NM News - Valle Vidal Trout Restoration Project

The Valle Vidal at the confluence of Comanche Creek and the Rio Costilla.

There’s a lot of activity scheduled on the Valle Vidal this summer including new fishing regulations, stream closures and a planned celebration of the pristine mountain areas’ new protected status.

The Valle Vidal opens for fishing on July 1st and this year anglers will be allowed to catch and keep two cutthroat trout a day from the upper reaches of Comanche Creek and all of its tributaries, said Eric Frey, Northeast Area Fisheries Manager for the state Department of Game and Fish.

The streams in this area are in the final phases of being cleared of all fish in preparation of restocking with pure, native, Rio Grande cutthroat trout, Frey said.

The special bag limit on Comanche Creek and its tributaries is in effect upstream of the confluence of the Little Costilla Creek and ends July 22nd, Frey said.

There will be no bag limit at all on these waters from August 4th to Aug. 7th to allow anglers to harvest any fish remaining in these streams, Frey said.

Frey stressed that catch and release regulations including the use of single, barbless flies and lures remains in effect on the upper Rio Costilla and all other creeks and streams within the Valle Vidal.

An exception to that rule is at Shuree ponds where the bag limit is set at two fish per day over 15-inches in length, Frey said. Shuree ponds were recently stocked with brood-stock sized fish, he added.

Recent restoration work on Comanche Creek watershed has included the removal of about 1,000 cutthroat trout, many of which were transplanted into the nearby Rio Costilla, Frey said.

“So there should be some good fishing up there this opening day,” he said.
Visitors to the Valle Vidal will find some other changes this year as cutthroat trout restoration work continues.

Comanche creek is slated for closure to anglers and all others starting August 8th through August 26th to accommodate continued work on the stream including the application of a chemical treatment to eliminate any remaining fish, said Donna Storch, fish biologist with the Carson National Forest.

Comanche Creek’s closure commences from it’s confluence with the Rio Costilla at Comanche Point upstream to the Clayton Corrals area, about five miles.

Vehicle traffic will be allowed on the main route, Forest Road 1950, that runs parallel to Comanche Creek and up to high country and Shuree Ponds but stopping and exiting of vehicles is prohibited, Storch said.

Motorists will also find a new in stream barrier installed on Forest Road 1950 where it passes under the roadway near the Little Costilla Corrals to prohibit the migration of fish into the upper reaches of Comanche Creek.

The barrier is part of the overall cutthroat restoration project to remove non-native fish from waters throughout the region and reintroduce the native Rio Grande cutthroat trout to its native habitat.

Restoration work will greatly reduce threats to the Rio Grande cutthroat trout’s survival and eliminate the need for protection under the endangered species act. Such a listing usually results in severe restrictions on forest use and sport fishing.

The success of those reintroduction efforts has been greatly enhanced by habitat work done on Comanche Creek and the surrounding countryside, said George Long, Wildlife Biologist for the Carson National Forest.

Years of overgrazing, placer mining, road building, timber harvesting and past fish stocking practices have all contributed to the degradation of Comanche creek and its tributaries thus threatening the Rio Grande cutthroat’s existence, Long said.

But much work has been done to close off and in some cases, eliminate roads that cause excessive runoff and erosion that fouls waters.

Stream banks have been rebuilt and restored with native vegetation to create a healthier environment for fish to thrive. And non-native fish such as rainbow trout and white suckers have been eliminated to allow the Rio Grande cutthroats a clean start in their restored home waters, Long said.

Much of that work has involved volunteer groups such as the Truchas Chapter of Trout Unlimited, New Mexico Trout, the Quivera Coalition and the Albuquerque Chapter of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Long said.

“We couldn’t have done it without them,” he said.

To celebrate the many efforts made by these groups and others to protect the Valle Vidal a Youth and Appreciation Day has been scheduled for July 21st at Shuree Ponds, said, Jeremy Vesbach, Executive Director of New Mexico Wildlife Federation.

“There’s a lot of celebrate and everybody’s invited,” he said.

The Valle Vidal waters now have state oversight and protection from water pollution and the forest lands have been granted federal legal protection from proposed gas and oil drilling, Vesbach said.

New Mexico’s congressional delegation and a great deal of public support led to passage of Rep.Tom Udall D-NM bill, the Valle Vidal Protection Act, this past winter.
Many organizations will be involved in the celebration including Amigos Bravos, Sierra Club, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Trout Unlimited and the state Dept. of Game and Fish. Activities such as a stream restoration workshop, a fly-casting clinic, a birding hike and other festivities are scheduled and many organizations will have informational booths in place.

“Everybody’s invited,” Vesbach said.

And privately owned Costilla Park is also slated to open the same weekend as its neighbor, the Valle Vidal, said Billie Norsworthy of the Rio Costilla Cooperative Livestock Association’s office in Costilla.

The park offers camping at $20 a night and fishing along the lower stretch of the Rio Costilla where regular fishing regulations and bag limits apply.

Latir lakes and area streams in the high country hold plenty of cutthroat trout and will open for fishing and camping on June 29th. A four-wheel drive vehicle is required to climb to Latir Lakes and fishing is $7 a day and camping $20 a night. A state issued license is also required.

“If you’re going to come camping this is the time to do it,” Norsworthy said. “Conditions are great.”

The San Juan River - Habitat Improvement Project

Tim McCarty, 56, of Albuquerque shows off a trout caught in the renovated area below Simon Canyon during a recent fishing trip.

By KARL F. MOFFATT | For The Santa Fe New Mexican/Outdoors
June 7, 2007

Anglers looking for some good fishing and a little breathing room on New Mexico’s popular San Juan River need only look downstream to a stretch of recently improved trout habitat.

“Looks like money well spent,” said Tim McCarthy, 56, of Albuquerque, as he released a good-sized rainbow trout caught in the project area during a recent fishing trip. “It’s nice and fishy down here.”

That’s the response state and federal officials were hoping for when they finished the second stage of the three-phase project designed to entice fish and anglers to the lower reaches of the state’s premier trout stream.

