Tarp tent again: Bear Lodge Saga (pt. 3)

There wasn’t much else that happened in my trip. I got in a beautiful second day of hiking, even though it started with a snow-squall.

I did want to share this picture of the resurrected tarp tent however.

Basically, I was camped in the same place as the night before. With the advantage of light and favorable weather, I did a much better job than I had the last time.

Not only did I not wrap one end of the plastic around a tree, I also folded the tarp in at the end, sealing myself in like a burrito. It made for a surprisingly effective seal against both wind and water.

It worked much better than the joke of a shelter I’d raised in Minnesota.

 Even so it was a cold place for anyone to sleep.

For my friend Andrew, now hiking the Appalachian Trail, will be sleeping like this for the next couple of months.

Helluva way to spend a night, I thought as I shivered in my bag. When I talked to Andrew last though, it sounded like he had been doing alright…had seen two bears already.

Next month, I’m planning to do some camping around Yellowstone or in the Teton Range with my friend Ben. I'll be getting a real tent for that one.

Above It All: The Bear Lodge Saga (pt. 2)

My backpack poses atop Sheep Nose Mountain in Northeast Wyoming

I went to sleep to cold night rains. I awoke to a cold, moody mist.

I crawled out from the damp cocoon, and set about taking down my jury-rigged tarp-shelter. After I’d loaded the pack I ate some dried oatmeal flakes and chased it with some cold water from the bottle.

This would be another day where I could decide what I would do as I went along. Most of all, I wanted to get a lot of miles under my belt and see how I handled it . If I was still feeling good, I figured I would stay out in the woods another night.

Having established a clear mission statement, I set back down the dirt road.

Eventually the road gave way to a path that went through the center of a ravine.

The walls were steep, but climbable. To get warm, I started scrambling up the north side under full pack until I got to the top a couple hundred feet up.

Nearby, there was a post with what looked like a medicine bottle attached to it. The lid was too tight for me to wrench away, but I could peer through the orange plastic and see that it was a mining claim.

Like much of the Black Hills, the Bear Lodge Mountains have been surveyed over by prospectors, a tradition that spans back a century to the original settlers.

More recently, a rare earth minerals company has been talking with residents and officials in Crook County about setting up a mine in the mountains. The project would put an American stamp on a commodity that we import almost entirely from China, sometimes from war-torn corners of the planet like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Some of the residents living nearby are excited about the money and jobs that a mine could move into the now-quiet corner of Wyoming. Others have trepidation because the project would require extremely toxic chemicals to extract the minerals — minerals used in everything from our cell phones to batteries in hybrid automobiles. The mine would exact a high water demand just to keep the dust levels down.

Somebody had big plans inside that plastic canister. After, I’d held it in my hand for a while, I put it back within its place. Then I scrambled my way back down to the path., triggering mini-rock falls as I went.  When I came back to the stream, the sun had begun to peek through the veil of fog.

Warmth came back within the veins of golden light. They pierced through the cloud cover and struck the wet leaves, exciting a kaleidoscope of color from the vegetation.

As I hiked along the valley, the stream dropped away from the trail. I could peer into the riot of pines and green-leafed aspen. Tall flanks of limestone rose up along my left and right sides. At my feet, flowers and other unruly forms of life sprung from the soggy earth.

Beyond it, the land dropped away, and I could see how that the forest Eden in the clouds was really an island inside the desiccated ocean of rangeland. My eye followed the uninterrupted miles of golden plains eastward until they rose at last into the dark green of the Black Hills in South Dakota.

At last, I decided that my mission should take me north toward Sheep Nose Mountain. Though it is about a thousand feet shorter than Warren Peak, it is also doesn’t have a major road running right up to its summit, making it a bit more rewarding for the solitude-seeking hiker.

To get there I took another trail up along some highlands meadows. The trail was marked well most of the way, other places not so much. I lost a bit of time losing it, striking out with the compass and then finding it again. In one empty field, someone had placed a cow skull up in a tree where it kept silent vigil over the trees and grass.

Sheep Nose itself, was a table-like mountain, distinctive with its red rock cliffs rising out of the pine trees. A few miles before I got there, the trail would go down again. Actually, I was grateful to be in another valley because I was just about out of water.

