a multitude of rocks at an angle above and a 3000 foot fall below. To prevent hikers from having to hop over the chasm in the path as we did, Joel informed us that we were going to fix it. We started by initiating a controlled rock slide by scraping the McLeods on the rocks above and having them descend to fill the hole from the bottom up. We then raked in moist dirt to fill the small gaps still present between the large rocks and followed by smashing in smaller rocks that would offer more support when the dirt hardened completely. As we continued our climb down, we cleared more of the trail from brush, fashioned steps from resting flat rocks, and removed any potentially hazardous rocks along the way. A hundredfold more difficult than the previous day, today presented us with a new realization about life: working hard to get to the top is only half the journey, working so others can climb brings it full circle.