Over the last two winters about 500 tons of strategically placed boulders have been installed in a three-quarter-of-a-mile stretch of previously barren and featureless water below Simon Canyon and just above the area known as The Gravel Pit.

The rock work will help directs water to the center of the river where it will create a deeper channel which will carry off sediment and provide trout with good cover. Boulders placed in the channel itself will churn up the water to add oxygen and provide protective areas where fish can hold, said Marc Wethington, state Game and Fish biologist for the San Juan River.

And the work is apparently beginning to pay off.

“We had hoped to see some results this fishing season,” Wethington said. “It should get even better with time.”

Wethington said too many anglers crowd into the Texas Hole area below Navajo Dam and neglect to use the rest of the estimated 4.25 miles of public access to the river.

“We wanted to relieve some of that congestion, spread out the anglers and make fishing here more enjoyable for everyone,” Wethington said.

A plan was hatched — spurred, in part, after offers from private energy firms operating in the area to contribute to such projects, Wethington said.

“We like to fish down there, too,” said Steve Zink, a production supervisor for Devon Energy which employs 32 people and operates about 500 oil and gas wells in the Navajo Dam area. “This is just Devon’s part in giving something back to the community, and the fish, too.”

Public agencies such as Game and Fish, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corp of Engineers and Navajo Lake State Park worked together on the project along with the San Juan Fly Fishing Federation and several energy firms including Devon Energy, Williams and ConocoPhillips. Adobe Construction of Bloomfield provided the heavy lifting for the job.

Wethington said his peer at the BLM, wildlife biologist John Hansen, was instrumental in the project, particularly in securing the use of federal Sikes Act funds to get the project off the ground.

Those who hunt, fish or trap on public lands pay an additional $5 for a Sikes Act “habitat stamp” when they purchase a license.

Those funds are typically used on projects such as providing water for wildlife through the installation of wells, rain- catchment systems and holding tanks or earthen ponds. Sikes funds might also be used for range management or wildlife reintroduction programs, Hansen said.

“But this is one of those cases where you can actually see that Sikes Act money put to work,” Hansen said. “It’s been one of the best projects I’ve worked on in my career considering how well everyone came together, the results and the public response.”

Fishing guides who ply the San Juan’s waters welcomed the project that aimed to improve conditions on the last stretch of water that many drift boats pass through before they reach the Gravel Pit takeout.

“This gives us a place to fish that we didn’t have before,” said Greg Faught of the Float and Fish fly shop and guide service of Navajo Dam. “During high water, it’ll do wonders to move sand and silt out of there. I give it a big thumbs-up.”

During high water season on the San Juan River, water flows from the dam are increased from 500 to 5,000 cubic-feet-per-second, or cfs, for several weeks to mimic spring runoff and deliver water downstream.

The higher flows serve to clear the riverbed of silt and sand as well as other debris that has built up during the year and can smother insect production, the primary food source for trout.

The high-water season ended the last week of May, and water has since scoured deep holes behind the boulders installed in the project area which will not give trout a new place to live.

It also moved out plenty of built-up sand and sediment which should improve the insect population in that area, Faught said.

“I think this is going to be great wading and dry-fly water,” Faught said.

Anglers wanting to test these waters should consider fishing the area in the mornings and early afternoons before the drift boats start coming through, Faught said.

The project represented several major engineering obstacles but proceeded smoothly nonetheless, Wethington said.

Boulders had to be trucked in about 50 miles from a quarry near Ignacio, Colo., with each weighing an estimated 11/2 to 2 tons and “about as big and round as the hood of a pickup,” Wethington said.

Heavy equipment couldn’t be driven along the riverbanks due to environmental restrictions, so workers had the water flow lowered to 250 cfs and brought in a high-clearance, all-wheel-drive dump truck to haul the boulders upstream through the river itself. A tractor, with a movable arm fitted with a pincher claw, worked out of the riverbed, picking up and positioning the boulders.

The project area represents the last mile of the San Juan’s quality waters which are home to an estimated 75,000 trout.

The first quarter-mile of the river is strictly catch and release, and the remaining four miles have a bag limit of one trout over 20 inches with the angler required to stop fishing once they have taken a fish that day. Single, barbless lures are required on the quality waters.

Below the quality waters, anglers can use bait, and the normal bag limit is in effect

on public access to another 3.5 miles of river.

The third and final phase of the project will target the Cottonwood Campground area in the bait water section of the river.

The design is expected to be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing as the state park campground serves as a highly visible centerpiece for the entire Navajo Lake State Park which encompasses the quality waters of the San Juan River.

The third phase will make use of downed cottonwood trees to provide structure as well as more boulders and excavations which will create suitable habitat for holding fish as well as reduce silt and sediment buildup.

Fish-holding areas created by the structure work will be particularly useful in this part of the river as it is regularly stocked with up to 60,000, 9- to 12-inch trout for anglers to catch and eat.

The fish habitat project has cost about $85,000 to date. According to Wethington, anglers spend about 250,000 hours a year fishing on San Juan River below Navajo Dam and contribute an estimated $20 million to $30 million to the state’s economy every year.

Also see this article at the Santa Fe New Mexican's web site)

NM News - 2007 Rafting Season Saved

(Photo courtesy of N.M. Dept. of Tourism)

Recent wet weather, cooler temperatures and good snow pack at Wolf Creek Pass in Southern Colorado have apparently saved the Rio Grande’s high water rafting season from what some feared would be an early end.

“We thought we were doomed in March,” said Mike Boren, a river raft guide for New Wave Rafting of Santa Fe.

That’s when a spell of warm, dry weather began quickly melting mountain snow pack and brought on peak water flows of about 2000 cubic-feet-per-second (cfs). Then the water began to come down, leading some to believe the high water season had already come and gone.

Instead the runoff season has picked up again and is fueling the high-water flows that allow rafting companies to offer their most exciting and lucrative trips through the Taos Box.

“To be profitable we really need a Box season,” said Boren’s boss, Steve Miller. “We have a lot of locals who come when there’s exciting water and right now the flows are fabulous.”