The stream I was expecting was small, but large enough to fill my bottles in. I played a little imagination game, in which I convinced myself that none of the abundant cow-pies scattered everywhere had in fact landed in the my water source. Either way, I was glad I’d brought my Aqua-Mira drops — the same stuff I’d used to disinfect my water while in Peru.

Like a streamside alchemist, I swirled the two components of the mixture together and waited for the solution to turn yellow. Then I poured it into the bottles, remarking at the weird smoke that it made when it hit the water.

Satisfied, I screwed the bottle tops back on and let the potion work its freaky magic.

I waited until I got to the top of Sheep Nose to drink.

The view there was another knockout. I could see into South Dakota and over toward Warren Peak. The cold, wet morning was just a rumor in my memory as I soaked in the sunlight. Even so, a hard wind whipping  from the west still made the weather slightly less than idyllic. When I got back down into the trees, it was perfect.

View from Sheep Nose looking east

Out of the wind, I unpacked everything I had and laid it out in the sun. I wrenched off my soggy boots and got some air and sunlight to my pallid fish feet. Everything, including the sleeping bag, dried out quickly.

I spent the next couple of hours hiking along a dirt road leading back to Warren Peak. A couple of ATV’s went tearing by. I went by some campers and ended up fending off a German shepherd with my hiking pole.

I reached Warren Peak at about four in the afternoon.

This time, I did get to see the sights, including Devils Tower, far below. Another round of storm clouds were hovering above the Keyhole Reservoir, streaming their gray bands of precipitation.

As I stared at it all, an SUV roared up the mountain road and parked at the base of the tower. A hefty middle-aged guy and his wife stepped out, as did their two sickly looking dogs.

The guy started up the tower. He looked friendly, perhaps slightly deranged with an enormous grin that revealed a frightening largish set of horse teeth. His wife was loitering by the vehicle.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” he shouted to me.

 I nodded.

“Sure is.”

“It really make you think doesn’t it?” he shouted. “I mean, all of this is God’s country. If this is God’s country, it means we can’t just go tearing all over it. We have to treat His land with his respect. Don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I told him.

He saw my backpack and asked if I had been camping out in the woods. When I told him I had, he thought it was great. He asked how far I was hiking that day.

“Oh, I dunno. Should be about 15 or 16 miles by the end of the day,” I said.

He was pleased, told me he thought I was doing the right thing.

He was leaving the area soon to work for the Union Pacific Railroad and would be at the other end of the state. He wanted to go up the peak one more time before the big move.

I wished him luck and left him on the tower where he could contemplate the order of the universe. When he was finished, he could get back in his SUV and ride back down to the highway.

I would stay for another day, I decided, and started back down the road to where I had camped the night before.

The fire tower on Warren Peak

Coming up next: my improvements on the tarp tent, and more snow! 

Wet, Wild and Really Cold: Bear Lodge Saga (pt. 1)

The fog hit when I was still about five miles west of Sundance Wyoming.

The change was so sudden, I practically hit the brakes. Features like road signs faded into the obscurity. The semi truck 50 yards in front of me became a dim rumor of itself. There was a fine spray of the icy droplets alighted on my windshield.

So much for the sunny weather.

Not that any of this was particularly surprising. I had come out for this hike in the Bear Lodge Mountains near Devils Tower expecting to find Mother Nature in a foul mood.

I wasn’t going out there to have fun exactly. I still only had a fuzzy idea of what the weekend would entail, only that it would involve me striking out into the wilderness, hiking long miles and using a cheap plastic tarp for shelter. Everything else I left to chance and my own sense of whimsy.

More than anything, I looked at the days ahead as a practice round. I wasn’t going to be that far from civilization, so I had room to make errors and learn lessons that I could apply on future trips.

First lesson: don’t count on the Forest Service office being open on Memorial Day weekend.

From the door, I could peer in and see an array of useful maps and guides, but if I wanted to read them, I would have to commit a smash and grab on federal property.

I ended up finding out where to go because of a web search on my phone. There was a campground and some mountain bike trails that went through the wilderness nearby.

