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

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?

Damn Fools and Bad Roads

What the hell is a shirtless dude doing standing in the middle of a snow-covered road up at 9,000 feet in the Bighorn Mountains?

It was an excellent question, not one that Andrew had much time to think about from behind the wheel of his Suburu Outback, which he was revving through the snow directly at him.

The guy didn’t seem particularly worried about the thousands of pounds of metal hurtling in his direction. Instead of jumping the hell out of the road, like most people would, he stood his ground and waved his arms at us to stop.

Andrew hit the brakes and the guy moved to the driver’s side to talk.

 “I need you guys to help,” he said. (Or something to that effect, since I don’t remember our dialogue verbatim).

 “My pickup got stuck in the snow a couple miles up the road and I left my coworker there.”

He thought we might be able to help dig and push him out of the rut.

The man’s face was broad and ruddy. He was carrying some extra pounds on his frame — made all the more apparent by his shirtless state of affairs. The run down the road got him panting and his cheeks and torso were flushed red. I’d have pegged him at maybe 40.

The dude’s appearance was an unexpected development in our plans, which were already starting to look doubtful. Andrew and I had decided to West Tensleep Trailhead and snowshoe into the base of Cloud Peak. If things went well, we could maybe, just maybe, get to the summit.

This was the first time I’d seen Andrew for over a year, in which time he had been a ski instructor in Maine and then thu-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Now he was driving west to a new ski job in Salt Lake City, a journey that brought him through my neck of the woods. I was determined to give him taste of the Wyoming mountains I’d been playing in since I’ve seen him last.

What I hadn’t counted on was the dirt road to the trailhead being totally screwed the way it was.

We were perhaps three miles out from Highway 16 and it was already looking unlikely that we would be able to drive the full nine miles to the West Tensleep Lake where we planned to start our hike from. The deep snow on the road meant that the only way to travel was to stay within the ruts made by previous vehicles. It was no easy task going uphill, and when the ruts weaved crazily to the left and right.

I had to admit that it would have been too much for my Mazda Protégé, but even Andrew’s Suburu was struggling to keep on track. It was getting bad enough that I was ready to suggest that Andrew turn it around so we could try our luck somewhere else.

 Now we had been recruited to some kind of rescue mission for the pickup and some unidentified coworker (is this some demented form of corporate team building?) The coworker was a woman, but I didn’t inquire about any relationship status. 

Oh and there was also something about a snowmobile with a torn belt that he had left even further up the road from the truck. He’d run the truck off the road in a failed attempt to rescue it. It had been a busy day.

My first suspicion of a shirtless dude who neglects to move out of the path of a speeding vehicle is that alcohol may be a factor. He didn’t seem drunk though, maybe a little strange. When I asked him why he was going with no shirt, he said that he had removed it because the run had overheated him. First he had thrown his parka to the side of the road, which struck me as less than brilliant.

I figured that Andrew and I would have to drive the guy back to Highway 16 and then somebody with a tougher, more redneck vehicle would roll through to bail out his truck and his friend.

But Andrew thought he could punch through with the Subaru.

We couldn't put our new passenger in the back because it was jammed with the stuff Andrew was moving to Utah — our gear on top. We ended up jamming the guy into the front with us (at least he still had a shirt to put on) and hit the gas.

The engine revved and the tires spun helplessly in the snow.

Of course the guy had to stop us right in the middle of an uphill pitch where we really could have used the forward momentum.

Now we were stuck too.

“Man, I hate Wyoming,” the guy said.           

The two of us got out and pushed for all we were worth, enough for Andrew to rev his way to the top of the hill where we got back in.

I made sure to take the passenger seat where I could buckle up. Yeah, we were doing the guy a favor; but all things considered, I’d rather not be the one who went face-first through the windshield if things stopped suddenly.

The wheels started spinning again and the engine revved to about where it would be if we had been drag racing at 120, with the tachometer well to the right side of the dial.  It was barely enough to get us moving forward.

But forward was forward, and we were good for the time being.

The guy between Andrew and I talked non-stop, describing the chain of misfortunes that led up us finding him.

 “Oh yeah,” he kept saying. The way he said it made it sound like he was lecturing us.

 “Oh yeah.”

All the while, the engine roared. A smell like hot plastic or burning oil filled the car. We were going at about 30 now, which is hella fast for taking on18 inches of snow over a twisting roadway. Andrew had to go fast enough to get through ruts and go up slopes, but not so fast that we would skid out on one of the many tight turns on the road ahead.

To make matters worse, the ruts went all over the road, often in multiple sets, and Andrew had to jerk the wheel this way and that to stay on course.

Every other minute Andrew would let out a curse as he struggled to steer the car through the snow.

Then we careened around a corner and skidded sideways.

Andrew let off a stream of profanity then managed to rein the Subaru in and get us back to the ruts. 

It was a good save, and soon we were off and running like a demented sleigh ride.

Then there was a steep uphill, with even more confused ruts.

The engine roared. The wheels kicked up plumes of snow behind us. It was no good.