The Box was running at 950 cfs on Wednesday (May 30, 2007) and the higher flows could continue for a few more weeks to come if the weather cooperates, said Richard Armijo, a snow surveyor with the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service in Albuquerque.

“There’s still pretty good snow pack in place at Wolf Creek Pass,” he said.
The 11,000-foot pass in Southern Colorado which feeds into the Rio Grande watershed is still holding 83-percent of its snow pack which accounts for almost 25 inches of water, Armijo said.

“That should be good for two or three more weeks,” he said.

That and good rains last summer and fall increased soil moisture content throughout the region to allow melting snow and recent rains to fill the creeks, streams and springs feeding the big river.

“We’re looking pretty good this year,” he said.

More information regarding snow pack and reservoir levels and other water information can be found at their website .

“That’s great news. We were hoping to have a Box season through the end of June,” said Miller. For more info about trips check their website .

The Taos Box provides rafting enthusiasts with a 17-mile Rio Grande gorge trip from the John Dunn Bridge north of Taos near the village of Arroyo Hondo downstream to the Taos Junction bridge near Pilar.

Bill Blackstock of Far-Flung Adventures of Taos said the Taos Box trip is a big draw for his customers as it provides a full day’s adventure on the water with plenty of majestic gorge scenery, wildlife viewing and whitewater thrills.

“It starts out mellow,” Blackstock said. “But by the last four miles it’s nothing but rapids. If you love the water this is the place to be.”

Blackstone said he too hopes to stretch out the Taos Box season as long as possible. Check their website for trip details.

Rio Grande water flows from Colorado are dependent upon how much water is pulled from the river for irrigation and ground water recharge in southern Colorado.

If rains keeps farmers fields wet like they have recently and wind and temperatures remain moderate, the high water could keep coming.

But those flows could also begin to wane if the region begins to dry out.

“That’s why if you want to get in on some high water, your best bet is probably going to be the next couple of weeks,” said Rico Salazar of the Pilar Yacht Club Café, a retired rafting guide who books river trips and shuttles vehicles back and forth between the put-in and take-outs for rafting outfits such as Far Flung Adventures.

Most rafting companies will cease to offer the Taos Box trips once water flows get down around four to five hundred CFS and there’s no saying when that may occur as that’s entirely dependent upon the weather.

But even once the high water ends, the five-mile Race Course section of the Rio Grande will still continue to provide rafting enthusiasts with plenty of white water thrills from Pilar down to the Taos/Rio Arriba County line just north of the Dixon turn-off.

“We can always run the Race Course,” he said.

Bill Bailey, Recreation Manager for the Taos Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management which oversees rafting on the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico, said snow pack in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains was normal for this year and has helped keep water flows in the Rio Grande high.

Bailey noted that water flows on the Rio Grande on May 29 registered close to 400 cfs at the Colorado state line but had more than doubled to 950 cfs when measured at the mouth of the Taos Box the same day.

Bailey said natural springs along the Rio Grande in the Wild Rivers area north of Taos and streams such as the Red River and the Rio Pueblo de Taos feed into the Rio Grande and help boost its flows.

Bailey was guardedly optimistic that the river would continue to see good flows throughout the summer.

“A lot of us are feeling we’ll be running at 300 to 400 cfs,” he said. “And that would be good for recreation.”

Bailey noted that climatic change in recent years has forced river runners to adapt to lower water flows on the river and that has helped them alter their services and extend the rafting season.

“Back in the late 1980’s everybody would be disappointed it (the Rio Grande) wasn’t flowing at 2000 cfs this time of year,” Bailey said. “It was no fun unless it was roaring.”

During those days customers hung on for dear life while an oarsman piloted a big raft downstream. Those kinds of trips were dependent on big water and produced big thrills.

“It could be scary,” he said.

But now companies have smaller, more easily maneuverable rafts which can negotiate the river better during low water conditions. Customers can now also participate in helping paddle the raft or pilot their own inflatable kayak trip during a guided trip, Bailey said.

“It’s a different kind of river experience, there’s time to enjoy the scenery,” Bailey said. “I think people have responded to that well.”

But the Rio Grande isn’t the only game in town for river rafters.

The Rio Chama is also flowing well right now and has the added benefit of controlled flows out of upstream dams on weekends during the summer months, said Mary Scofield, President of Adobe Whitewater.

Pagosa Springs - Colorado Kool-Aide

This tale is dedicated to old friends, better times and the promise that summer can bring.

It was one of the best summers of my life.

The resounding ka-chink of a framing hammer driving a 16-penny nail. A gnawing hunger at the end of day and sleep that rolled over me like a heavy fog.

It was 1995 and I was on the run from the demons in my life. A series of bad decisions, heavy drinking and some lousy luck.

I tried to avoid thinking about the past year as I roared down the gravel road, stones plinking off the frame and the rear end swaying to George Thorogood’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.”

I was heading west out of the Valle Vidal in remote northern New Mexico, cutting through a canyon straight out of the old western series, “Bonanza.”

This was cattle country and in the middle of a long, lonely stretch of pasture lay a great bull with his head held high.

I slammed on the brakes and a cloud of dust enveloped the van.

I got down and looked across the barbed wire fence at the bull. If he noticed me, he didn’t show it.

I backed up and sat down on the bank of the road and began to cry. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or where I was going and I was scared.

But the fear, indecision and self-pity slowly passed and as I dried my eyes, I found the bull was now staring over in my direction.

I got mad and yelled out, telling him where to go. I climbed back in my van and went looking for a phone and a friend at the other end of the line.

I found him in Pagosa Springs, just over the state line in southern Colorado.

“Forget Wyoming, why don’t you come up here?” my buddy Reggie Larkin said over the roadside, pay phone in Cimarron. “There’s plenty of work, the fishing’s great, the people are nice, you’ll love it, c’mon up!”

I had just spent the last six months riding out the winter in Las Cruces, New Mexico, right back where I had started six years earlier as a J-school student at the state university.

