In the far northwest corner of Colorado, in the canyons above the Yampa River, is a survey whose reputation precedes it. Not just for the terrain of survey itself, but also because getting there is not for the faint of heart. The survey is known as NC3 and referred to with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
The transect sits on a gully that feeds into the Yampa River. The terrain is rough, with crumbling cliffs and a field of car-sized boulders that’s a special kind of hell to traverse. Noone goes here, save for a Bird Conservancy of the Rockies field tech once a year. It’s a wild place. The canyons are steep, the sky is big, and the civilized world feels far away indeed. The sort of place where time is measured in geology rather than any human metric. I went there once, a long time ago. This place has stayed with me ever since. So much so, that this past season I asked my supervisor to give me this survey so I could see it again.
The birds in this area aren’t that different from other pinyon-juniper canyons in Colorado—white-throated swifts, black-throated gray warblers, western tanagers, Clark’s nutcrackers, and if you’re lucky, a golden eagle. What makes it remarkable is how remote it feels.
The call of a white-throated swift is a sound that indicates you are about to scramble up the kind of cliff your mom must not find out about.
Getting there requires 8 miles of white-knuckle driving along tracks that are better traversed by mule than by car. Once the road ends, there is another mile and a half of scrambling and bushwhacking to reach the transect itself. Even with the GPS, a topo map, and the instructions put together by years’ worth of field techs, it takes a solid 45 minutes to descend into the canyon.
The first time I did this survey, I couldn’t drive all the way to the end of the road. My jeep had suffered a tragic and unprovoked act of squirrel vandalism a week earlier (a story for another day) and had to exchange it for a mini van. That time, I backpacked to the survey the day before.
This time, I drove 3 miles before reaching a rock ledge that I was confident I could drive down but less confident I could drive up again. That still left a 5-mile hike along the road in the morning. If I ran at my usual trot (my new favorite way to reach surveys), it would take about an hour and give me an extra hour of snoozing time in the morning. Then the real challenge would start.
(Side note. It also took another hour of trotting to get back to the car after 6 hours of scrambling and hiking for the survey. I slept well the next night.)
It’s exhilarating to run at night. That far away from any cities the stars were some of the best I’d ever seen. Normally I try to time my long night runs with a full moon, but this time I didn’t mind that it was extra dark. Once, I saw eye shine reflected in my headlamp but whatever it was melted into the forest before I could tell if it was friend or foe.
I ran until the road ended and then kept going, following the little arrow on my GPS and turning around occasionally to make sure that no big carnivores were stalking me. I got to the first point with plenty of time before sunrise to put on warm clothes and have a snack. I could wait and watch the world turn from black-and-white to color as it got light and then start my survey.
Each IMBCR survey has a description sheet with directions about how to get there, where to camp, and other useful information. I have no idea who put together the description for this one, but it is excellent. Without the coordinates of where to turn into which gully, it would be all too easy to get stranded on top of a cliff or only reach a couple of the points. These directions, written at the expense of buckets of sweat and copious profanities, were indispensable.
Some of the points were inaccessible altogether. Others required glissading down dirt and hoping you slowed down before the bottom. There were also scree treadmills: places where the slope was so steep and loose that getting to the top made me feel like Sisyphus. Everything required sure-footedness and a level head. It was one of the most physically demanding surveys I had done, but I relished the challenge. All to reach the spot where I could see the Yampa river 1000 feet below, a great green anaconda winding its way through the canyon. The blocks around me were studded with fossilized shells. There were other treasures too, like the largest mountain lion tracks I have ever seen. The cat might have even watched me as I scrambled through its domain, an unusual figure in this place.
This was euphoria. This was bliss. This was worth waking up early and braving the darkness of night. Seeing it again, the magic was still there. I’ll keep dreaming of it.