Gut Check

Bighorn Peak seen from a ridge to the Southeast

One time or another, some of us are bound to ask questions like, “Why the hell am I doing this?”

Such moments of self-reflection are not uncommon to those who squat wretchedly in the snow by a camp stove at five in the morning.

The smell of charred oatmeal flakes was already a good indication that my pioneering new technique of cooking breakfast was maybe not so pioneering.

In theory, a ziplock bag’s worth of dried oatmeal and sugar stirred into a pot full of snow would marry seamlessly into a warm, wholesome meal that I could eat before I started my climb on Big Horn Peak. In practice, the flakes started burning before the snow could melt around them, creating an ashy, lukewarm goulash. The flavor was not improved by the remnants of the Indian meal I had cooked in the pot the night before.

But a meal was a meal. Food was energy I would soon need and, just as important, those calories were heat. I slopped down each nauseous spoonful in misery.

It was well before the dawn, and to be completely honest, I wasn’t exactly sure where I had pitched my tent the night before, besides that it was some anonymous grove at the base of the mountain.  I had spent half an hour or more scooping away the deep powder with one of my snowshoes. By the end, I had made an enormous hollow, which allowed me to lay the bottom tarp on solid ground.

After dinner, I was in my sleeping bag at 6 p.m., eager to depart the realm of consciousness.

Long hours of uneasy slumber dropped away with the ring from my cell-phone alarm. Now the day’s challenge was somewhere up above me and to the west. The thousands of feet of rock, snow and ice that I intended to scale were hidden behind the branches, of the pines, cloaked in darkness. It was virtually guaranteed that I would be the only one up there.

Again: Why the hell am I doing this?

I’d scanned a mental list of easy answers as I left the day before, when I rolled out of town on my usual trajectory west toward the Big Horns.

It had been a pretty crappy week, one that had spawned a series of angry, unwelcome clinging thoughts. I lowered my foot on the gas, but the little buggers still held their grip. If I couldn’t drop them on the highway, maybe they would freeze to death in the mountains.

That was it, then.  I was going up on high to repair the damage that civilization inflicted on me.

 Obviously.

 My untamed, poetic, rambling soul demanded this — that I not only venture out in search of oneness with nature, but also that I take the ultimate challenge of a 12,000-foot mountain, testing both physical strength, but also my will.

Sing it brother! So true!

And then I would return to that polluted civilization with tales of daring exploits and triumphs on high that would rouse the hearts of those sedentary mortals who’d wiled away the weekend in bathrobes with a DVD collection of “The Office.” Yes, they would be damn impressed when they came across my blog post later and scrolled through the story of fighting the elements tooth and claw, along with the awesome pictures and…my thoughts trailed off.

It was easy to see the flaw in my thinking. If civilization was the condition I sought to escape, why was I fawning after its validation. This was something the mountains alone could not give me; only other people could do that.

Getting an early start

Yes, I can climb and ramble over every hill and isolated mountain only to find my footsteps leading me back to those bright lights and convenience stores, the apartment, the desk, the friends that I would hang out with, swapping stories in the bar.

Every blessing of civilized society was in the car with me, from snowshoes to a backpack, the tent, processed food, high-tech jacket and sleeping bag. I humped it all toward the mountains in my gas-powered machine courtesy of the federal highway system and state roads.

This time, however, I wasn’t sure if a weekend of mountainous lonerdom is what I really needed. Sometimes being the loner was the problem.

My life thousands of miles from where I’d grown up, on the high plains had meant time away from friends and family – though I’d valued those short visits. More recently, most of the people that I’d met and befriended in Wyoming had left the state for other work.

Reflecting on this as I approached the mountains beneath the insipid gray sky did little to boost my spirits.

What was the point of this anyway? If it were pointless, what would I be doing with my time that was more meaningful?

I thought about activities that were more creative than hiking (like practicing music or writing a short story at home), things I could do to better society (like volunteering), activities that were engagement instead of disengagement (like socializing amongst friends instead of going out into the mountains alone).

All of these required a different kind of work ethic than the kind of mindless obstinacy that I had cultivated within myself for these treks. Perhaps it was even less risky than doing something else that I was less familiar with. To be sure,  when I’ve left on such trips,  I’ve hardly guaranteed myself success – I have also reaped my share of misery and failure in the high places. But in any scenario I’ve faced, the most important ingredient has been my will to move forward. Whether it’s a sunny day or one with wind whipping sleet, success has hinged upon my desire to succeed and thrive. Success in so many other things in life be they jobs, relationships or creative success hinge upon the approval of others.

Not so with mountains. Peaks can be fickle in their own way but there is a fairness to them. Those who struggle throughout their lives to be something may never be rewarded for their toils. Eventually, the persistent hiker, one who was smart enough not to tumble into a ravine, will reach the summit. Similarly, one may wander in life uncertain, searching vainly for a goal. The mountain should do away with such existential wobblings.

There is the summit. Go forth and climb to it.