I had gone to college on the GI bill after having served as a truck mechanic in the Army where my skepticism of authority had thoroughly matured. Being a natural born hell raiser who thrived on confrontation and a good cause, I naturally wanted to become a newspaper reporter.

It seemed to me that those were the qualities they were looking for back then and I excelled at the work, advanced quickly and landed a gig after graduation as a crime and courts reporter at the Albuquerque Journal’s northern bureau in Santa Fe.

But what they didn’t teach me in J-school was that a big city newsroom can harbor any number of ego driven, dangerously desperate, power hungry psychopaths and I ended up running headlong into a few of them.

Things turned ugly and my big mouth and stubborn streak didn’t help matters either and after what had been a sweet run, it was time to walk away from the game.

I found I really didn’t like looking over both shoulders, one for the bad guys I might have pissed off on the beat and the other for the ladder-climbing, ambush artists in the office.

So here I was aimlessly tooling about northern New Mexico agonizing over what to do next. I had fantasized all winter about going north to the big country of Wyoming where there was supposed to be lots of work, plenty of fishing and no one who knew me.

But now that push had come to shove, I was running scared. That was until I talked to Reggie.

High Country Hide Out

Me and Reggie had become friends after having met through a mutual acquaintance down in Las Cruces, a newspaperman named Bill Diven, but that’s another story.

Larkin was a grizzled, union, pipeline welder and a desert rat that drove a push-car at the local dirt track on Saturday nights. He was well read, knew his politics and more importantly, was a straight talking guy.

So when he told me to take a deep breath and just head up to his favorite summer hideout in the mountains, I found myself extremely relieved.

Reggie was taking one of his self induced sabbaticals from his nomadic pipeline welding gig which required working long hours at remote sites for months at a time while living out of hotels or travel trailers.

Needless to say he has a sensitive stomach and twisted sense of humor.

We met up at the Hogs Breath, a bar and grill on the north end of Pagosa Springs where Reggie had secured a summer job. They featured a full-length bar over which plenty of dead animals hung, great steaks and even better bar-b-que.

I was sitting at the bar that first night when the guy next to me struck up a conversation and told me his name was Bob and he was in town from Denver to work on a bridge construction project.

“What’s there to do around here?” he asked. “Seems like they roll up the streets by nine o’clock.”

Playing the role of the hardboiled local, I told him there wasn’t much else to do but fish.

“I ain’t here to fish,” he sputtered. “I’m here to work and screw some of your women.”

The whole bar turned and stared at this guy.

“Well, seeing as how you already got a job,” I said in my best western drawl. “Then I’d strongly suggest you learn to fish.”

With that everyone let out a good laugh and returned to their drinking.

It was a great little bar, the Texan tourists loved it but it was the locals who made it a great hang out. And there’s nothing like a local pub with a friend behind the bar to make a guy feel at home.

I spent the next couple days exploring the little town of Pagosa Springs. It sits in a bowl ringed by towering mountain peaks, surrounded by dense forest with a river running through it.

It’s a little town, maybe a couple thousand hardy year-round residents. Having been born during the lumber, mining and cattle era, the town now catered primarily to tourists and part-time luxury homeowners.

Pagosa Springs was a place where the locals wore Carhartt and the tourists L.L.Bean.

Recreational attractions include skiing the deep powder found at Wolf Creek, fishing the headwaters and forks of the fabled San Juan River and soaking in the town’s riverfront hot springs. There’s golf, hiking, camping, horseback riding, ballooning and plenty of shopping along the downtown historic district.

It’s a hospitable but not too nosey kind of town where locals are quick to ask where you’re from but reluctant to inquire as to what your name might be.

There may not be many available women but there sure was plenty of work. Especially for those willing to toil in construction, building high-end homes for wealthy retirees and others with cash to spend.

Big log homes with cathedral-like glass windows were going up all over the countryside when I had landed there in the summer of ‘95.

I had gone downtown that afternoon and was making the long, uphill climb back up to the northern edge of town when I stopped to pick up a young guy hitchhiking. He told me he had been down to the auto parts store and was heading back home to finish working on his car.

We exchanged the usual small talk and then I asked where the work was. He told me he just got fired for failing to show up at his laborer’s job for one of the local homebuilders, Southwest Custom Homes.

“I know they’re hiring, in fact that’s their office right there and there’s the boss’s truck,” he said as we passed a building on the roadside. “You should stop in and see Tim.”

“I think I’ll do that,” I said.

I dropped off the kid and went back to the office and asked for one of the owners, Tim Horning. A tall, rugged looking guy with a bushy mustache and thick eyebrows came out and asked what he could do for me.

I inquired about work and he looked me up and down and asked when was the last time I did a “day’s work.”

I had to laugh. It was true. I had been making a living off other people’s misery for the last four years and the only calluses I had were from banging on a computer keyboard.

But I told him I wasn’t afraid of a hard day’s work and had worked as a framer on a sub-floor crew when I got out of the Army.

He asked when that might have been?

I sheepishly noted it was back in the mid-80s, over ten years ago, building subdivisions for Pulte Homes on the plains outside of Denver.

“I even got my tool belt in the back of the van still,” I said hopefully.

“Okay, if you think you can still hack it,” he said and then gave me an address to show up at the next morning to help lay a foundation.

“And make sure you bring a pair of gloves, okay?” he said.

I shook his hand vigorously, told him I’d be there and went back to the bar to announce my success at finding a job.

Everyone there, carpenters, road workers, and other working stiffs seemed real happy for me, smiling and patting me on the back. But you could tell when they turned away that they must have been wondering, why anybody would be so happy about landing a laborer’s job on a construction crew and working on a Saturday morning?

Yeah it’s a bottom rung job and nothing but hard work but the way I figured it, that was just what I needed to get my mojo back, some good, honest, hard work and no office politics.

So there I was the next morning, tying off rebar, shoveling dirt and waiting with a bunch of other guys for the cement truck to arrive when a little Dodge pickup with a camper shell pulled up. A squat, barrel-chested, tough looking, older guy got out and came over to the site.

