I climbed Anthill and it only took me a year

View looking east from Anthill Summit

Ah, Anthill, my arch nemesis, we met again last weekend.

The 10,980-foot mountain is hardly a goliath in the Rocky Mountain West; it had, however, loomed large over my last year in Wyoming.

It had been the first mountain in the Big Horns that I had made a serious attempt to climb, and that attempt had met failure.

Last December, I’d camped at 8,000 feet around the Hunter Trailhead, intending to climb the amusingly-named mountain the next morning.

It had been close, but ultimately, I the deep snow proved to be my undoing. Even in cross country skis, I was sinking into the stuff past my knees, and it got under my gaiters to make my feet freeze up. I had to turn around late in the day with perhaps another half an hour of hiking between myself in the summit. I wanted to get back to the car before darkness fell.

I had made another attempt in April, another failure, which I wrote about in “Take What You Need.”

It involved being too cold, getting too much snow in my boots, and falling through treacherous crust to the point where I was too cold and beaten to try a serious attempt on the summit.

Just as Charlie Brown keeps coming back to kick that football however, so was I determined to get to the top of the obscure mountain that shares its name with a minuscule sand mound.

So I came back the weekend before Christmas.

This time I was arsenaled out with a formidable array of outdoor crap that I have spent money on over the last year. There were the heavy Gore-Tex outdoor research gaiters on my legs and the new snowshoes that I had barely used on my last trip to the mountains with Andrew. I supplemented these with the cheap tent in my pack and the monstrous -40 degree sleeping bag on the outside, which is as handy as having a tauntaun carcass to sleep in on a cold night.

And damn it if I didn’t get what I came for!

I wonder now, if another utter failure might have made for a more entertaining tale.

Most of the story begins along the familiar routine that I have worked out for these expeditions, which starts with me driving out to Buffalo.

10 miles out from Gillette, the mountains rear up before my windshield and trigger a rush of excitement through my veins.

60 miles later, I’ll stop at the Maverik gas station to take a leak, or visit the Sports Lure to grab some last minute gear that I think will be necessary for my next attempt.

The IGA or the DJ’s supermarket is a final stop for peanut butter and any other last minute necessities, before I begin that last climb up the pass.

What happens next is supposed to be the adventure.

The weekend before Christmas, I drove up the plowed dirt road to the Hunter Trailhead and started out with a leisurely walk in on the trails.

The snow wasn’t as deep as it had been on my previous escapades, with perhaps 18 inches on the ground once I got past Soldier Park. All the same, I was glad to have the snowshoes, which made things that much easier.

Triangle Park was the next clearing, which I reached just as the sun was going down. Anthill was just over the trees. I walked into the woods a ways and then pitched tent.

I have learned that to camp in the woods is to come across all kinds of fun surprises, surprises like the discovery that the wand-style lighter that I brought as a surefire way to light my stove, had decided to snap in half in my backpack.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me…”

Sun coming through the trees near Soldier Park

I ended up eating some caramel popcorn that I brought for dinner.

Though I was fortunate enough to have brought extra food in case of a stove malfunction, I wondered if there would be enough water, now that I couldn’t melt large amounts of snow.

Again, a small amount of foresight was my saving grace; I had decided to bring three liters of water instead of my usual two

Now I drank one bottle and a half, which left that much for the next day — less than ideal, but probably doable.

I supplemented by putting snow in the empty bottle to melt inside my sleeping bag, and into the half empty bottles.

It was dark at 6 p.m. and I spent most of the night tossing and turning trying to sleep.

I woke up at 7 a.m. and found an extra pack of matches I had slipped into my rain jacket from a previous expedition.

“Strike anywhere,” the box read. OK, how about lighting on the freaking box.

I went through trying to strike 20 matches in my cold hands, until giving up and woefully downing fistfuls of dry oatmeal as my breakfast.

On the plus side, almost all the snow had melted in my bottles and I figured I was in good shape for the climb. The only thing that made me a little concerned was the flurry of snow filtering through the pine trees. Because I was going to leave my tent in the woods away from Triangle Park, it meant that it would be that much harder to locate again.

I had my footprints to follow, but then the falling snow might make those disappear just as surely as Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.

Well, it was just a flurry, and it looked like there was blue elsewhere in the sky.

I left my tent and heavy sleeping bag and started uphill to the Northwest through the woods.

The woods gave way to a cleared out slope — deep white snow with boulders protruding out. A cold wind blew down from the peaks above.

Their were handy heel bars on the back of the snowshoes, which I snapped into the upright position in order to tackle the steep angle of ascent.

Though this arrangement worked for a while, as I got higher the wind had blown most of the powder away and I took the snowshoes off again to do some good old-fashioned rock scrambling. It was still slow going, but it was also fun.

From time to time, I’d look back down over the ridgeline of broken stone, watching Triangle Park get smaller and smaller.

A false summit above tree line on Anthill

When I finally got to the top of the last immense stone pile, I caught an enormous gust of icy air coming from the west. Bomber Mountain and some of the other peaks were veiled in snow-squalls.

Below, the miles and miles of lodgepole pine, further down, the dry brown rangeland, with the improbable deep blue Lake De Smet.

 I took a slug of ice water from a canteen, got brain freeze, and followed my tracks down.

Unlike some of my earlier death march-style expeditions, I was able to get back well before dark.

The sun sank was low in the sky when I got to Soldier Park. Above and to the south a snow squall brought out a display of angelic light. Darton, Bighorn and neighboring peaks were strange and beautiful amongst the ethereal suspension of flakes. The beams that broke through shone gold upon their cold buttresses of stone and ice, so inhospitable and appealing.

Another day my friends.

 With the Anthill chapter closed at last, I will be sure to return to browse among the extensive catalogue of mountains that the Bighorns have to offer.

A view of the mountains from Soldier Park. I tried to capture the ethereal grandeur of the snowfall with the camera, but it didn't work. You'll just have to take my word for it. OK?