The semester is over! Here is a piss poor attempt to catch you up on what happened this semester.

In December Liyah slipped on some ice in front of my apartment and broke her fifth medial metatarsal! She limped around until February, which was a nightmare. The city of Billings, in its infinite wisdom, refuses to plow anything but the main roads to the hospital, mall, airport and downtown. So she had to basically skate on one foot, propelling her self with a pair of crutches. Fun right? That’s what I thought at first but 4 months later when the second cast finally came off, it was obvious she was ready.

I worked a split shift all semester, it sucked and I barley made any money but oh well, it was fun working outside even when it was -40 out. Love that Montana weather.

It looks like we are both going to be done with our bachelors degrees at Montana State Billings after next semester, yay!

Liyah and I both got jobs guiding this summer, in Wyoming and Colorado respectively. Which is pretty snazzy.

At the end of the summer we are going to climb Mount Baker in Washington State.

That’s about it, that wasn’t too exciting, but this summer I will be guiding and living out of my truck so stay tuned!

We crossed through valleys, over ice, and finally to the bank of some body of water. We were exhausted physically, but mentally overjoyed because across that body of water was what looked like a trailer! As we made camp we chatted and laughed, as if the stress of that night had never existed (or perhaps I was the only one that had felt that?). We scouted and saw that we were about a days walk from lights, that we figured had to be houses. So we ate dinner and hit the hay. My god was it windy. The tent was blowing all over the place and the sand of the bank that we camped on hit us like small bullets. I woke up with sand in my hair, and teeth. We ate breakfast and were on our way. We got to a house and jumped the fence and knocked on the door. We were going to ask to use their phone because we had left our itinerary with a few people and were getting very close to over-due. No one answered so on we went. The last ten miles or so were uneventful. David took off and was way ahead of Dan and me. We had no idea how far it was to the highway, so when I crappy old Nissan flew by we put our thumbs out and got a ride. We got in, and in the back was a couple of shotguns, and the floor of the car was covered in spent shells, I mean covered the layer of shells was like three inches deep. 

Finally the highway! We exchanged a few holy hell I cant believe we made it’s and were pretty proud of ourselves. Sadly we were still twenty some odd miles from the car and almost over-due. So we started walking and trying to thumb a ride, and were pretty unsuccessful. Every car that passed was either full of smiling natives laughing at us, or women, who would never stop and pick up three guys with ice axes. I think was Dan that said “we need some of our people”, “Yeah we need a Subaru or something” I said. Lo and behold ten minutes later a crappy old Subaru peaked the hill. We turned and put our thumbs out as he passed, and bingo break lights! We ran up as he was pulling rifles out of the back seat and throwing them in the back to make room. This guy had been guiding and hadn’t been home in like a month and his wife was waiting for him, so we just asked for a ride as far as he could give us. He gave us a ride all the way back to the car, ten miles past his house. We had made it. In true Outdoor Ed fashion we made a stop at the drive through liquor store for Dan and were on our way back to Riverton.

This trip was somethin’ else. It was epic. We made mistakes, we refined our judgment, and we put it all on the line. Dan and I had both just come off of semester courses, him with NOLS Patagonia and me with OB Alaska while David had just thru-hiked the AT. I don’t know about Dan and David but I am thankful this fiasco was my first major outing after my course. You come off of those things thinking you can do anything, and that attitude can really get you hurt, this took me down more that a few notches. It also taught me the value of good trail buddies. This trip could have been a disaster but instead it was fun, yes it was stressful/depressing/unnerving at some times but over all it was fun. I can think of a lot worse ways to spend thanksgiving than wandering around the Windrivers with two good friends.