He was talking to Horning, smoking a cigarette and looking over the crew. It was obvious he was some kind of boss. He also looked kinda mean, so I stayed busy and out of his way.

Horning told us his name was Bob McNeil and he was a master carpenter out of Florida.

Sure seemed like I was running into a lot of out-of-towners named Bob up here, I thought.

By the end of the morning we had smoothed out the cement and were about finished for the day when Horning came over and asked me if I wanted to come back on Monday and work with Mr. McNeil. Horning had hired McNeil to be the lead carpenter on a custom home Horning was building for his wife. He said the job paid eight bucks an hour with a dollar raise if I survived the first couple weeks.

I looked over at McNeil as he squinted through his cigarette smoke at me.

“Sure,” I said with a grin.

And with that I had managed to land a job for the summer in one of the coolest little towns in Colorado. Suddenly Santa Fe’s petty politics sure seemed a long ways away.

Camping Colorado Style

Both Reggie and I were staying in our little camping trailers parked on one of his friend’s horse pasture located several miles outside of town.

Every once in a while I would awaken at night to find the trailer rocking as one of the horses outside rubbed himself up against it. There were plenty of flies too.

We had to haul in our water, there were no toilet facilities nearby and I soon went looking for a place, closer to town, where I could hunker down in my van and ride out the night instead.

One of those spots was under a couple of giant ponderosa trees down at Echo Canyon Reservoir, a few miles out on the south end of town. It was a little recreation area where I could park and cook up something on my Coleman stove and watch the ducks cavort and the fish rise as it grew dark. I spent many an evening down there casting flies to those rising fish, catching bluegill, perch, small mouth bass and the occasional trout.

Once it got dark I would try to pick up a ballgame or something else on my battery powered, transistor radio, but most of the times I’d just lay there in my bed listening to the wind in the trees.

I’d leave the van’s side door wide open, a curtain of mosquito netting to keep the bugs at bay and I’d nod off while the crickets chirped.

In the morning there was an outhouse nearby and while my cowboy coffee brewed in an old fashioned, blue and white spotted, enamel coffee pot, I’d stretch and do some calisthenics in the warm, morning sun.

My commute to work was a pleasant cruise through a nice, quiet little town to a job I found increasingly enjoyable.
The backside of Horning’s house was aligned to take in the view of the pasture and mountains and many times I would look up from my work to find a procession of billowing, white clouds marching across a piercing blue sky.

They’d cast a checkerboard pattern of shadows across a backdrop of towering peaks and I’d take a deep breath of that cool, clean Rocky Mountain air and feel my lungs expand and my mind relax.

My dog, Wiley, loved that job, too.

She’d sit out on the very end of the first floor’s main beam staring intently into the back yard, watching and waiting. Then she’d suddenly turn and scamper back across the beam to a plank leading to the basement steps, she’d patter down those wooden stairs, her nails clicking and then emerge from the basement patio at a dead run - just to scare the hell out some unsuspecting chipmunk.

She’d dig for hours out in that pasture, a steady stream of rich soil flying out from between her splayed legs. When she’d take a break and come back into the house she’d arrive with a ring of dirt around her snout.

It wasn’t pretty when she’d hit pay dirt and unearth a colony of mice, their little tails twitching out of the side of her mouth as she chewed them up.

Bob was a hard case at first, really coming down on me when I screwed up, messing with me to see how much I could handle, that kind of thing.

He was a blue-collar, Vietnam vet from Michigan who was on the run from his ex-girlfriend and the IRS. I was a second-generation hippie with a journalism degree who was afraid of power saws and heights.

One day Horning showed up as we were laying out tarpaper on the garage roof. I was crabbing around on my hands and knees while driving the roofing nails, too scared to stand up straight and risk seeing the dizzying height we were at.

Hell you could have jumped off that roof without getting hurt.

Bob started making fun of me and left me crimson with shame. Horning reached into the cab of his truck and pulled out a cold six-pack of beer and tossed one up to each of us.

“There,” he said with a grin. “Have a little courage in a can.”

It was cold, crisp and refreshing but lacked the kick I’d expected.

It was “3.2 “ beer, the only kind they sell at the convenience stores and supermarkets in Colorado, Horning explained.

I fell in love with that stuff, plenty of beer satisfaction and only the slightest buzz, what a concept!

“What a crew!” Bob said while shaking his head at me.

Then one day we were racking an outside wall on the second floor above the garage. Bob was yelling at me to hold the damn wall steady, as he got ready to nail it off. He held a 16-penny wedged between his index and middle finger, palm facing him, awaiting the framing hammer’s blow, when I grabbed his cocked arm.

“What’re you doing? Let go of me!” he raged.

“Look in your hand, Bro,” I said calmly.

Bob looked back at the framing hammer clenched in his fist and saw that he had the head turned around with the claw end facing his open palm. Bob twirled the hammer in his hand and drove the nail with a resounding ca-chunk.

Bob took me out for beers at the Hogs Breath after work that night and even let me play “my” music on the battered, boom box the next day.

It was kind of funny to watch a guy his age nod his head and hum along to the likes of George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

But Bob loved that tape and asked for it all the time after that. He liked to start the workday with some good, hard-driving music and we’d rock on throughout the day.

That house brought us together and we forged a bond building it.

Buy Ford Stock Now!

One day Bob said we were getting offsite and going on a little road trip.We were taking a borrowed Ford pickup with a Power Stroke diesel engine and hauling a flatbed trailer up over Wolf Creek Pass to the sawmill in Saguache to pick up a bunch of beams for the house.

We motored out of town and started up the mountain, past the scenic waterfall, the runaway trucks ramps, the overheated RVs on the hillside and hauled ass all the way up to the 11,000 foot, snow covered summit.

Man that Ford sure could pull, we giggled, as the motor roared and we soared across the Continental Divide and down the other side of the Rockies. Across the mighty Rio Grande, past the beer barley and potato fields, wondering what all those piles of rocks were in the corners were for, trying out our Spanish on the Mexican field hands at the crossroads’ store.

