The Pusher (An Adventure Through Wyoming’s Teton Mountains)

 It’s true: some of the best adventures get hatched over steins of beer.

So it was when my friend Ben and I sat inside the Snake River Brewing Company in Jackson, Wyoming, a pint of stout and an India Pale Ale on the table between us. I pulled out a map so that we could take an informed view of the mountains outside the city.

There, the mighty Teton range reared up out of the land, thrust like stony teeth from the sagebrush plains and evergreen forest.

Usually, a respectable mountain range will provide a set of foothills that build up to the main event. The Tetons dispense with this formality. 

From the 6,000-foot base of the mountains, you can point your eyeballs straight up and gaze upon the dagger-top of Grand Teton, which stands at 13,770 feet. To see the top from below is a far thing from being there, at least if you ask the climbers who have dared that pinnacle of rock and ice.

The brewery was far more pleasant. We were roofed off from the dark clouds gathered overhead, the rain and the roll of thunder. Not only could we quaff our craft beer in comfort; we could also nosh on delicious pizza. It was a far cry from two days ago in Yellowstone where we had hunkered down for a meal at a remote campsite. We had cursed around the pot of rice and bean soup, swatting away squadrons of mosquitoes and black flies.

We were back in civilization, now but couldn’t stay. Not if we wanted to have a legitimate claim to real adventure.

Grand Teton, was a few degrees out of our league, I decided, but there were plenty of other places on the map that looked promising. If the bad weather let up by the end of the day, we would be able to hike out to one of the backcountry camp spots in the national park.

If we started late in the day, we wouldn’t be able to make it far so I selected a place with some of the nearest available camp spots: Granite Canyon. The beauty of that kind of trip trip was that Ben and I could make it as easy or as hard as we wanted.

The hike in looked to only be about three miles or so, and if we made our hike an out and back, we would be able to camp in the same place the next day. That day, we would be able to hike without our backpacks and we could hike a short ways up the canyon before we turned around. Or, if we were feeling more ambitious, we could try to hike a large backcountry loop. My eyes skimmed along the topography, up the contours of the canyon to Housetop Mountain. We probably wouldn’t make it there but…

…But I was a pusher. As soon as I made out the lines of that 10,500 foot summit, I knew the most obsessive part of my soul had locked on it and would have to be pried away before I gave up my pursuit.

As Ahab had fixed his existence upon the white whale, so does my mind brood upon the summits of lofty mountains. 

I pointed out the canyon on the map to Ben, who said he would be willing to start later in the afternoon if the weather cleared up.

“There are a few mountains we could do around here,” I said. My finger grazed along the topographic lines, inching its way toward Housetop.

“—If we’re feeling ambitious the next day.”

Ben, who is less experienced with mountains, and also less damaged then I am, said that he was fine with whatever. He just didn’t want to get sucked into doing something that was too grueling or dangerous.

“We’ll do whatever your comfortable with,” I said and meant it.

I am a pusher, but I like to think that I’m not yet a madman. I’m not an Ahab who would kill himself and others to achieve a goal. I’m not the pusher from the Steppenwolf song who “don’t care, if you live or you die.” I’ve turned around on mountains like Washington in New Hampshire and Anthill in Wyoming’s Big Horns when I felt like time was running out or that the situation was becoming too dangerous.

I do my best to take others’ abilities into consideration, just as I take my own. If I miscalculate, I will step back and reassess the mission.

I wasn’t sure how difficult a mountain like Housetop was going to be, but if it looked unassailable, I was fine with sticking to an easy hike inside of Granite Canyon. If the climb looked doable, I was definitely going to sell it and be as persuasive as possible.

First we had to get registered.

We finished the rest of our pizza and beer and got in the car for the ranger center in Moose, about 12 miles up the road.

The ranger I talked to told me the area was beautiful. We got the all clear for two nights of camping in the lower canyon.

We also got a transparent “bear canister” to put our food and cooking supplies in. The canister, which seemed to be made out of the same stuff as a Nalgene bottle, worked like one of those childproof med locks. No three-year-old or grizzly bear would be getting into my oatmeal!