I heard a lot about it when I lived in Europe. It was mostly crap, “oh stupid Ameri-cans, not bright enough to settle things with words, cow-boys”. Not to beat a dead horse, but I am willing to bet in 1945 they were thankful for our stupid cowboys with guns. I think it goes back to our formation. The future Americans had a daunting task in front of them, win freedom, settle a violent and wild land, and protect their stuff from other Americans. Whether we think so or not our society has not changed. Look at hurricane Katrina; law and order was absent for the longest period of time since the early 1900’s. Men and women alike made their own law and order, with a gun. For right or wrong even law abiding citizens, who were not zealots, were packing. Unfortunately its not normally levelheaded gun owners you read about in the news. No we are not conquering forests full of bears and angry natives, today’s wild and violent places are cities and deserted stretches of road. Do I tempt fate, traveling through bad parts of town, or taking a car that will leave me stranded on that lonely stretch between Lander and Casper Wy? No but you bet I bring a gun with me just incase, more so when I travel with people that I love. I’d rather have and not need it than need it and not have it. Incidentally the one time I did break down and would have like to have it, I didn’t, thankfully it didn’t pan out like I thought it would. We like to think we live in a time when we don’t need guns or at least that seems to be what Chicago thought, with their handgun ban. We all know if any people need guns it’s those poor folks in Chicago trying to protect their stuff. Is stuff worth a life, I’d venture to say yes. Where does that slope end? First a man takes your car, then enters your home and takes things, then maybe he takes your wife. That might be flawed thinking but that’s the attitude Americans have. We work hard for an honest living and we’ll be damned if a thug is going to take it away from us. Do we still need guns to guarantee our freedom? That’s the $64 thousand question the country is struggling with. Is the constitution insuring us the right to hunt for the right to arm our selves against our government, it’s an interesting question no doubt. I just bought a new gun, my first brand new firearm. I bought it for three reasons, hunting, protection of Liyah, and myself, and because as a history lover I was attracted by the history associated with lever-action rifles. So while I won’t be using it to win freedom and settle a violent and wild land I can’t say I don’t feel that connection every time I work the lever.

I like this picture because it reminds me of Chicago. He has a bag, maybe he's coming home from a business trip, or work, or a midnight meeting with his exotic mistress that dances at a place by the airport who's named Destiny, Desire, Candy, Brandy or Coco. I don't know and I don't care, I'm curios, but I don't really care. I would never ask him about it. That sums up the city, you pass homeless people, mentally sick people, just people in general, and you're curios but you don't really care. There is a barrier we put up in the city between us and other people, we cant see it but it's as solid as the steel door that separated myself and this man.

Some day it would be awesome to have a job where things are painted on glass doors. When people get fired the janitor would have come scrape their names off of the door. I would like the janitor to be polish and have a mustache as thick as his hilarious accent. Anyway, I just enjoying looking at this one. 

         The next morning, after a restless and cold night, we checked out what Dan had thought the night before was a potential way off the ledge. On the south side of the ledge was a wall of rock that was passable along its toe. Easily navigable in the light of day but the run out was so bad. On the south side of the wall was a steep slab coming out of the cliff, just too steep to traverse. Luckily where the slab came off the cliff was a tiny seam that was a little less steep. In addition to its eastern slope the slab gently sloped south and ended in a small platform with two trees. I call them trees, but they were about two and a half to three inches in diameter and about two feet tall, more like sticks stuck in the ground. It was here that Dan and I set the anchors for our rappel, a loop of webbing around each tree and a carabineer for each loop. Even though I was confident in our anchor building abilities, I was a little nervous as Dan loaded the rope and began his rappel. After a few minuets, when we thought Dan should be at the bottom we pulled on the rope to see if he was still on and he was. We tried to shout to him and him to us, but the wind and distance made our attempts futile. About ten minuets later the rope was free and we lowered the packs. After the packs, David rappelled and after David I descended to the valley floor. Once on the floor we laughed as we realized why it had taken Dan so long so get off the rope. From the site of our anchors we could see the valley floor, just to climbers left of a large bulge in the cliff. At the base of the cliff, obscured by the bulge, the ground dropped twenty feet into a scree slope. When Dan rappelled he passed on climbers right of the bulge causing him to dangle above the scree slope. Dan couldn’t walk him self to the ledge because the bulge would not allow the rope to slide and he was hanging away from the cliff wall about 6 feet. Dan had to untie the safety knots at the end of the rope, swing him self back and forth until he had enough momentum to rappel off the end of the rope and land on the ledge. Dan coiled the rope, we got water and we were on our way.        Hour upon hour we walked, in the dark, never seeing further than the dim arcs of illumination our lamps provided. We crossed endless highcountry desert and miles of roads to nowhere. We tried to follow them at first, but they led us away from the river and to dead ends. It didn’t make any sense. I thought to myself “where is the river, I cant hear it, when was the last time I heard it, SHIT…shit we are so lost”. Up and down, across and through, we traveled the valleys of the Windriver Reservation. With every uphill I could feel my stiff mountaineering boots tearing at the raw and bloody flesh of what was once a blistered heel, 20 miles ago. I heard once that hell is not all fire and brimstone, but a separation from God. A separation so powerful and consuming that it tortures you worse than any fire. The picture it put in my mind was of a man, floating in a void, in darkness so powerful no sound or light could possibly exist, disoriented, but with a full understanding of eternity. No one could see him to take pity on him; no one could hear him plead his case. He was doomed forever to exist in that trackless void. As I thought about that I felt a crushing hopelessness so profound it sent a chill down my spine. I felt that hopelessness again as I stared into the darkness trying to find a track in the trackless desert.

