Climbing Sisnaajini

This summer I plan to return to the magical playground of the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains and the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado, a place I visit as frequently as any other on the continent. It is a special place of challenging high peaks, seductive hot springs, and tasty micro-brews. But its spiritual allure is probably what draws me back more than anything else, again and again. It is a magical place with hidden secrets that beckon the serious adventurer to reach beyond the ordinary into a sort of mysterious dreamtime.

The valley has been known for a long time as a place where many strange events occur, with a preponderance of paranormal activity, whether UFOs, poltergeists, spectral Indians, crop circles, or Bigfoot, and often many at the same time, causing it to be referred to as a paranormal playground. Looking at the geophysical properties of the area, it is one of only a few areas anywhere with large pockets of maximum field strength and minimum field strength magnetic energy in close proximity. This sets up what some call vortices and others call portals, tears in the electric membrane that separates dimensions. This magnetic field anomaly has been attributed to the vast quartz crystal deposits underneath the topography that generate electric fields that are so strong that they cause a momentary tear in the dimensional membrane. When you get that happening you get interactivity between dimensions, which we call the paranormal.

Wherever one finds these large quartz crystal deposits, like under Sedona, Arizona, the mountains in the area exhibit electromagnetic fields that are up to 500 times more powerful than those of the surrounding countryside. That's what it takes to get a rip in the membrane to occur. Piezoelectric discharges of bolts of energy shooting from the mountain to the sky have been observed on cold winter nights with low humidity in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east side of the San Luis Valley. Nicola Tesla was said to have come here to investigate these discharges. It is little wonder why the military is discretely buying up the areas of highest activity and posting a guard to keep others out.

Indigenous peoples that have inhabited the area have long maintained an oral tradition of strange happenings there, as have local ranchers from the 1800's and 1900' – objects that come up out of the ground and go into space and all kinds of other strange things. It is the only region anywhere in North America where three regional groups of native Americans overlapped – there were thirteen different groups of native Americans that would come here – among them, the Anasazi, Utes, Kiowa, Comanche, Navajo, Apache, Pueblo, and Hopi. It was a sacred gathering place for all, where native peoples of different tribes did not fight because of a recognized interconnection of their common heritage with interstellar beings known to be here. That energy or presence is still very much apparent today.

The bloodless San Luis Valley was viewed by these regional native Americans as their place of origin, their Garden of Eden. It is in this valley that they describe the Sipapu, or place of emergence, a hole in the ground through which they literally crawled up into this existence. Before coming here they claimed that the Ant People were taking care of them.

Rising above the valley to the east is the holiest of all the mountains, the sacred Blanca Peak, which I will be climbing this summer. Called Sisnaajini by the Navajo, it is the place where all thought originates, where creation occurs, where native Americans say there are crystal skulls buried. There are so many UFO sightings around Blanca Peak that an observation tower has been set up for viewers to watch.  I'm really looking forward to climbing here; this mountain portends to be more than just another fourteener.