crazy mountain woman: Newspaper Tree Adventure

I've got a lot of catching up to do on my blog. I finally went through and downloaded pictures off my card and can't believe all the memories they bring back.


Falling down mine

This is an adventure that Carma took me on last October. She had taken her Young Women on a hike to some newspaper trees that someone in her ward had told her about. There is no trail to these trees, you have to know where you are going. I'll take that back, you can follow a road part way there, then you have to cut across country. This was a mine that we passed on our way up the road. We took Suri, Tali, and Blew with us on this hike.


Tali cooling off.

It was a beautiful fall day. The colors were lovely and it was just cool enough, but obviously warm enough for Tali to lie down in the creek to cool off. When we got to where we had to cut across the mountains, Carma pointed out where we were heading. The mountains above Idaho City are steep and dry. We tried to hold to the creek bed, but it was rough going around fallen trees and rocks, so we started following a game trail.
The game trail wasn't very wide, and I felt like I was walking on the sides of my feet all the time. It was nice when there was a little up and down so that our feet could be in a different direction.

Blew took off not too long after we left the trail. The labs stayed close by our sides. Every once in a while we would get a glimpse of Blew. But she didn't come back to us until we were almost at the trees.

Newspaper Trees

Our first glimpse of the trees showed a stand of aspens amidst pine trees. When we got up to them, we were able to see all the old carvings made by sheepherders who spent their summers in these mountains. The earliest year I could detect was 1935.

This was an amazing look into the past. Hopefully I will be able to do this hike again. Carma and I were discussing the possibility of planting a letterbox here, but the problem would be how to explain to people the way to get there! I think we would need a hand held GPS to get coordinates, and maybe the people following the clues would also need to have a GPS. Like I said, there isn't really a trail to get there.

Carma's hand in one of the carvings.

Coming back we walked along more game trails, our feet slanting in the opposite direction. The walking sticks that we got in Zion National Park would have been a great help.

The following are more pictures that show some of the carvings on the trees.