More to Come!

My little sister came downstairs and asked my dad to drive her to a party and he said yes, and they left. About 5 min later I hear the front door slam and my mom yell

“THERES A MAN WITH A GUN AT THE DOOR CALL THE POLICE!”

“What?” I responded. Thinking, I don’t know what I was thinking.

 “CALL THE POLICE HE HAS A GUN”

I didn’t have a phone in the basement so my mom grabbed one and went the laundry room where there weren’t any windows because the guy was still on the porch looking in the window. As my mom was on the phone with the police I was waiting at the basement door. She kept yelling to stay away from the windows and in the basement. Come on really, some dude has a gun on my front yard? I am not staying in the basement and leaving my mom up stairs alone. I ran up stairs and into the office and grabbed our shotguns. I ran back to the laundry room, tossing my mom our single shot shotgun. I broke the double barrel and confirmed my suspicions, empty. My mom thinks it’s too dangerous to have ammo in the house because we have an alarm system and don’t guns need since we don’t live in the city anymore. So if he broke in, the plan was to bullshit him until he left, the cops came or whatever I guess. Then I heard a noise outside the kitchen door and the police on the phone said they had a guy checking the house, and that they had the suspect in custody. They said they had the house secure and that my dad should not try to come home but instead he should wait at the corner. They had the whole street shut down. I guess the cop on the phone heard we had guns and so he was like “ma’am, ma’am you and your son have firearms? Put them down we are on our way”. This is when I am sure the cop must have wondered to himself what kind of idiots he was dealing with. “My son has a double barrel shotgun and there’s another shotgun but they are both empty”.

A police officer rang our doorbell and said it was ok, they had the guy in the squad car and were searching him. They had m16’s, mp5s, and shotguns. They came loaded for bear. The reason we hadn’t seen any lights is because they secured the block and advanced on foot and surrounded the guy in the street. SWAT team style stuff I guess. So what kind of gun did he have in his hand?  A black berry and a clipboard. It was one of those clip boards that opens up and is about an inch thick. One of the officers was came up to the door and said he knew exactly what happened. He was holding the end of the clipboard with the rest behind his coat and his blackberry was in his hand so all my mom could see was the top of his hand with the grip of the gun (his blackberry) and the top of the slide (the bottom of the clip board). What happened is that my dad has just left so when the doorbell rang she thought it was him, that he had forgotten something. We don’t answer the door after dark. Instead it was a large man with a coat covering his face. They made eye contact and he said nothing, instead he just started to raise his hand from his side behind his coat with the silver and black object in his right hand. She saw it and it flashed through her head, he just saw my husband leave that’s a gun this is a robbery. She jumped back and slammed the door and locked the dead bolt. The rest you know.

Why would my mom see a silver and black shape and assume it was a gun? Because my mom didn’t come from the suburbs she grew up in New Orleans in the 70’s. Fat City and the club scene was bringing in big drugs and big killings all over the city. Race riots indiscriminately destroyed property and maimed people. It was a dangerous place in a dangerous time. So bad that her mother, a five foot tall sweet Italian women named Rosalie, had to carry a semiautomatic berretta in her purse. It didn’t help that Rosalie’s cousin had been murdered and cut in to pieces and stuffed in a garbage can for his truck and her brother had been robbed at gunpoint while delivering bread. When my mom was little there was a young man living on their street who was always in and out of trouble. When my mom’s neighbor was out he would come and break into her house and play with her German Shepherds. The dogs soon became accustomed to him. One day after her husband went to work the young man came over and raped her. A few years later he was run over by a car and died in the gutter, it’s suspected that it was not an accident. She was raised to be cautious, and it saved her life. One day on her way home from work late at night a truck was blocking the road and a young man was lying on the ground as if he had been hit. “I broke his neck he can’t move please get out and help us”. My mom was suspicious, she told them she was almost home and would call the police. Angrily the man said, “Come on get out and help us.” She jumped the curb and drove home. By the time the police arrived the truck and the kid on the bike were gone and no ambulances had been called. It had all been a rouse to get her out of the car. Then after she married my dad they were eating in the city when a man came in and robbed the place, she had to hide her engagement ring in her shoe. Then later on a scuba trip they went into a gas station and there was a man threatening to blow it up because he blamed them for her daughter’s death. My parents have a million stories like that. That was the world they grew up in and that is why my mothers instincts tonight caused her to react the way she did. Even after living in the suburbs for 20 plus years tonight she saw something that registered as a threat to her and her family and she reacted.  