I also had my trusty can of bear spray attached to a holster on a hip belt. Bear spray is like the stuff you would use for protection in a city, only more powerful. When Ben and I were in Yellowstone, the rangers told us the spray made for better defense than firearms. A bear might back away from the pepper-spray cloud. A puny handgun round might just make a piss him off.

As an added protection against ursine aggression, Ben and I made sure to either talk loudly or make random noises to try to scare bears off the trail as we walked. A few renditions of “Finnegan’s Wake” didn’t hurt either.

I’ll admit to not quite understanding how human noise will frightens enormous bears with claws and teeth, but apparently it works.

Our government-issued bear canister, with my new tent in the background

I let Ben drive the Mazda down through Jackson, across the Snake River and then north past the Teton Village ski area. The pusher rode shotgun.

We rolled up to a gate into Grand Teton National Park, where we got the bad news.

“The road’s closed,” the ranger announced.

Shit.

“Closed?” I asked.

I looked back my map with a feeling of incomprehension, betrayal.

“The road’s under construction. If you want to come back, it will be open tomorrow.”

A fat lot that would do when I had already booked the camp area for that night.

“Looks like we’ll have to turn around and start tomorrow,” Ben said.

He was right, I thought. What else could be done? Another chance to look around Jackson might not be so bad.

but…

“Hey, turn around, I want to ask that ranger a question.”

I got out of the car and showed the ranger the map to ask if we could leave from the trailhead from Teton Village — even though our backcountry permit said we would be leaving from the Granite Canyon trailhead.

The Ranger said we could, but warned that the trail from Teton Village I was looking at was especially challenging with a lot of up and down. We would be hard pressed to make the campsite by nightfall. Night is not a not a time that I wanted to hike in bear country.

“Well thanks for your time,” I said. At least I tried.

Before we left again, the ranger pointed out that we were only about a half mile from the trailhead that we were going to go up anyway. Why not park near here and then walk up the closed road to that first trailhead?

A fine idea!

He pointed out a nearby equestrian area where we could park. We were back in business.

It was hot as hell when we got out of the car and I started packing stuff into the bear canister.

The pot and stove fit with the food that I had. The bowls were tricky. Actually, they wouldn’t fit.

“Hey Ben, do you have any problem with us eating out of the same pot?”

Problem solved and less weight on my back.

We would have oatmeal for breakfast, flatbread for lunch and couscous for dinner. For hungry moments in between, I had packed us some trail mix and a separate packet of dried fruit. Water wouldn’t be an issue as there was a stream running all through the canyon and I had brought plenty of water purification to kill bacteria.

For clothes, I had my quick-dry shirt, running shorts and a warm fleece and rain jacket..

We started down the road, walking toward the snowy Teton peaks.

It wasn’t so far to the trailhead. When we got their the dark pines closed in around us, filling our nostrils with the rich, smell of their needles. The fallen needles formed the ideal, cushioned walking surface. Unlike the dry sagebrush plains in the east of Wyoming, here life ran riot. Bright green leafy vegetation sprang up from the well-watered ground. Small birds fluttered among the trees.

Because the hiking was so easy, we reached the camp area pretty quickly. We were allowed to choose any site along about two miles of trail, so I proposed that we use the daylight that we had and press on.

After a while, it was getting dim enough so we chose a site near the river and pitched tent.

We encountered several moose and deer along the way

Camp eatin'

We felt pretty good the next day as we started up the trail again.

I didn’t have to be a pusher for the first part of the hike. We were both in good spirits. The trail followed the canyon upward steadily into the mountains.

After a few hours, patches of snow began to appear alongside the river.

Then I saw Housetop.

It looked less like the peak of a domicile, more a pyramid of boulders with a plain of snow still clinging onto its east face.

To get there we would need to go off trail. It was only about a mile from there to the summit but it would be steep.

“Are you game to try this?” I asked Ben.