Andrew turned off the engine and we all got out. I had brought a snow shovel, which he used to start digging. I spent my energy kicking down the ruts, sending sprays of snow into the trees by the roadside. After about five minutes, we had enough of a starting ramp to try going forward again, with plenty of pushing.

We made about 20 feet of progress before Andrew got stuck again, then backed it up once more.

Finally, he got enough traction to get going and we let him roll up the road so we could catch him up somewhere more convenient.

As we walked, the guy continued to talk about all his bad luck, elaborating to include trouble with family, the law and severe depression. Some people just love to share. I was a little wary of the guy, but decided we were still obliged to try to help him. I didn't see a concealed carry strap, and figured Andrew and I could take him if he started going all Deliverance out in the woods. He seemed OK overall but just a bit eccentric and I'm sure many a wanderer who encountered my wild-bearded visage in the woods would think the same.

After we got back in the car, it was excruciatingly slow going next couple of miles, with plenty of other opportunities to push. Again and again.

Finally we rounded the corner to a nice straightaway. A little further up, and we came to the guy’s pickup.

He had tried to gun it up a hill and got stuck it the deep snow on the side of the road. A short, rotund woman got out of the cab.

“Thank God!” she explained upon seeing us.

We tried the out best to be the rescue team she thought we were and started kicking snow away from the truck with our boots (the snow shovel had broken at this point. ) Finally, the guy got into the cab and with Andrew and I pushing, he managed to get out.

He wasn’t finished though. The crippled snowmobile was still up the road. The woman got back into the truck with him and he rolled it back down the hill. When he reached the flat he gunned the engine again, and took tore back up the hill.

Andrew and I heard the sound of the truck skidding and revving through the pines. It sounded like he got stuck more than once, but managed to escape each time.

Getting the car started (second day)

Now that we had bailed the guy’s ass out of trouble, it was time to figure out what we wanted to do.

We were probably about a mile from the Tensleep trailhead, and already spent a couple of hours extra driving in this far.

I suggested that we just park here and hike the extra distance. Either way, it wouldn’t be too many hours until dark. With any luck, we’d be able to moonlight it to Misty Moon Lake and make an attempt on Cloud Peak by the morn.

But Andrew wanted to try the rest of the road. I shrugged and got back in the car.

Things went well for the first 10 seconds or so. Immediately after however, we found ourselves skidding to the side of the road. The car veered helplessly into a snowdrift.

We had made it, perhaps 20 feet further than the pickup truck had.

I got out and tried pushing, but the road was sloped here, and the car seemed only to want to go further off the road.  We might as well have just stepped into a puddle of quicksand.

There was more kicking and then we were crouching down to dig the soft powder out from underneath the car with our hands.

With each attempt, we avoided getting into further trouble, but we also didn’t seem to be getting out of the trouble that we were already in. Slowly, we worked the car into the exact same spot where we had bailed out the last guy.

As fate would have it, that was just when we heard the roar of the pickup coming down the road. There was his snowmobile tied to the back weaving along the road behind him.

Yes, he had a towrope with him. Time to return the favor.

First thing we did was help him push the crippled snowmobile up the ramp to his pickup bed, then we got the Suburu hitched to the truck, and after another 15 minutes of struggling in the snow, both vehicles were free at last.

We shook hands with the guy and wished him luck on the rest of the way out.

This is the part where I should be telling you that Andrew and I decided to call it a day. We would have seen that it was going to be dark soon and decided that going back into Buffalo to swap stories over pints of beer in The Occidental Hotel pub was a more pleasant option than tramping through the snow at night and shivering in my tent.

However, an important part of the brain, which prioritizes enjoyment over suffering, seems to be missing in both of us.

Instead of going all the way back, we drove down the hill a couple hundred yards to the flat area and parked the car off to the side. Then we loaded up our gear in packs. The plan was to make it as far in as we could with headlamps, hopefully as far as Mistymoon Lake. We had snowshoes too, which would hopefully be what we needed for a successful ascent on Cloud Peak.  That prospect looked more and more doubtful with each passing hour.

The sun had already sunk below the mountains by the time we trudged up to the trailhead.

Here, the snow got to be about calf-deep, though neither Andrew or I felt like putting on snowshoes. Ours were the first tracks in the powder and it made the trail very difficult to follow.

Going through the trees was challenging enough. It was easy to mistake a deer path for the trail and bumble up it for ten minutes in the dark before realizing it was a sham.

Fields were worse because we wouldn’t be able to see a trail rut beneath the powder and it would be impossible to tell where the trail began on the other side.

After countless false starts and perpetual disorientation, Andrew and I realized that there was no way in hell we were going to make it to Mistymoon that night.

Discouraged, I found a clearing and pitched the tent. Neither of us felt like fiddling with the stove, so we gulped down handfuls of trail mix and crawled into our sleeping bags.

Andrew was feeling nauseous, because he had driven in from sea level and now suddenly I had brought him up to 9,000 feet. I wondered nervously if he shouldn’t be the one sleeping closer to the tent door, and if I was in any danger of being puked on.

