The Mountains Around Here, and Their Names

The weather has been deteriorating all night, and this morning, early, I woke to the sound of the wind howling. It's that intermittent wind I've mentioned here before. I can almost imagine it building over behind the mountains, forcing its way up and up, and then collapsing on itself and into our valley. Sometimes you can hear the fierceness of this wind, but if you step outside it's calm down on the ground. It's a high wind, and often passes right over us without bothering to come down here among the mortals. I find the mountains and what they do to weather to be infinitely fascinating.

I have been studying topographical maps online of our valley and the mountains around us. For some reason, I have to know the names of the mountains, where they're located, the names of the valleys and canyons, where they're located, the streams. It isn't an easy thing to learn. For one thing, the people around here call everything variously, almost as if they're making all of it up on the fly.

For instance, I was told by the real estate agent who sold us this house that the tall mountain to the west, the one that has snow on it even in July, that mountain, she said, was Elk Mountain. And so for months I called it that. Then my neighbor down the street, who has a envious view of that mountain through their back windows, well, they called it Gascon Peak. I then began to look through my mountain books, and could not find a Gascon Peak listed at all. This mountain is well over 11,000 feet and is pushing 12,000. I know this because of the very fact of that snow that stays up there practically year-round. So it would stand to reason that a mountain that tall, in this state, would be listed in the books. Hermit's Peak is listed and it's just 10,600 and rarely has a snow-cap past March. But Gascon Peak seems to be what all the people living right here want to call the damned thing, I guess because it's down Gascon Canyon.  So I was going to just go with it, too. Except that it just isn't really IN me to do that.

The president of our association wrote a column in our newsletter in which he mentioned Gascon Peak and Lone Pine Mesa, another interesting name that I believe people just like to say. I ran into him down at the post office shortly after this article came out. Our post office is in the valley and from the parking lot there you can see almost the entire circle of mountains around us. I asked him to please point out Gascon Peak and Lone Pine Mesa to me, and here's the funny part. He couldn't do it. He sort of gestured with his hand and gave me a vague response, and I realized that he really wasn't certain either.

Back to the topo maps and my endless quest for the proper names and locations. And this is what I believe I know. The infamous Gascon Peak is really Penasco Grande, and it is 11,866 feet high. Beside it is Spring Mountain, also over 11,000 and scarred by a fire from about 7 years ago that began in Maestas Canyon below. Behind Spring Mountain, and barely visible from our valley is Elk Mountain, a sister mountain to Spring Mountain. Just in front of Elk Mountain, and blocking the view, is Bluebell Ridge, which runs right up to the back end of Hermit's Peak. There is a bald spot on Bluebell Ridge that keeps a snow-pack in winter, and that bald spot is called Bluebell Park. And finally, in front of Bluebell Ridge, hovering around the lower valley is Lone Pine Mesa, a very nondescript part of the larger loop of mountains. Lone Pine Mesa is in fact covered with pines, spruces, and other forest evergreens, but maybe at one time in its life it had a single pine. Who gets to name these mountains and why are they named as they are?

Another thing that I managed to find out, definitively is, that our house sits at 7600 feet, probably the reason I struggle to breathe every other day. A flatlander, born and bred at an altitude of about 6 feet above sea level, finds it hard to breathe when she climbs a ladder, let alone walks, talks and lives at 7600 feet. I'm hoping that someday this will stop being a struggle for me. Because I do so love these mountains.

Onward ....