He was.

When we got to the bend in the trail where I had planned we started hiking up a steep gully.

‘Let me know when you get outside your comfort zone,” I told him. 

“Okay.”

After an exhausting pitch I decided, to save at least one of us some energy and go ahead to see if there was a feasible way forward. The going was pretty steep again, and I had to make sure not to stumble on the loose rocks.

It was steep, but I felt comfortable enough. If nothing else, months of fooling around on the Buttes near Gillette,  Wyoming had given me a greater comfort level when it came steep climbs.

I got to a flat face on top and saw the peak again. It wasn’t far. We could climb it.

“Hey Ben! Come on up. I’ve found a way here.”

He looked up skeptically.

“C’mon man. I know you can do it.”

He made slower progress than I did. I could see the steep pitch and the long drop were making him hesitate..

 “That was definitely past my comfort zone,” he said panting as he reached the top. “How the hell are we going to get down this?”

“We’ll get down it no problem.”

I was more interested in how I was going to get up that.

There was one more pitch on the way to that final pyramid, and it looked even steeper than what we had climbed up in the first place.

I tried to think of some easier way that we could both achieve the summit.

Part of the wall was out of view and if we hiked around, I though there might be a gentler routee somewhere I couldn’t see.

But I wasn’t so lucky. There ere a couple of viable routes that I could see to the summit, but they all looked even steeper and more scrabbly than what I was thinking of before.

In between me and the wall, lay an immense bowl of white, glacial snow. At its center lay a lake of striking mineral blue. It was impossible to tell how deep it was.

Housetop summit is on the right

When Ben made it to where I was standing, I asked him if he would like to try going back around to where the slope was gentler. Not too keen.

I wasn’t surprised. The summit was maybe only a half-mile from where I stood, a very steep and treacherous half mile,. Having come this close to the summit of the beast, however, I was loath to give it up and maybe never have a shot at it again.

I asked Ben what he would think about the idea of chilling out by the pond while I went for it. He said he could swing it, but asked me not to kill myself. When this happens, it can be very inconvenient to the other guy. I appreciated this and assured Ben that staying alive and uninjured still had top priority for me.

 Still, by splitting up, I knew I was entering an uncomfortable area in hiking ethics and safety. Most other places, I would have considered this completely unacceptable. Fortunately, he would be able to see me on most of the climb up. I would be coming back soon. The lake was a beautiful place, and probably not a dangerous one.

To make things faster, I decided not to go around, but to attack one of the steeper scree pitches that got to the summit pyramid faster.

One of the many fossils we found in the area

I rounded the lake and began the hard work of getting up that final, treacherous pitch of scree.

I was still the pusher, but I was now only the pusher of myself.

Occasionally, a footstep would send a rock clattering below my boots. The lake got smaller below me, but I still felt its stare going into my back, a serene, unblinking eye that was as cold as the ice that rimmed it.

View from near Housetop summit

At one point in the route up a large overhanging boulder divided the route in two. Left or right? Right was more in Ben’s view so I chose that way. The scree became shallower, and the pitch was steeper.  I clutched feebly at the surface, trying to make my way up an inclined plane of ball bearings. There was a pretty steep drop to my right side, which I didn’t allow myself to look over it. Every muscle was strained, working towards the goal of getting me up the damn thing alive.

DEET that I had sprayed on my hat seeped into my sweat and began to seep into my eyes.

Concentrate.

I made it over the side.

I let out a war whoop to let Ben know that I was doing fine and started up the pyramid. Scrambling over the boulders made for a much gentler climb and was actually kind of fun. In ten minutes, I was at the top.

I made out the summit of Grand Teton above me to the north; The Snake River Valley below me and to the east. To the West, there was the state of Idaho. Time to start climbing down.

I made my descent down the easier, longer way that I had seen before. It was still a rough scramble over that scree.

 I had scratched my mountain itch and we still had several days left to spend together in Wyoming.

“So,” I told Ben. “What do you want to do for the rest of this trip?”