As the penitent monk tries to escape the worldly things to get closer to heaven, so does the mountain climber seek to ascend beyond the muck and slime of ordinary existence. He ascends bodily into a land that is pure, dead and snowy white. Life exists here, but tenuously. It is easy to pretend that all is barren, those proud, beautiful sloping forms of the mountain peaks.

The brutal beauty of the alpine summits is not just what is there but also what isn’t.

Unruly, stinking life is gone and its absence reveals the proud bones of the earth. Towering rocks show themselves, as do unrelenting snowfields, as do vast spaces that either make the visitor fell like an insignificant speck, or one particle in a grand, perfect creation.

 Wind and cold kill away what is weak and imperfect — including the traveler if he stays. And yet he comes anyway, hoping to transcend the ordinariness, which he is undeniably a part of, and to which he must tragically return.

Barren ridge leading to summit of Bighorn Peak

If there is an unquantifiable value to these hard and beautiful places, it doesn't necessarily follow that the traveler must go alone.

Some of my best experiences in the outdoors were the ones I’d shared, whether it was Colca Canyon with friends in Peru or the countless New England mountains my father and I have climbed together.

An amazing sunset is still beautiful whether one person sees it, or a group of people sees it. A mountain is just as physically challenging to climb alone (often harder) than it is to climb it in a group.

But when people go together, that individual satisfaction of conquering a commanding peak is also a team accomplishment.  It is rewarding to see others work hard toward the common goal, to put in the cooperation and communication needed to make things work. Whether the group succeeds together or fails together, the most important thing is whether it stays together.

Seeing things together can add a fresh level of appreciation.

Going out with others past the strange beauty of mountain cliffs, or to a wild waterfall means that those things become a common memory. The inevitable hijinks and pitfalls of any climb become fodder for a story that can be swapped over drinks years later. When someone else is around, you can talk about the beauty of the landscape and feel that much less like a doddering crazy person walking alone through the hills.

Bighorn peak as seen from near the Circle Park trailhead. The route I chose is to the left side of the frame.

Often, the distinction between what is meaningful or meaningless is how we remember it, how we tell the story. Whether I like it or not, I usually walk out of the woods with some kind of lesson learned. I try to write them down so that I don’t unlearn, or even so that others may gain wisdom from my follies.

After I finished the disgusting oatmeal, I put my snowshoes back on and looked down at my compass needle to find where I should aim myself in the darkness.

The climb was gradual at first, but then I came to a steep section that required me to pop the ascender bar on my snowshoes.

The red light spread in the east.

By the time I crested the first ridge, the sun came over the horizon to cast its light upon the thousands of feet of rock and snow that I still had to climb. My path was a catwalk of shattered stone, sandwiched between two abysses. Eventually this path wound to the summit. While this was an intimidating sight, my excitement at seeing the sunlight and the miles of untrammeled terrain was the closest thing that I had to real exultation on the trip.

Within another 15 minutes, I took the snowshoes off and began scrambling along rocks. I knew I had a long way to get to the top, and then a long way back to my tent and a long way back to the car. I thought about turning around then so that I would know my tracks back to the tent would still be fresh on my return. An early turnaround would also hedge against the increasingly likelihood that I would hike the final miles out in the dark.

But turning around felt wrong. If I had a good chance to make the summit, I would take it now, rather than have to go back over the same route on some later trip.

Looking northeast from the Bighorn summit

In a couple of hours of rock scrambling, I made it to the cold stack of stones at the summit. The whole climb up, I had thought about how I had wanted to be somewhere else. Now the frigid wind coming over the mountain slopes compelled me to hasten my descent. 

From noon until dark, I underwent one of the most exhausting ordeals of my life, first picking along the rocks on the way down, reaching the snow and losing my tracks. I spent about half an hour looking for my tent and then had to stuff everything into my heavy pack to haul the long, snowy miles out.

Because of my gross cooking pot, I had decided not to melt any more snow for water. Now I was thoroughly dehydrated and scooping up the odd handful of snow for what moisture it would afford. My legs and back ached continuously.

I could feel the reactors slowing down in my head, the needles on the machines moving back to E and the whirr of gears and belts dying as the lights of the control consoles went dead one by one.

The thought of just lying down in a snow bank to shut my eyes, was at once appealing and deadly. I focused on the dull desire to keep pressing forward. I had no energy to concentrate on anything else.

If there was one small blessing to be had, it was that the trees held the warmth; if the air had been 20 degrees colder, it would have multiplied the ordeal.

Darkness came as it always will come, and I squinted along the trail through the pines. I made certain not to lose the trail because I knew I didn’t have the energy to be lost in the woods in the dark. If that happened I would have to camp it out for the night and find my way out in the morning. Fortunately I didn’t have much difficulty staying on this well traveled section of trail and reached the road. It was still another mile to the car — the magical ticket back to lights, people and everything else I had left behind for the weekend.

I took a gaze up at the cold stars overhead and started hoofing my way down the last stretch.

I knew I would make it.

Morning light seen through lodgepole pines in the mountains