Chicago Basin

It is the most beautiful place in Colorado, a state that already boasts the most spectacular scenery in the continental United States. The Chicago Basin is an area of pristine wilderness in the middle of the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. One of the reasons for its unspoiled condition is that it is only accessible by foot and then only after first taking a train ride from either Durango or Silverton. The closest road is many miles away.

The world-famous Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad stops to drop off climbers and backpackers in the ghost town of Needleton, near the intersection of the Animas River and Needle Creek, at an elevation of 8200 feet. After crossing the footbridge over the Animas River, it takes a six-mile hike along Needle Creek, with about a 2500-foot elevation gain, to get up into the basin.

The trail was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and it is well maintained to this day, but it is still a grueling grunt. Having hauled a heavy pack up it twice before, I packed as lightly as possible last weekend when I returned for the first time in fourteen years, along with my neighbor Rich, his stepsons Wes and Miles, and Wes's friend Rich. This was a second annual trip for Rich, Wes, Rich and me after our Rim-to-Rim Grand Canyon hike last June, with Miles filling in for Jake this year.

By mid-afternoon on Saturday, we had reached the upper part of the basin, where the good campsites are located. There is a recent restriction on camping within one hundred feet of any water, so the campsite I stayed at with Dave Beckwith back in 1996, which we checked out along the way, was not usable. This turned out to be a good thing, because as we walked further up the trail, we spotted the basin's renowned mountain goats on the hillside above the creek. The goats are not indigenous; they were transplanted from Glacier National Park in Wyoming at about the same time that the trail was built in the 1930s. They are thrilling to see in the wild and add incredible charm to this already magnificent area.

Instead of shying away from us, the goats came down to investigate. Some in our group were afraid they would be head-butted, but the goats were only curious and came right up to us as we stood on the trail taking numerous photos. They moved on after a while, and we continued up the trail to a good campsite with easy access to the creek. As we were setting up our tents, the goats returned and wandered around our camp until they located a place at the edge where Miles had urinated. They pawed the ground and ate the wet dirt! It was gross to think about, but they were obviously craving the salt in the urine. With a group of five men, it wasn't long before we had marked most of our perimeter, and the goats started to fill up our campsite, but the novelty of having them so close by never wore off.

We played sheepshead, ate dinner, and then played more sheepshead until it started to get dark and cold. The goats finally went to wherever it is that they sleep and we retired to our tents. The next morning, the sun didn't reach our campsite until almost 8:30, and no one was in a hurry to get back on the trail until things warmed up. The day's plan called for all of us to hike up to Twin Lakes, in the upper basin that separates the area's three Fourteeners, Sunlight Peak, Windom Peak and Mount Eolus, which I had climbed with Dave Beckwith during our two previous trips. After appreciating the moonscape-like vistas and figuring out their routes, the others would climb Sunlight and Windom while I returned to camp, packed up, hiked out, and caught the train back to Durango so I could be back at work on Monday morning. The others would go back to camp after their climbs, return to climb Eolus and its subpeak, North Eolus, the next day, and then hike out on Tuesday.

The climb from our campsite to Twin Lakes was as difficult as I remembered it, maybe more so, even though I was using trekking poles to help ease the strain on my knees. I must be getting old. A few times along the trail, I thought to myself that I was happy I wasn't climbing the peaks again. It was enough just to see them once more from the lakes. I wondered if Nan would want to join me on another trip to the area someday. Places this beautiful need to be shared.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Boat Quest, Part 15

The marine survey for Little Walk arrived by email while we were at the Barefoot Cay Marina on Roatan. I sat at the computer in the marina office and read all twenty pages of it immediately. There was an unexpectedly high level of detail about every aspect of the boat, and most of it was negative, like this paragraph from the introduction:

This model vessel is well-known for its bluewater sailing pedigree. However, this particular vessel is in need of a major refit prior to venturing beyond protected inland waters, including significant renewal of the electrical systems, rigging, safety equipment, etc.

The report didn't get much more positive in the pages that followed. It was broken down into seventeen sections, each with three columns: a title, like "Propulsion Engine"; a detailed description of the particular item or feature; and a statement about its condition. Unfortunately, the "SEE RECOMMENDATIONS" condition outnumbered the "Appeared Serviceable" and "Operational" conditions by a total of forty-four to thirty-seven. The recommendations were listed in a separate section near the end of the report. Under that section's title, it said: "Recommendations in BOLD are considered essential for the safety and proper function of the vessel." Almost all of the recommendations were in bold.

When I finished reading the report, I felt sick to my stomach. There was so much wrong with the boat. Would it be worth the time, effort and money to try to correct all of its problems? I walked down the dock to where Quetzal was slipped to talk with John Kretschmer. He could tell by the look on my face that the news wasn't good. He asked if I wanted him to read the report, and I told him I would appreciate it. We walked back to the marina office, I called it up on the computer, and then I left him alone.