We loaded up at the mill, too much it seemed as the trailer wandered and swayed as we headed down the road. Back we went to unload a few and we were off again. That truck climbed the mountain going as fast as it had coming up.

I’d buy me one of those Fords if I had a good reason to.

I ended up spending many a day using an adze on all those beams, giving them that authentic, rough-cut look. Stripped down to just my shorts and boots, I’d stand astraddle one of those beams with the adze swinging down between my legs, chipping off a thin layer of wood, working my way back until I was done with one side. Then I’d muscle the beam over and get to work on another other side.

It was tedious work and you had to pay close attention or risk burying that adze blade in one of your shins.

The sweat would drip from my forehead and sting my eyes, somewhere a power saw buzzed like a horny cicada, a car passed on the gravel road, the crunch of its tires causing me to stop and stare.

Only a few more to go before we’d bring in the Pettibone to hoist them up for the ceiling, I’d tell myself as I got back to work and waited for Bob to call it a day.

But I did such a good job on those beams that Bob put me to work on some more for a log home we were building on the side for another guy.

That guy’s place was further out in the country, surrounded by thick pasture and tall ponderosas. I’d roll up in my van, crank up Deep Purple’s “Machine Head” and get to work on sculpting those mill cut logs with a Dewalt power planer.

The vibration from that tool left my hands tingling for hours afterwards but at least I didn’t have to worry about lopping off a leg.

Those logs sure looked pretty by the time I got through with them and all that hard work was melting the winter fat off my body, but it was also taking a toll on my 37-year-old muscles and bones.

So one of my favorite payday rituals was to go downtown to the hot springs and soak in the healing waters for a while.

I was able to manage that because they had a really affordable monthly pass for locals that I managed to buy by just showing them a payroll stub and a sincere smile.

I liked to slip a couple of cold ones into my gym bag and then sit in the upper pool sipping a forbidden but well-hidden beer.

From that vantage point I could watch from behind my shades as the tourists frolicked in the lower pools, their steaming, white bodies glistening under the setting sun.

One night I was doing just that when a couple of fine looking young women climbed into the upper pool with me. I was checking them out from behind my shades when one of the gals asked me in German-accented English if I would mind if they removed their tops.

I reached up and slowly lowered the sunglasses so they could see my eyes and said “Bitte.” - that’s German for please, I’d learned that when I was stationed overseas with the Army.

The Fräuleins giggled wickedly, stripped off their tops and I put my shades back up and slipped down a little further into the water.

It was a wonderful evening in Pagosa with two friendly, topless German women sharing my hot tub, a river slowly flowing by and a cold Coors in my hand.

And they said there were no women in this town.

Trout Bumming

What a summer I was having and as it progressed, it got even better. I was exploring and finding great fishing all over the place.

Within an hour’s drive I could be deep into the San Juan or Rio Grande national forests from which flowed the headwaters of the San Juan and Rio Grande and an abundance of creeks, streams, rivers, ponds and lakes.

One night I could be fishing the evening hatch on the Piedra River and sleeping in my van perched on a nearby cliff. The next night I might be found fishing in the San Juan behind the downtown ice cream parlor while the tourists licked their cones and watched from up on a deck.

When Horning let us go early on Friday around noon I might find myself a few hours later, knee deep in the south fork of the Rio Grande, under a canopy of trees, wading in a pair of sneakers and shorts, flicking a short leader armed with grasshopper and a dropper. I’d catch brown trout in the lower stretch, brookies in the middle and rainbows up below the dam.

And I’d be laughing to myself the whole way just like those crazy men you see on the street. I loved that stretch of stream on a hot afternoon.

Maybe I’d find myself high up in the mountains, wending my way between the pines to get to one of the lakes where I’d spend the evening trying to keep my fly out of the trees as I made an incredibly long cast towards the expanding ripples where a fat trout just rose.

It was a trout bum’s kind of summer and I was living it.

Back to Reality

But it all started winding down the day Bob left town, headed back to Florida and his real life.

I stayed on the job a little while longer working with another lead carpenter to finish off the roof and on what was to be my last day on the job I walked over to my van and cranked the engine, only to have it spin noisily and fail to start.

Reggie came over with a compression tester and we soon discovered the engine was shot.

Well, Tim Horning came to the rescue again, this time ordering me an engine at his cost from Knighton's machine shop down in Albuquerque and then allowing me to stay at a mobile home he owned in a nearby subdivision.

We towed the van over and parked it and I did some work around town till they got the engine done, staining all the 2x6 wooden planks inside a woman’s newly built horse barn for $10 a hour one day and finding grunt work on a construction crew on another.

It seemed a man willing and able to work in Pagosa Springs could always find something to do for a buck.

In the evenings I’d sit cross-legged on the living room floor of the empty mobile home and sip a quart of beer as I watched the World Series on a little black and white TV perched on a kitchen chair.

I awoke one morning to find snow and my new engine in the driveway. A bare block of iron, encased in plastic wrap and a wooden crate sat there as the UPS truck pulled away in a cloud of exhaust and clattering gears.

For some reason I thought of the Blues Brothers’ line from the movie where Akroyd says “It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.”

I got an engine hoist and got to work on the van out under the carport, jacking up the body to pull the engine out through the front where the grill and radiator had been. I worked long into the night and finally got it all buttoned up, poured some gas down the carb and fired her up.

She roared and then died, I tried some more gas and she caught right off and then died again.

Hmmmm, I thought. She wasn’t getting any gas so I pulled the fuel line off and cranked the engine. There was no gas coming out of there like there should have been, so I pulled the fuel pump back out of the block. I hand pumped the arm that rides inside the engine and works off a cam on the crankshaft and watched as gas spewed out across the driveway.

Hmmm, I thought again, the pump’s working so that means what?

I looked over at the old engine block and saw the fuel pump’s crankshaft cam still bolted to the timing gear on the old engine.

I had forgot to swap it out. I hung my head and thought of crying, again. Instead I grabbed a wrench and got back to work, pulling out the radiator, water pump and everything else to get at the engine again.

I drove the van out of Pagosa Springs the next morning.