Grand Teton from the summit of Housetop Mountain

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.

Big Nip: A Tale Of Ice Axes and Obsession

Big Nip: A Tale Of Ice Axes and Obsession 

I finally made it up the left side of Nip on Easter

Just 20 miles north of Gillette, Wyoming, past the coalmines along on the road to Montana there lies a rugged landscape of sagebrush, scrub pine, miniature canyons and towering buttes.

 Since I’ve moved west, The Burnt Hollow Land Management Area has become my favorite place to hike, play and practice climbing.  From the high places here, it is possible to look 75 miles to the west out to the 10,000-foot wall that is the Big Horn Range. To the east stand the Bear Lodge Mountains of eastern Wyoming’s Black Hills, and the Missouri Buttes, that keep their odd cousin, Devils Tower, just out of line of sight.

I have already lost track of how many times I have gone to the buttes for wandering. When I go, I bring equipment: my ice axes and crampons, even now when the snow and ice has melted off.

The reason for the gear is that the buttes are crumbly, treacherous, at times slippery and defiantly steep.  It is an excellent workout and a thrill to take on a sharp pitch that would have been impossible without equipment.

One of the most challenging pitches out there is the tall, nipple-like protrusion atop a tall butte that my friends and I have called, uh, Big Nip.

The pinnacle’s near vertical sides and unlikely summit drew me as the Empire State Building drew King Kong.

I visited and revisited the buttes, tackled different mud slides and crawled through dirt to reach different high points in the area. All the while, I was looking over my shoulder at the big nipple made of clay and sandstone. That one’s next, I thought.

 Never mind that the climbing would be very, very steep — an ascent over a surface that is at times rocklike and in other places is as crumbly as dried-up cow crap. Never mind that even King Kong fell from his place, back to the streets of New York.

 In the not unlikely scenario that I lost my grip, I would go down, down tumbley-wumbly for a couple hundred feet — limbs head and body getting battered and bashed all helter-skelter within the maelstrom of kicked up rock and other debris.

This knowledge didn’t stop me from trying the climb on January 1, 2012. What better way to start a new year than a fairly dangerous climb followed by a chance to stand self-important over God’s creation?

My buddy came too. I wore the crampons, he took the ice-axe and we made our way up the steep knife-edge ridge that leads to the base of Nip. Because neither of us had the full set of gear, it was a tough struggle, and we both helped each other out.

There was a dirt ledge at the bottom of Nip where we could both rest. My friend didn’t feel inclined to try to tackle Nip. Can’t blame him. The steep rise, the long drop beneath our feet certainly gave me pause. Still, I figured that with crampons and an ice axe, I might be able to hack it.

I walked out along a dirt ledge, a few hundred feet of drop beneath my spiked feet. As I started up, I sensed that my grip on the surface in front of me was tenuous at best. Debris kicked up by my axe blows scurried down the slope below me, accelerated, bounced in the air as they made their plunge down the pitch. Watching their suicidal progress did little to soothe my anxious mind. The pinnacle of Nip was perhaps only 30 feet overhead. The way down was much further.

Even the mightiest blows with my axes afforded me scant millimeters of grip on the pitch.

In case you were wondering, no I wasn’t roped in or anything smart like that. Even those first cautious steps up the pitch sent a wash of adrenaline flowing over my nerves. I felt the shaking in my calves as they tried to keep the crampon’s spikes inside of the tiny notches they had made in the stone-like surface.

I looked up and swallowed.  I just had to endure five minutes of terror and I could stand up there, be king of the world, beat my chest etc., etc.

That terror, of course, would only make the experience all the more gratifying. Mine would be the exultation of one who stands atop an obscure pinnacle that few people have noticed or even cared about. Then I could work on the oft overlooked but nonetheless important getting down part of the operation.

But as I clung, trembling against the bosom of the butte, I thought,

Not this time.

My friend who came with me up this far, told me it might not be the best idea for me to break a lot of bones and leave him with the responsibility of getting me out of there. I could see his point. It wasn’t worth it.

