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High Country Backpacking
If you're used to well-groomed packed dirt trails, the mountains have a surprise waiting for you just above that first rocky rise. On high-mountain shoulders, trails are likely to be cairned paths through crumbly scree. Sometimes, it seems as if you're being led through a field of marbles, each of which is only waiting for you to step on it before answering gravity's call to roll downhill.
There are two kinds of high country rock: scree and talus. Scree is the crumbling stuff that you skid down on. Talus is the bigger rock rubble—boulders and slabs—that forms a high-altitude obstacle course. Both can be nerve-racking in the same way that an earthquake is nerve-racking: Having the ground move beneath your feet is a challenge to the normal order of the universe. That's what mountains do (and perhaps why we love them): They challenge the normal order of the universe.
Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is simply to walk around it. If you have a choice, a long loop around a scree or talus slope may take a lot less time than a direct path through a jumble of rocks. But often, high-mountain terrain doesn't offer you a choice. That's when a little experience and a few tricks will help.
Details mentioned in this article were accurate at the time of publication
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