LLAMAS AND GOATS, PACKING TOGETHER
PUBLISHED IN THE FALL 2018 ISSUE OF PACK ANIMAL MAGAZINE
I assumed the trail on the north side of the pass would match that of the south side of the pass. I was wrong.
A ghost of a trail appeared and disappeared through the scree and boulder field that fell off the north side of the saddle, but it completely disappeared once we made our way out of the rocks. Little trickles of water wandered down the sides of the surrounding mountains. In our search for the path we knew must be there, we mistook most of the trickles for trails until we splashed into them. Then it started to drizzle, and we gave up on finding a trail and simply picked our way between the spots of marshy, spongy ground and the dense thickets of willows.
We were heading for the Fryingpan Lakes, which were reportedly chock-full of trout. We almost made it. Almost.
The day before, we had started out at the North Fork Lake Creek Trailhead near Aspen. As we were three near-strangers coming from three corners of Colorado with five animals between us, we were on the trail only four hours later than we had planned. Not bad, considering all the trip’s variables.
Fortunately, the goats and llamas took to each other without any problem, we figured out a trail order that made everyone happy, and we hiked an easy couple of miles to the base of the pass and set up camp well before dusk.
Nan Hassey, a 39-year-old pack goat breeder from Rye, Colorado brought three goats: two packers and a milk goat. Gayle Woodsum, a 62-year-old writer and community organizer from North Fork, Colorado who has been packing with llamas since 1998, brought two llamas: one was an 18-year-old semi-retired pack llama and the other a rescue llama that had spent four months running wild in the mountains above Fort Collins before being rescued and had never been on an overnight pack trip before.
As the editor of Pack Animal, I had instigated the trip but brought no animals. I did bring the kitchen, however, and tried to make myself useful in other ways. I was also the planner of and navigator for the trip. A few years back, I had hiked to the unnamed lake at the top of Fryingpan Pass and knew the trail was pack-animal-friendly up to that point. I could see the Fryingpan Lakes off in the distance and I assumed that the trail would continue on the other side in the same manner that it had delivered us to the top of the pass. My Navigation columnist, Dr. Phil Romig Jr., never would have made that mistake. But then again, I tend to take after my father, Charlie Hackbarth, and follow my gut when I’m out on the trail.
If we had started earlier and had abandoned the search for a trail sooner, we would have made it to the lakes. But our green llama had been signalling her skepticism of our leadership since the boulder field and Gayle had been using too much energy trying to convince her that we knew where we were going, so the final push to the lakes was abandoned late on the second day.
I’m just guessing, but I think we camped less than a mile from the upper Fryingpan Lake. But since I was the only angler in the group, I was unable to get the votes needed for an early morning start to the lakes for a bit of fishing before we turned around to head back up and over the mountain. I will admit, however, that I may not have campaigned as enthusiastically as I could have. Hiking without a trail is always more exhausting than I think it will be.
The next day, the animals, sensing a return to the barn, never complained about the pace and we were at the edge of the lake that sat in the saddle of Fryingpan Pass in time for lunch. We arrived in the midst of a huge hatch and, after scarfing down a PBJ, I caught a pretty cutthroat on my second cast. Nan and her goats and Gayle and her llamas headed down the switchbacks toward our first night’s campsite while I stayed behind and fished a while longer. Before the hatch ended I got a few more bites and one on the line that took my fly. Fishing alone at a high mountain lake is a rare treat, and the solitude is both peaceful and unnerving, especially as you watch storm clouds pile up on one side of the pass and then break apart as they cross over. There’s electricity in the air even if no storms materialize.
On the way down from the pass, I thought about how well the animals worked together on the trail. Goats and llamas have a lot in common as far as trail companions go: neither of them make much noise, and they both go at a human’s pace. The milk goat that provided fresh milk for my morning coffee, the scrambled eggs, the French toast, and the Alfredo sauce was unfamiliar with the concept of staying on the trail, but everyone else hiked in line at a steady pace. The animals are quiet, but you feel their presence. Nan and Gayle both speak to their animals as if they expect a response, leaving me as the fifth wheel, talking to myself.
The other benefit of both llamas and goats is their size: horses and mules have been the traditional pack stock in the U.S., but demographics have changed drastically in the last one hundred years. There are fewer people who grew up around horses an fewer still who can, in the face of high land prices, afford to keep horses for recreational packing. But both llamas and goats require less: less space, less upkeep, less husbandry knowledge. They are easier to manage on the trail and exponentially safer around children and folks who have little experience around large animals. They can’t carry nearly the same weight as a horse (generally speaking, a llama can carry twice as much as a goat and a horse can carry twice as much as a llama) and you can’t ride them, but they’ll get you deep into the backcountry and leave little to no impact on the land as they do it. And due to the ever-increasing number of people who are enjoying our public lands, minimal impact is going to be an essential component of preserving that land.
We hiked out to the trailhead the next morning in a constant but light drizzle, and were back at the cars before we realized the trip was over. Fortunately, it took us a long time to get Gayle’s fifty-foot rig back out onto the highway, so we didn’t get on the road home at too early an hour.
After an hour on the road, cell phones suddenly find service and messages and voicemails start rolling in and you fight the urge to turn around and head back in, deep into the mountains and away from the responsibilities of daily life, back to where three strangers, three very different women, enjoyed a dozen miles on the trail together with little in common but the love of the backcountry and the pack animals who make it possible.