We headed back to the car in the twilight, drove home in the dark. Maybe Nip was just a bit out of my league. Maybe I needed to back off, get a little common sense.

Maybe I needed to get a second ice axe.

*****************

Didn't try to climb this side. Puts the beast in perspective though. 

I signed for the package and carried the box up to my living room.

With little ceremony, I used my old ice axe to rip through the cardboard. Inside was the sleek, silver Black Diamond ice axe from EMS. It was lighter than my other axe, a little shorter too. Still, it was an instrument capable of putting any Trotsky in his place and also worthy of an ascent up mighty Wyoming buttes.

After I got the second axe, I didn’t try Big Nip again right away. I took a couple more weekend trips to the buttes, hacking and stabbing my way up to different high points. On other trips I went to the Big Horn Mountains where there was still ice and snow aplenty. I made attempts on Loaf Mountain (11,667 feet) and Ant Hill (10,971), but due to deep drifts, neither climb was a success.

Strangely enough, in that cold high-altitude land of snow and rocks, I didn’t find any places where I needed an axe or crampons. It seemed like I was destined to use my axes on hills of dirt, not ice.

So it was that on Easter afternoon, I was back at the buttes, marching Custer-like across the sage. I decided that I didn’t have to climb Big Nip, if it still seemed too dangerous I could still do the right thing and turn back. But I knew I would climb the butte at least as high as the base of the formation. Then, with axes and crampons, I would test the ground once more and see if I couldn’t probe out a successful ascent.

I started climbing the Butte without crampons. With two axes, I found I could use my arms almost as much as my feet to pull myself up the slope.

Oh, how sweet the satisfaction was in finding steep, formerly unclimbable ledges, sinking the points in and hoisting myself skyward through pure force of will.

Occasionally, an axe would slip and I would start to slide. I was always able plant a knee before the catastrophe and swing desperately until I hit something more solid. Clods of dirt rained down beneath my feet.

It took me maybe 20 minutes to climb up to the bottom of Big Nip, the final protrusion, the Eiger of Burnt Hollow, a test of skill and will.

Some of the feeling of righteous certainty that I had felt when I was lower melted off as I looked at the smooth, defiant formation, crowned by cracked and treacherous mud. No fooling this time. I strapped the crampons to the bottom of my boots and cinched them as tight as they would go. Then, like a panicky Wall Street exec on a window ledge, I began to ease myself around the edge of dirt below the Nip, above the long tumble down the butte.

I faced the Nip, swung with the new axe. The claw of metal clanged against the hardscrabble and bounced back in futility. Pieces of shale and specks of grit flew at my eyes. I bashed again, dislodging pieces rock, fucking up the proud and ancient contours of the butte. Its consistency was about what you would expect from dried clay before it went in the kiln.

Finally, I achieved some kind of tenuous grip in the surface. I swung with the other axe, whacked it into some tiny groove in the slope. My knuckles bashed into the surface too and spilled a couple of red droplets into the hardpan.

I set the crampons in to the point where I was satisfied that I could pull an axe out, then struck again, higher up the slope. I had to hit it several times before I could be satisfied that it would actually hold my weight —remember you have to come back down this way too — kicked out again with a crampon, pulled myself up. If I could repeat this process about ten times, I could hit the summit.

I felt that shaky treachery creeping back into my muscles, the uncertainty and the tightening. It wasn’t worth it. Not this way. I turned back.

Kicking and hacking my way down even that short distance kept my nerves on edge. Every blow of the crampons, crushed more shale, sent a stream of dirt tumbling down to the abyss. I got back to the ledge and let myself breathe for a few minutes. Maybe I could find a new pitch that would be easier.

I circled the base, and found another route. This way was steeper, but I felt like I could get better grip with the sharp implements.

The purchase was oh-so-slightly better and after several tenuous whacks into shale and clay, I was able to haul myself up a bit. But up at about 15 feet above the base, the wall became rock solid again.  Part of me wondered if the miniscule hold that I had gained in the wall overhead could hold my weight. I was terrified to try.