By the time I got out of the car at the campground, the wind was whipping the icy droplets. A pickup with South Dakota plates was parked nearby. The man behind the wheel rolled the window down. He took a drag from a cigarette between his fingers.

“You want a campsite?”

“I was just going to check out the maps,” I said, pointing to the information board nearby.

“Here, I’ve got one,” he said and passed me a sheet of paper, with a crisscross of different mountain bike trails printed over it. There was information on distances and trail names.

I asked where I could find the highest mountain in the area, and he told me that I could go up the road four miles and it would take me to the top of Warren Peak (6,650 feet). The trails only went part of the way there; the rest would either be off trail or on pavement.

It was already close to five in the afternoon, but I decided that I would like to have a go at it and then find a patch of wilderness nearby where I could camp.

The camp manager wished me luck for whatever foolishness I might be getting into and flung the cigarette on the soggy ground.

I found a path going up the mountain and started hiking fast to get some warmth built up against the cold and wind. I managed to raise my core temperature, but my hands remained stubbornly numb.

In about an hour, the path brought me back to the road and I started trudging up the pavement. The whirling fog made sure that any scenery was well out of view.

It reminded me of how years ago, my father and I had hiked in similar whiteout conditions on a mountain ridge in New Hampshire. In the last few steps of the way up Mt. Lincoln, we climbed out of the clouds and into the sunshine. I remembered the awe I felt at suddenly seeing the blue sky above the endless sea of white cloud tops.

No such luck this time. On a good day, the summit of Warren Peak affords views of the Keyhole Reservoir, Devils Tower and the South Dakota Black Hills. When I made it to the top, I was treated to a 360-degree whiteout. I climbed the water-slick steps of the summit fire tower, grimaced in the wind and turned back the way I came.

Perhaps a half-mile below the summit, I turned onto a dirt road that led down into a dim valley, filled with conifers, aspen and birch.

I needed trees in order to set up the tarp properly, but I also wanted a flat piece of ground. It was going to be a tough find since steep valley walls were rising up on either side. The mist began to form a cold drizzle. In the darkening gloom, I passed a roadside grave for Emil Reuter, the guy who worked to establish the wilderness I walked in. As I walked, the tough confidence that launched me out the door that afternoon balled into a knot of anxiety.

Finally, I found a spot between the road and the bank of a stream. Though it was far from an ideal set-up, the darkening gloom and the cold made me anxious for shelter. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, I probably wouldn’t have thought things through a little better. Instead, I twisted part of the tarp around the tree, operating under the hope that it would keep my head dry by sealing off the entrance. I lashed it all together, the clothesline I’d brought cutting into my cold hands. Then I fortified the walls with rocks. It wasn’t such a bad structure, at least for a guy who was six-inches shorter than I am.

When I wrapped the end of the tarp around the tree, I had also shortened the length of the whole structure, ensuring that my feet would be sticking out in the rain. Brilliant.

This rather important design flaw managed to escape my notice until I was already huddled in my sleeping bag — rain gear and all — trying to muster some kind of warmth. Now that I had some tiny cocoon of body heat, I was damn reluctant to get up and fool around the rain trying to adjust my demented shelter while getting everything soaked in the process. Instead, I forced myself into the fetal position, trying to think happy thoughts and reflect on all that valuable wilderness experience that I was getting.

 As an extra precaution, I threw my raincoat over the foot of the sleeping bag. It was a rather clever innovation, I thought, even if it came on the heels of monumentally stupid design. Funny, the last time I had slept under the tarp, I had parked my car on one end to keep the Minnesota wind from blowing it away.

Progress marches on!

As I huddled in my miserable, wet sanctuary, I saw the walls of the tarp light up from a flash outside. Of course! The wind picked up and the walls of the tarp swayed in on me.

So, I wasn’t sleeping in the Ritz Carlton that night. But I could count my blessings. Though damp, and a little cold, I was nowhere near hypothermia. I had all my gear, knew I could get on my feet and hike out if I needed to. Once I fell asleep, none of those little discomforts really mattered that much.

It isn’t always easy to distinguish between what is an unpleasant situation and what is a dangerous one. In either case, I want to know I won’t freak out, that I will adjust my standards to the reality at hand and ultimately do what needs to be done.