Missing: Two experienced backpackers
Clothing: None
Facial Hair: Yes
Nose: Prominent
Last seen: 12,000 feet, East Fork Cimarron Trail
Answer to: ‘Rones’ and ‘Vio.’
Hang on, we’re being told these are llamas. Llamas don’t really answer to anything. Should you spot them, try “Hey, llama!”
Lisa Balcomb realizes her runaway llamas are likely fat, happy and indifferent to human intervention, grazing somewhere in the high meadows and rock-strewn cliffs of the high San Juans. But she’d appreciate it anyway if you called in notice of her best friends upon sighting them while hiking.
“It’s sad,” Balcomb said Saturday afternoon, back home at her ranch in Silt, posting “Lost Llamas” messages on 14ers.com and any other site she could think of. They’ve left handwritten “missing” placards at trailheads, and tucked notices stuffed into plastic sandwich bags under the wipers of cars from Lake City to Ouray.
“My sister and her husband just spent six days up there looking for them, really hard, you know. And they never saw them. It’s just really sad.”
Balcomb, 69, and her sister Barbara are expert llama packers, having given up their own backpacks to save their knees years ago. They’ve llama-packed the entire Continental Divide Trail, and frequently take two-week hiking trips in the San Juans.
On July 27, Lisa and Barbara were on the second day of return from a five-day pack-in through the valleys and over the saddles connecting majestic 14ers like Wetterhorn, Uncompahgre and Redcloud. They crested a high ridge with a sublime view into a valley, which included a distant herd of grazing sheep on National Forest meadows.
Not their first rodeo, the sisters armed themselves for encounters with aggressive sheep dogs and tried to prepare their own dog, Nick. Bear spray at the ready, llama leads held tight, leash on the dog.
Suddenly a shepherd’s dog lunged from a wash gully and attacked Nick. “We’ve dealt with sheep dogs before. This one was unbelievably ferocious. I thought, ‘He’s going to kill him.’ And I started pounding him on the head.”
Barbara aimed the bear spray but was reluctant to pull the trigger and spray all of them with the virulent cloud. One llama, Vio, saw greener, quieter pastures and took off, dragging Lisa across the rocks on her stomach. Lisa feels bad that in fearing for her dog, she lost track of Rones, who also had had enough.
The llama’s pack panniers, holding the sisters’ food and shelter, were gone as well. They spent hours looking for their mates, but also knew the snacks in their daypacks would only last so long. Lake City was the closest hike.
As they crossed the valley where they’d seen the sheep, a shepherd emerged from his tent and offered them binoculars. But they couldn’t trade information in English or Spanish – the shepherd spoke only the Basque of the remote portion of Spain that supplies high-country ranches with migrant sheep specialists.
Back in Lake City, the sisters alerted the sheriffs in Hinsdale and Ouray counties, whose dispatchers told them of other protective-sheepdog problems. But search parties for llamas – currently eating like kings, wherever they are – are not a thing.
The families will make the long trek from Silt and keep going back to the San Juans in coming days, taking binoculars on more hikes.
Sunday morning, Balcomb texted she was jumping back into her pickup again for the long drive south. “Got a good sighting and we’re headed down there. Keep your fingers crossed.”
If not found sooner, she hopes the llamas will eventually make their way down to a ranch or a town when snow starts covering up the high mountain grass. If anyone else spots them, she wants them to call the Hinsdale or Ouray County sheriffs’ nonemergency dispatch, or email newsroom@coloradosun.com and we’ll forward the news.
In the meantime, the sisters have other llamas safely at home, inside fences. They too largely ignore their names (Fox and Bud). They won’t go out packing, though.
“They’re retired,” Lisa said.