Instead, I kicked and hacked my way down again, usually taking about three to five strikes with axe or crampon until I felt sure that a hold was good enough.

Back on solid ground, I put my feet back on solid ground, slumped over my axes as my heart raced. A small pile of dislodged clay and shattered rock lay between my boots. It felt like quitting time again.

It was discouraging to turn back yet again after failing Ant Hill and Loaf Mountain in the Big Horns. But, then maybe the experience was a wakeup call that I needed to start working on more achievable goals.

But here’s the thing: when I went back around the Nip, I looked at the first route, still scarred from my ice axe blows and desperate kicks from my crampons. Now I was warmed up and knew what to expect. Did I want to try it again?

 I don’t want to. I want to.

I turned to the wall again, points out ready to climb. It didn’t even feel like a decision.

This time, my blows against the hardscrabble felt more certain. There was more power in my legs. The fear that held me back was focused now, directed upwards. I got to the place where I had turned around before and kept going.  Up higher, the pitch became crumby. The axe points wouldn’t hold, they just dislodged softballs of dirt down the side. I used the bottoms of the axes to brace myself to wriggle upwards.

There was nothing to grab onto at the top, so I just belly flopped onto it, wriggled the final inches onto level ground.

I rose to my feet and looked west. In the far-away, the mighty Big Horn Mountains rose out from the earth, their snowy flanks cast in shadow. The nearby buttes glowed golden in the late-day sun.

I gasped the dry air into my lungs, felt my heart racing in my chest. Gradually, it slowed.

*****************

The way down was scary, not terrifying.  I looked at the flank where I had come before and saw the axe and crampon marks I had left behind. Maybe the next rain would take it out. But I felt that I had violated the Leave No Trace ethos, the idea that visitors to a wilderness should leave it exactly the same as what it looked like when they came.

If more people did what I did, the destruction would be unforgivable.

From now on, I’m going to leave Nip alone so there won’t be more erosion. One climb had been plenty.

I drove this in backwards so that I would be able to grab it on the descent

A Runner’s Meditation on Heaven and Earth

There is a heaven,

I write with my knee slashed

And blood dribbling down my leg, dirty

From stumbling, stumbling

—running raving through the woods.

And I did emerge upon a gravel road,

Which went east and west and deep into wilderness.

I let hour run into hour.

I ran beneath the canopy of green and gold

The leafy banners bold against the autumn sun.

I’ve felt those cold draughts of air

Come charging down to my desperate lungs,

Explode within my chest.

And drive the rhythm of my footsteps

Through Chaos, masterful in purpose.

And it’s just as roots dug deep in soil

Reach the apotheosis of their expression

In burning leaves above.

That which makes live, is perfect

And I cannot live without this.

I actually wrote the first verses right after I’d finished a run.

I was in fact seated in my driver’s seat with a pretty nasty gash on my knee. Months later, I still wear the faint purple scar.

It was back in the fall, shortly before I had left for Wyoming. I had gone for a run in the Maine woods, and fallen through a booby trap of rotten branches, whacking my knee against a rock.

I had started that outing with a not-so brilliant plan to try running down a streambed. When the plan led to painful injury, I almost turned back.

Instead, I beat my way ahead through some nasty brush and discovered a gravel path, which went on forever through some of the most striking nature I have ever seen. Chances are I could have followed the network of logging roads and ATV trails all the way to Canada if I’d had the mind.

The day was uncommonly beautiful and the air was crisp. The still-warm October sun lit up the birch trees as they transitioned from green to gold, illuminating the leaves as though they were pieces of Tiffany glass.

I ran on, charging up hills as fast as I could, letting the exaltation of the day take me many miles further than I’d planned on going.

The simple, biological fact that I was breathing heavily and my heart was beating fast only intensified my feeling of elation. That relationship between emotion and cardiology is one reason why I hold that it may be nice to drive through scenery in a vehicle, but it can never be as exalting as experiencing the scenery while getting exercise.