A couple of weeks later I was sitting on the porch out at Reggie’s place in the desert east of Las Cruces soaking up the sun while Reggie was reading the want ads in the local paper.

We looked great but we were both unemployed again and trying to figure out what to do next.

“Hey Moffatt, check this out,” Reggie said. “Wanted: Reporter wanted to work for a modest wage, during an election year, at the worst, small-town paper in the country.”
“Let me see that,” I said.

It was the fiesty Rio Grande Sun up in Española where there was plenty of juicy news, a legendary, old-school publisher and lots of good fishing to be had.

I called the editor, Mike Kaemper, who remembered me from my work at the Journal and invited me to come on up for an interview.

This was the guy who kicked the Journal’s butt covering the Ricky Abeyta massacre in Chimayo, a domestic dispute gone bad that left seven dead including two cops and a baby. At the time it was the worst mass murder in state history and the Sun outdid everyone covering it.

It’d be a pleasure to work for these guys so I took the cops and courts reporter’s position when they offered it to me and I went back to work in the news game.
One of the first stories I wrote on that job earned us a first place newswriting award from the New Mexico Press Association.

It seemed somehow I had gotten my mojo back

Thanks, guys.

The Valle Vidal - My Hard Sided Unit

I awoke to rain tattooing the roof.

It was fall in Northern New Mexico.

In the backyard my aging Dodge van’s faded black skin glistened under a rare bath.

She was waiting to take me to the river.

But three-dollar-a-gallon gas did what 10 years of hard driving and several near-death experiences failed to do.

I had to park my beloved van.

For the past 10 years I’d been tooling around in the V-8 driven, one-ton, behemoth, rigged up with a full-size bed, propane heat, a working kitchen in the back and all the spare parts, tools, camping and fishing gear I could haul.

With a stiff tailwind and a long downgrade I was lucky to get 12-mpg.

But now I had a little, five-speed, four-wheel-drive, high-clearance, short-wheel-base 1996 Geo Tracker with a soft-top to run around in.

And it got 30 mpg and was a non-descript, sun-faded green, too!

I lucked into the little SUV, having dropped an e-mail to an old friend, Reggie Larkin, who works out of an automotive shop up in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and told him I was in the market for one of those little Japanese jeeps.

Turns out his shop had just picked up a newer, prettier, four-door, hardtop version of their trusty little shop truck and now the old two-door, convertible was up for grabs.

“I’d buy it,” he said.

That’s all I needed to hear. I talked to his boss who told me if I showed up with two grand, it was mine.

Me and my girlfriend, Wren, talked it over, pulled some cash out of the bank and headed north the following weekend to check out the little jeep.

It was just what we were looking for to compete with Santa Fe’s legions of high-end, monster SUVs - Range Rovers, Escalades, Expeditions, Land Cruisers.

We broke it in on the ride home, crossing over the San Juan Mountains and heading down to the Conejos River. The washboard dirt road that runs alongside this river for many miles would serve well as a shakedown cruise.

The little truck worked out fine as did the fishing and a few weeks later we decided we’d really break the little jeep in with a trip up to the Valle Vidal, in the high country north of Taos on the Colorado border.

I was looking forward to this trip because I knew we’d get into some reliable afternoon thunderstorms and slick roads that would really give the little jeep’s four-wheel drive capabilities a tryout.

It would be ironic because this is where a tragic, fatal encounter with a bear many years ago led me to buy my van in the first place.

I had been fishing at Shuree Ponds where on occasion a well-placed caddis fly can entice a hefty rainbow to the surface. It’s rumored the State Game and Fish boys plant retired brood stock in the ponds, which accounts for their legendary size.

I was fishing with a former co-worker from my newspapering days in the early 1990’s when I worked as a cops and courts reporter with the Albuquerque Journal’s Northern bureau in Santa Fe.

This was the guy who taught me the basics of fly-fishing and the formula news lead.

He had pulled in a big rainbow that evening and was anxious to cook it up back at Cimarron campground, about a mile from the pond. It is one of only two campsites located within the estimated 100,000-acre Valle Vidal and usually crowded.

We rolled in late and took one of the last sites located at the far end of the loop. It looked like an overflow spot, just an old road that ran off into the woods with a picnic table parked in the middle. Stands of trees bordered each side of the road.

When we paid for our site at the self-service fee station there were warning signs posted to tell campers that bears had been raiding the campground recently and to take the usual precautions to avoid tempting them any further.

Nonetheless, my fishing partner decided to clean his catch under the public water spigot and then fried it up in a great cast-iron skillet with bacon grease. Seems I remember eating my usual hamburger and Ranch Style “Husband Pleasing” chili beans.

And it wasn’t long before the aroma of our supper brought the bears in.

I was brushing my teeth by my little Isuzu Pup truck with my back to the tree line when I heard something rustle in the leaves. I turned to find a young bear at arms length looking at me quizzically.

I literally jumped out of my boots, scrambled up onto the picnic table and started spitting toothpaste as I screamed bloody murder.

The little bear took off running and I calmed down after awhile.

We thought about leaving but it would be a long drive off the mountain to find another spot to camp since there’s no camping “at-large” within the Valle Vidal.

Instead we decided it would be okay to ride out the night in our bedrolls under a couple of tarps strung up in the far tree line since it appeared we had scared the bear off.


Besides, we had my fishing partner’s dog, Pete, with us. He was a feisty male chow/husky-looking mix with one blue eye whose manhood was intact and he wasn’t afraid of a fight.

We also had my dog Wiley, a slight, whippet/Boston terrier mix, with us. I had only recently picked her up during a fishing trip up in the Jemez Mountains. She was out with us on the first of many camping trips and just a few days earlier she had disappeared during an evening lighting storm only to nonchalantly reappear the following morning.

The fight in her remained to be seen but there was the added peace of mind brought on by my partner’s big 12-guage, pump shotgun and my .357 Magnum pistol.

I soon drifted off to sleep curled up with my dog and my pistol. But within a short time I was awakened by a series of loud whispers urging me to “wake up!”