When I caught up to him later, John was smiling. He said it sounded like the boat was in pretty good shape. This was coming from a man who has written hundreds of sailboat reviews for Sailing magazine and is the author of Used Boat Notebook. He knows boats, and he was saying that there was hope for Little Walk. "Really?" I said. "What about all those recommendations?" He said that most of them weren't all that critical and that he hadn't read anything that he considered to be a deal-breaker, like hull damage or deck delamination. And the best part, he said, was that the surveyor included a fair market value that was more than ten thousand dollars below my offer price. The broker and owner would need to adjust that price down accordingly, and I could probably negotiate an even lower price. If I was willing to spend the difference on improvements, I would come out of the deal with the boat in great condition for what I had expected to pay in the first place.

Photos and captions from the marine survey of Little Walk:

Photograph of Little Walk as seen from the starboard bow, taken at the time of survey on 4/26/2010.

Photograph of Little Walk as seen from the starboard quarter, taken at the time of survey haul-out on 4/26/2010.

Photograph of Little Walk as seen from the port bow, taken at the time of survey haul-out on 4/26/2010.

Photograph of a blister on the port aft hull bottom, taken at the time of survey on 4/26/2010. Blisters up to 3” diameter were found randomly throughout the hull finishes.

Photograph of a port cap shroud chainplate attachment to its plywood knee. The knee has deterioration along its bottom and there is likely crevice corrosion of the chainplate. All of the shroud chainplates need removal and inspection.

Photograph of engine exhaust as seen from the starboard side, taken at the time of survey on 4/26/2010. The insulated piping is deteriorated, and there is minimal vertical separation between the point of seawater injection and the waterlift muffler.

Boat Quest, Part 14

It has been well over a year since I last wrote a Boat Quest post. The most recent one, Part 13, was about Otter II, the Valiant 40 I looked at with Stan Dabney while I was in Miami in January 2009 helping the Caouettes prepare their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, for a transatlantic crossing. Otter II sold several months later, much to my disappointment, before I could get anywhere close to making an offer. I went back occasionally to YachtWorld.com to check the Valiant 40 listings, but there were no other affordable boats worth considering.

Late last fall, I was checking the listings and noticed a 1980 Valiant located in Baltimore. As I looked at the photos in the listing's slideshow, I had the feeling that I had seen the boat before. I dug through my computer's photo archive and found the set of photos I had taken of Little Walk (Boat Quest, Part 10 and Part 11) back in May 2008 when I was in the Washington, D.C. area for an Internet conference. There was no question about it. It was the same boat, just located in a new place and listed with a new broker. I had not been able to get adequate answers from the previous broker to my questions about the boat's condition, so I had given up on it and assumed when it disappeared out of the listings that it had been sold. Apparently not. It was still priced higher than I thought it should have been but not as high as the previous broker said it would be based on some improvements the owner was putting into place.

I studied the description and the photos in the listing, and I studied the many photos I had taken myself. In addition to the basic design of the Valiant 40, which I had decided several years ago was the perfect boat for us, there were many features to like about this particular boat. Some Valiants have been almost excessively customized to meet the needs and desires of their owners, but not this one. It was close to stock, looking very much like it must have when it left the Uniflite factory in Bellingham, Washington back in 1980. The distinctive wooden hatchcovers, the fold-down saloon table, the tapered mast, the port-side pilot berth, the original electrical panel--it was all there.

I watched the listing compulsively through the winter, hoping for the right combination of factors that would make my dream of owning a Valiant 40 come true. The first factor was, of course, my wife Nan. If she was not in agreement, then that would be the end of it. But then, during her charmed birthday weekend in Denver back in January, Nan proposed the idea of living in Isla Mujeres, Mexico for a year. We could rent an apartment at Color de Verano on Laguna Macax. And since there is a pier right out back, we could maybe have a sailboat there to sail on weekends in order to help build Nan's confidence for more ambitious trips. Since I can work from anywhere that I can get a high-speed Internet connection, as I did last fall when we spent a month in Isla Mujeres, I was thrilled with the idea.

The second factor fell into place at the beginning of April: the listed price came down by $10K. At the previous price, the boat might never have sold, but at the new price, I was afraid it would sell quickly, so I called the broker to find out what it would take to put in an offer. He emailed me a form that I completed and faxed back to him, and I mailed him a deposit check for ten percent of the listed price--I didn't want to lose the boat to a better offer. I had been saving money in a "boat fund" for just this day since giving up on Sea Hawk back in November 2007. The offer was contingent on the results of a marine survey, so there was no risk of losing my deposit if the boat proved to be unseaworthy. I was able to coordinate getting the survey conducted before Nan and I left for our Central America sailing trip, but I wasn't able to get the results until we arrived in Roatan.

"The Odd-yssey" in Latitudes & Attitudes

Of course, as soon as I had given up hope of Latitudes & Attitudes ever publishing my article about our 2008 Odyssey sailing trip, they finally did publish it in their May 2010 issue, along with fourteen of the eighteen photos I submitted. If you missed it at the newstand or at the seafaring.com website, you can still read it in its published format at Capt. John Kretschmer's website: "The Odd-yssey" by John Lichty.

Editor Sue took a few liberties that I wasn't overly happy about, and there are some misspellings in the photo captions, but the article finally made it to print and that's what matters. She even mailed me a check, which went immediately into the "boat fund."

If you would like to read the original article, in its original format, with all eighteen photos, which I posted here back in March when I was sure it would never get published, here's a link to it: "The Odd-yssey".