As I ran I started thinking about:

How it is that the tree’s dying colors (okay, its shedding colors) are prettiest to look at.

All those leaves together form a simple shape, a single splotch of color in our line of sight.

That zone of color seems like an ideal to me, a perfection that transcends its reality. It exists like an equilateral triangle or a solitary note, plucked from a guitar string. When I look at a tree, I don’t think of the decomposing chlorophyll any more than I think of the nylon stitching on a flag or the ink molecules on the pages of a book.

The tree appears as more than the sum of its biological processes, but also much, much less.

After all, the beauty of that final, leafy display begins in that dirty mess of roots, plunging through the detritus of dead and rotting life. Why is it that we are more likely to rhapsodize over the final, brief display of color than we are to worship the roots, the weird grubs and bacteria below that make the display possible?

It must be our human instinct to focus not on the bits and pieces of things, but focus on the complete idea. Psychologists will talk about the symbols and other shortcuts that we use to understand our world. We can divide these symbols into smaller pieces — try to understand the roots, the bark, each strange leaf, but of course it would be impossible to hold all of this in our minds. We have no choice but to misunderstand everything we see, to stab blindly at the truth with simulation.

The idea of “perfection” can only be a byproduct of this sloppy mental arithmetic. I never cared for Plato’s model of the universe, where everything has a single perfect version of itself floating out in the ether somewhere. There might be a couple billion horses roaming the earth, but they are all based on the idea of a single, perfect horse floating out there. somewhere. All other horses suck compared to this one Plato would say.

I believe there are too many forms of beauty out there to assume there is one perfection of anything, not horses, not birch trees, certainly not human beings.

I’d rather think that everything that creates existence must be a part of the larger perfection, not just the tree’s brilliant leaves, but also the roots that feed them and all that plant sex needed to create baby trees.

Running through that imperfect world, I wondered why heaven had to be some separate kingdom, divorced from the breathing, farting life-processes down on earth. I was running, breathing and farting in that world now. The thinkers who spent their time obsessing on perfect angels, writing down the details of the One Truth and other iterations of inflexible dogma probably took breaks now and then to scratch their asses or eat some tubers.

The so-called imperfections of the world are what give it its authenticity. Otherwise, the reality we live in might as well be projected on a screen, incomplete as any other flawed idea that humans can conceive of.

The real world can cut you or kill you. We learn to respect the forces of nature that do this. We nourish our bodies with air, food and water from this earth. We make our minds come alive by embracing the world that we have, taking it in through our eyes and ears, breathing it in through our lungs. It leaves its mark on minds and flesh alike.

Take What You Need

The graves of some old cowboys with Big Horns in the background

Now, let us praise the utility of the simple kitchen spoon. Whether it be silver, aluminum or steel, the spoon is unmatched in its ability to plumb deep into a jar or peanut butter and deliver its precious sustenance to hungry mouths.

At 3 a.m, I awakened with a rumbling stomach, a jar of peanut butter and nothing to eat it with. I was in the driver’s seat of my ancient car, having parked for the night at a 7,000 foot parking lot in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains. It was cold. I really, really wanted a spoon.

I had packed everything else it seemed — cross country skis and boots, extra hiking boots in case I didn’t want to ski, layer upon layer of breathable fabric tops, an impermeable raincoat. Somewhere in the dregs of my backpack, I had squirreled away my new Patagonia parka, which is rated to 30 below and shimmers like a radioactive orange ghost in the moonlight. Oh yeah; I ‘d also brought my crampons, an ice axe, sleeping bag, gaiters and a tent.

I was planning on climbing Ant Hill. Don’t let the modest name fool you. This particular hill stands at 10,980 feet at the edge of the Big Horns, where it towers over a hundred miles of brown Wyoming rangeland. I had been there in December, but after hours of climbing in waist-deep powder, I’d bagged the mission at 10,000 feet.