We woke up early, I cant remember if we ate breakfast, what I do remember is that it took a certain member of the team an hour and a half to get up. Seriously, WTF?  It was a frustrating start to what would be a frustrating day. We went over our plan again. Walk east across the reservation, don’t get caught, but in case of capture bullshit, bullshit, bullshit (non of us had a cent, so bribery was out of the question, unfortunately). We started down, plunge stepping and postholing through the knee deep snow along Double Creek. We followed the creek walking on its banks and its ice until we came to a frozen waterfall, where we then took a line of 4th class terrain on the north side of the creek, this is where our trip went from backpacking to classic alpine mountaineering. Over the course of 600 linear feet we dropped 1000 vertical feet. It was a mix of 4th and 5th class terrain, easily navigable but there were a few spots where the runout was less then desirable, and by that I mean 1000 feet to a lovely boulder field and then right into a frozen river. I remember one area along Double Creek where it was so steep we had to scoot and slide on our butts. There was absolutely nothing to throw a rope around. After 100 feet it was so steep we couldn’t see where we were going until we were there. Then it just cliffed out, I don’t mean it got steep, I mean woosh 500 feet into nothing. I can say now that I was starting to worry about our route. We found a nice little ledge and busted out the maps. During our map session I realized that I had zero water left and I think David was out as well. We spotted a ledge below us and decided we could rappel to it and then to another and then to the valley floor. We abandoned the rappel idea after not finding a suitable anchor site. After a total of about 3 hours of scrambling and perfecting our “ass sliding descent” technique the valley floor was within sight. All that was left was a 25 foot down climb over some barely 5.6 terrain, and a scramble down a boulder strewn class 4. We lowered our packs to Dan, who down climbed first. I was nervous when my turn came. I recall the rock being slick with frost or water and the down climb was very reachy for me, my stiff mountaineering boots were not ideally suited for such terrain. A slip meant a tumble down the long 4th class boulder field below. never has a 25 foot 5.6 psyched me out more. As I lowered my self over the ledge I was searching with my toe for my next move. I felt my hands sliding on the wet rock so I just went for it. I found a place for a foot, jammed it in and kept moving. Its bark was way worse than its bite.
          Finally down on the valley floor, we cut across the boulder field into a wooded area and found water. We kicked at the ice futilely. With our axes we were able to chip a hole in it large enough to get water. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until that water touched my lips. Ice cold mountain water, untainted by Iodine or a filter, I felt my whole body cool and I was instantly and wholly tired. It was almost as if my body was shutting down and resetting after the stress of the day, but my fatigue would have to wait. We were now on the valley floor beside the mostly frozen Dinwoody Creek. At the time we expected a leisurely walk out along the river, little did we know that we were just starting a tortuous three days of leg burning elevation loss and gain, four hundred feet here, five hundred there. We tried to walk along the river but found the ice too thin and the warm temperature on the south facing slopes above had caused the river to swell right up to the cliff walls. Once we realized that following the river was not a viable option we started up. I think the most frustrating aspect of the odyssey out was standing on a hilltop, seeing our objective less then a mile away, but then having to descend, ascend and descend again to get there. There was many times that in order to travel a half a mile we had to gain seven hundred feet and then loose it, and then gain it again. In order to skirt the cliffs along the river, that blocked our passage, we had to ascend from 8,500ft to 10,000ft. That day was certainly physically demanding, but I was loving it.  The thrill of the unknown and challenging route finding topped off with the beauty of the Windriver Range makes for a fantastic day, but the day was not over yet. As we continued east the terrain got steeper and we were forced higher. At the start of a big descent, about 1500 feet David went ahead to scout the route while Dan and I decided that even though the sun was setting that we should hike as long as we could.
          Fast forward two hours, we were standing on a ledge with an icy cliff above us, and a black abyss of unknown depth, impenetrable to our headlamps, below us. We couldn’t go back up, we couldn’t go down so we made camp. We tried throwing rocks and listening for the impact, we thought about lowering a light, hell I even whizzed off the ledge, but nothing gave us a clue as to how far up we were. I cant say the ledge wasn’t on our map because we didn’t have a map for this area, I know I know stupid. It was off our route and no one thought in a million years we would have to go that way. Let me paint a picture of our camp that night. A pretty good sized ledge, about 25 feet long and 10 feet wide. Not a bad place to camp right? Unfortunately all but a tiny patch of the ledge was far too steep to sleep on. There were three small trees on the ledge, two standing and one lying down. They provided our sleeping areas. Dan slept behind the standing tree, digging out a small hole, while David slept along the side of the fallen tree, both using the trees to stop them from rolling off the ledge in their sleep. Luckily I almost fit in the hole left by the roots of the fallen tree. I made it work. Since there was no room to set up the tent I slept wrapped in the footprint and Dan slept wrapped in the fly, while David slept wrapped in a tarp of some sort that he brought. As I reclined in my hole, my thoughts about the next day were interrupted by a strange sound above us. At first the sound was infrequent hollow pops, at their crescendo the pops were rapid and sounded like machinegun fire. Then came an impossibly loud and deep rumble, like a freight train roaring towards. Resonating in our chests, equal parts sound and sensation. Oh my god, rock sliding on rock. No one said anything. I held my breath wondering where the massive slab of rock would land, and if it would trigger more calving of the cliff face above. I breathed a breath of relief when I felt and heard the monstrous impact in the valley below. Sleep did not come easy that night. As the wind whipped my makeshift shelter around I lay awake looking for the stars and wondering about what was ahead of us and for the first time in my life I drifted off uncertain of tomorrow. 