My buddy was whispering hoarsely that he thought the bear was back and rooting around in my little Isuzu pickup truck. Then he turned his flashlight on and in the powerful beam we saw a much bigger bear than before.

She was seated with her rump on top of the toolbox behind the cab and leaning over into the open bed. I saw the top of my cooler fly through the air before my partner’s flashlight suddenly went out.

We couldn’t believe it. His bulb had apparently chosen that moment to burn out.

While I frantically searched around for my flashlight, I could hear Pete going wild, barking and straining at my partner’s grip. It was too dark to see but I could smell and hear the bear.

I finally found my flashlight and when I turned it upon the truck we could see the bear looking over at us. We tried yelling and throwing things at the bear to scare her off but she wasn’t fazed in the least by our efforts.

It wasn’t until Pete broke loose and launched himself at the side of the truck that the bear responded, rearing up on its hind legs in the bed of the pickup, big as a church.

It was a quick decision to fire, my partner his shotgun and I my pistol, a single blast each and the bear tumbled from the back of the truck and out of sight.

We cautiously made our way over to the truck and peered around the front end to see the bear struggling to get up. She was a big, cinnamon-brown bruiser and my partner put her down with another load of double-aught buck.

It was a sad affair. I remember the feeling of guilt and remorse that washed over me. To top it off my dog had run off again during all the action. Then we began to wonder what kind of trouble we might be in.

We left the dead bear and my dog behind as we dragged our sorry asses down off that mountain. We drove about 15 miles to the payphone at the gas station in Amalia where we reported the shooting to the State Game and Fish.

The officer who took our report told my partner not to feel too bad about it. Most nuisance bears are doomed to such a fate and they had been expecting something like that to happen since there had been so many bear encounters in the campground that summer.

Nonetheless, I still felt bad about what happened. We were to blame for killing that bear no matter how we tried to justify it.

My co-worker and me parted ways that morning, he headed north to Wyoming to continue his vacation and I, back up the mountain to search for my dog. I was relieved to find her, shivering in the middle of the road by the campsite.

Nearby was the body of the dead bear we had covered up with an old blue tarp. The Game and Fish officer said he would come pick it up later.

I got a good look at her in the morning light and remember the shame of it all, having to kill that great creature, especially since she was obviously the mother of the other little bear we had encountered earlier.

What had happened to that little guy? Would he end up like all the other trash picking bears in New Mexico - doomed to die?

I surveyed the scene and in the clear morning light was shocked to see through the trees a group of tents in line with where my truck had been parked the night before.

I turned and looked real hard at the line of sight from where I had been bedded down and then turned and walked through the trees looking at them closely. There it was, a fresh wound in the bark of a tree no thicker than my forearm where a round had embedded itself.

I continued through the tree line over to the next camp and announced myself and a head of shaggy dreadlocks poked out from inside a tent.

“Hey, what’s up?” the guy asked.

“Everybody okay over here?” I asked. ”We shot a bear over there last night”

“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t hear anything,” he responded.

I told him I was worried about any stray rounds and the new-age hippie crawled out and checked with his campmates and found everyone was okay.

I left relieved we hadn’t ruined anyone else’s life and I rolled off that mountain with a whole new attitude about camping.

That’s when I went out and bought the Dodge van, a “hard-sided” unit, and figured I’d let the bears and other woodland creatures do all the rooting around they wanted without any interference from me.

Return to the Scene

As we rolled into the canyon leading up into the Valle Vidal a steady rain began to fall on the soft top of the little jeep. We splashed our way through puddles in the gravel road under a canopy of thick, gray, angry clouds.

I was psyched, up ahead the road would split and one fork would climb steadily up the mountain to the ponds and the other would continue on up a valley to the upper meadows of the Rio Costilla.

It was the high road I was interested in because when it rained it typically turned into a soupy, slippery, just “floor it and pray” kind of mess.

A couple years back I had skated down that stretch of road in the van during a rainstorm as Wren and me were returning from a long road trip to Wyoming.

We decided to cut through the Valle Vidal on our way home and were doing fine until we popped over the top of the mountain and skidded to a stop.

It was raining and I knew the road down the mountain would be nothing short of treacherous. Driving the van under such slick conditions was like riding a brick. All you could do was try to aim the van, stay off the brakes and pray.

As we began our way down I looked over at Wren and found her was covering her eyes with her hands, refusing to watch. I looked back at Wiley who was asleep curled up in a ball.

See, she wasn’t worried! But I was, my knuckles had turned white from the firm grip I had on the wheel.

I was inching my way down the mountain with my outside set of wheels riding in some gravel mounded up on the very edge of the road when I noticed something in the rear view mirror.

It was a big pickup towing a horse trailer coming down the hill behind me and he was blinking his lights and coming down fast.

I slowed the van down as best I could and stayed where I was on the outside edge of the road.

Looking down off to my left I imagined the van rolling down the long, slippery slope into the rock strewn ravine below.

I then watched in my passenger side-view mirror as the truck’s headlights grew and then the van quaked as the big rig barreled past me in a shower of rain and mud.

Wren screamed, Wiley awoke and I breathed a great sigh of relief.

I cut across the road as we entered the upcoming corner and aimed for the rain filled gutter on the inside edge.

The van’s rear end fought to break free but I steered into the skid and managed to keep the right front tire in the ditch and rode out the corner.

We made it around the bend and then it was a straight shot through the muck for another mile or so. At the end of this run the gravel resumed and we’d be home free.

We made it and I sheepishly suggested we stop and do some fishing. Wren slowly peeled her fingers off the dash and told me it was time to go home.

That damn road had sunk me again.

So it was with some sense of vengeance that I returned to the Valle Vidal on such a rainy day armed with four-wheel drive. I was relishing the thought of churning through the van-stopping slop, mud flecking my windshield as I powered up the mountain with confidence.

I looked over at Wren who was grinning at my giddiness; this time we were going to have some fun.

I stopped and engaged the front hubs and then as we peeled off onto the high road I could only watch in dismay as the rain petered out, the road grew dry and the sun emerged over the valley.