 Now at the end of March, I was hoping that the warm weather had melted enough snow, or at least made it solid enough to trod on without the need for snowshoes (didn’t bring ‘em. Draw your own conclusions).

An early start was a key part of my plans, which was why I had parked at the turnoff. I planned to split the journey into two days, with the second day reserved for an early morning summit push. With any luck, the snow would still be frozen from the night chill by the time I started hiking.

The plan seemed pretty solid to me as I sat in the driver’s seat, shivering under my blanket. I unscrewed the peanut butter and plunged my fingers in, plucking up big gobs of the stuff to eat.

Beast of Burden           

Even without the weight of a spoon compressing my spine, I still had a heavy mother of a pack to haul  into the mountains.

Over-packing is a persistent concern of mine just as it is a persistent source of mirth to friends who see me heading out the door with what looks like another hiker grafted onto my back.

I’ve tried to get better. I’ve read Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips which is a fine book by outdoor instructor Mike Clelland. The read (with cartoon illustrations!) includes everything from tips on how to make pillows out of ziplock bags to sewing your headlamp to your hat to cut the weight of the strap.

While I admire the Zen of only trying to bring what is absolutely necessary to the outdoors.

I’ve also read plenty of stories of poor bastards, dead of hypothermia for lack of that three-ounce layer of polypropylene insulation.

Taking less stuff could be a Zen way to enlightenment, but bringing more stuff is a fun, American way of defying common sense. I recently discovered how awesome it is to have ice axes and crampons, and using them to scramble up steep pitches of ice, even slippery mud slopes, with no problem. Look at Lewis and Clark bringing that damn collapsible boat with them up through the Louisiana Purchase. Then there’s David Breashears, who hauled oversize IMAX equipment up the ice so that he and his crew could film atop Mt. Everest. Nuts? Sure. Awesome? Definitely.

Cold Toes           

The two things I obsess about on any trip are managing cold and managing moisture.  I’ve been to the Bighorns several times now, and I have stayed warm and dry zero times. This is despite my responsible layering; my careful attempts to seal off the inside of my boots from snow with knee-length nylon gaiters. A thigh-deep plunge through a thick crust wriggles away the protection so the snow rushes in. Then it melts into frigid puddles of water that tortured my feet.

On this trip, I wrapped Gorilla tape around my pant cuffs and around the top of my gaiters. Even then, it was no match for the deep, nasty stuff that I encountered up the trail.

It started with almost no snow and I soon ditched my skis. I was hiking with what felt like an oversize child on my back.

I didn’t hit the deep stuff until Soldier Park, a massive field in the midst of the pines and in view of several snowy peaks.  It was about an hour and a half into the hike.

I could see that the wind had blown a lot of snow off of Ant Hill, giving me hope that I might be able to finish the job in one day. Before I got there however, there were still miles of pines, still filled with deep snow.

Eyeballing the mountain, I thought that I had maybe a half-mile of the really deep stuff until I could reach some bare rock. I took my compass out and set a bearing for the nearest stone outcropping and plunged on ahead. 

The crust was a nightmare. It would tease me into thinking it would hold my weight, then plunge me into the icy powder.  I would struggle to lift myself out, but the snow around me wouldn’t hold my weight. Soon my feet and legs were soaked and freezing. My heart was pounding and my morale was sunk. I had gone off course and couldn’t even see where the damn mountain was.  I had been out there for about two hours. Disgusted, I turned around and followed my footsteps back to Soldier Park.

The sun was high in the sky, warming the air to the mid-60s. It was a beautiful day to lie in the grass with the splendid mountains all around, shimmering in the bright light. I set out my boots and let them fill with warmth. As they dried, I crawled into my sleeping bag and stared up into the blue for a while then napped.

I would go back and get my skis. I would try in vain to push myself through the deep snow and set up tent that alongside the trail that night. I kept my wet boots inside the sleeping bag so that they wouldn’t freeze. When I woke up that morning shivering with icy feet, I realized I didn’t want to try anymore. Ant Hill had won again.

My stuff resting in Soldier Park