More to come!

          The morning dawned bright and crisp as Dan Hill, David Wilcox and myself loaded into Dans Volkswagen passat. The drive to Dubois was filled with nervous chatter and sleepy, possibly hung-over mumbles from the back seat. We pulled in to dubios and chowed down on breakfast at Kathy’s Koffee. It was at the coffee shop that doubts were first cast on the success of our trip. When we told Kathy and her husband that we were attempting to summit Gannett Peak, they looked at us as if we were out of our minds. They gave us free tea that I now think was intended to sooth our wounded egos after what they seemed sure would be a failed summit attempt. After thanking the staff of Kathy’s we were off to the glacier trail trailhead and what would become an epic. 

We decided to take the old glacier trail. This meant we had to cross the frozen Glacier Creek. The trail climbs sharply two thousand feet and then opens up. As we walked out into that open area thirty big horn sheep thundered towards us.  They passed us and cut north and down the steep valley walls. We made camp at 10800 feet, just past the cave David and I camped in during our scouting trip. It was here that we met what would be one of our biggest foes on this trip; nighttime temperatures in the Windriver Range, in late fall. Food was cold after a couple of seconds, and water not kept warm would freeze. As we packed in to my cramped three man tent I was optimistic about our trip. 

We woke up, grabbed a light breakfast and got moving early. We were somewhat delayed because the entire interior of the tent was coated with ice and had to be shaken and dried in the sun. We headed south, postholeing in the sun crusted snow. We crested the pass at 10900 feet in the late morning. As we just dropped down the other side we crossed a marshy area, spotting an elk I suspect fell victim to wolves. As we descended, hugging the western side of the pass, towards Upper Philips Lake, the environment changed from lush wetlands to burnt out forest. Here we suffered our first major set back, a shit load of snow. Between the scouting trip a week prior and our arrival there had be two to three feet of snow.  We hung east and passed below lower philips lake. At Philips Creek we passed out of the burned area and took our lunch break. It was slow going through the snow, I estimate our speed dropped from three miles per hour to half a mile an hour. As we continued south, passing Double Lake on its east side, the snow got deeper. We made camp just north of Star Lake. It was here that I decided we were not going to make it, I approached Dan about it and he agreed. We spoke of the snow depth now and snow that we could see falling in the distance and the affect that might have on snow stability. As we relaxed in camp on the evening of our second day I noticed that the sky had become dark and a cold wind had begun to blow from the north and then a second wind from the south, converging in the horseshoe formation that is home to Florence Lake. Dan, David, and I watched as the northern wind rocketed spindrift, from the snowy backsides of the sheer cliffs. Five, six, seven hundred feet, the pillar of snow rose, and then fell on the valley, shrouding the sun from view and giving the wind enough bite to make that evenings attempt at dinner miserable. We ate a cold dinner. The now freshly falling snow, and spindrift ridden southern wind made a mockery of our jet boil stove. We foraged for supplies to create a wind barrier but found none suitable on the lone rock out cropping on which our camp sat, or in the snow covered forest around us. We made a small fire and talked as we tried to thaw out frozen water bottles and dromedary bags. We were running low on water and our fire was not substantial enough to melt snow. It was here that we began to formulate our plan for escape from the cold vice that the Windrivers held us in. We could not go back the way we came, the snow was too deep, and getting deeper. There was only one route out of the mountains, through the reservation. We had no permits to be on the reservation. We had been warned and I had heard stories of the natives lack of hospitality toward white trespassers, and though I didn’t tell the others I had even heard rumors of meth labs in the very valley we were going to traverse. We were rocked to sleep that night by the vicious southern winds, which carried with it biting cold, more snow and uncertainty. 

More to come with pictures this week!