The next morning, Andrew seemed to have acclimatized better. I worked out where we were on the map, which showed it plain to see that we were nowhere near Cloud Peak.

We packed up our stuff and humped it back out the way we came. I had planned to save my snowshoes for waist deep snow, but found that they worked quite well on the shallower stuff.

We drove back the way we came, but made a stop at Powder River Pass — 9,666 feet in elevation.

Here, a shark’s fin of broken rock goes up to a cluster of exposed crags.

Andrew and I weaved out way up the rocks until we got to the top of one of the crags.

 Far below us on either side, we could see the warm, dried out rangeland where no snow had fallen. There lay the Powder River Basin to the east of us, where you will find Gillette, cattle and coal mining. The Big Horn Basin was to the west where there are cattle and enormous sugar beet plantations. Far beyond that, well out of sight, the roads led to Cody, the eastern gateway to Yellowstone.

Well to the north, Cloud Peak lurked invisible behind the nearer mountains. True to its name, there were clouds gathered about the area. All things considered, maybe it was for the best that we weren’t playing around up there in the thinner air, getting snow thrown up in our faces.

It hadn’t been the most epic trip of our lives, but the view was all right from here.

Andrew atop a crag, not far from where we parked at the Powder River Pass

Part Ballerina, Part Musk Ox

Darton Peak is out of view as I begin the climb from Willow Lake. The adventure begins!

Snow on the ground makes almost everything more difficult hiking.

 From the increased challenge of tramping through powder, to having said powder creep into boots where it melts to ice water, to the challenges of clearing space for camping, a deep snowfall can make it a bitch of a time to do what you would take for granted in warm wather.

Before I left on a November trip to Darton Peak in the Big Horn Mountains, I knew there would be no exception to the rule about snow. At the same time, I figured that such an expedition would be a valuable opportunity to test out some new outdoor stuff I had bought and also try to learn from the things that I had done wrong the time I tried to climb the same mountain a few weeks before.

As a result of this determination, I started up the trail from Circle Park looking slightly more like the backwoods badass I’m always trying to become.

There were new Gore-Tex gaiters over my boots that I had bought for $60 at the Sports Lure an hour before ($60! Did I seriously just drop $60 on these little things I have over my lower legs!). I had new fuel bottles as well, ready to melt snow for water if need be. I had a new headlamp too, in order to help me get through the darkness. Then there was the $300 sleeping bag that I had strapped to the back of my pack. After that last sleepless night shivering with ice-block feet in the old bag, there was no question that this was an investment that I wanted for this trip and for any future expeditions into cold places. If it was warm enough for Denali, I figured it would work swimmingly in the Big Horns.

The last piece of gear to test was myself.

So it was a bit of an anti-climax when I drove into Circle Park to find that almost all the snow was melted off the ground and it was well above freezing outside. Did I feel a little ridiculous setting out with oodles of expensive stuff? Maybe.

But as I hiked the miles in, the snow became more prevalent and eventually I was trudging through a couple of inches of the stuff. The campsite I chose was at the shore of Willow Lake at around 9,000 feet. It was completely frozen over by the time I got there and my hands were already cold.

Though I had come prepared to melt snow, it would still be easier to have liquid water to begin with. The fact that the lake was iced over was a little discouraging. A more positive sign was a patch of bare ground underneath the shelter of some pines — the perfect place to pitch tent. I put on my warm clothes and began the diligent work of setting up the camp. The small warmth of the day disappeared with the sun going behind the mountains, just like an invisible hand were turning down the thermostat.

The view from my campsite at Willow Lake

The ice turned out not to be a big deal; all I needed to do was throw a nearby boulder through the ice. I filled up my cooking pot and fixed satisfying meal of re-hydrated mashed potatoes. It was better than that godawful meal dinner I'd made from bog water the last time I was in the Big Horns. I poured the leftover hot water into a steel bottle so I would be able to warm my feet on it in the sleeping bag.

Now it was dark and I used my headlamp to go about the rest of the camp chores. At one point, a set of tiny golden eyes glittered in the beam, then disappeared into the night.

By 7 p.m., I crawled into the super-warm sleeping bag for the night, sharing the space with the water bottles and boots. I bunched my parka around my feet for extra warmth.

No sooner had I nestled up, than a hard wind came down out of the mountains, punching the walls of the tent in at me. But I was warm! Safe within the womb of synthetic fiber, I may as well have been lounging on a tropical beach.

I stayed awake for a couple hours, listening to the howling wind and strange sounds from the lake as the ice contracted and expanded. Eventually, I drifted into n uneasy sleep.

Something was crashing around outside my tent. Eyes shot open. It was 1:30 a.m..

Shit! I thought the goddamn bears were supposed to hibernating now.

I realized that I was not at all sure of this, as much as I wanted it to be true.

“Hey!” More crashing.

“Beat it!”

No, I hadn’t brought the bear spray. Yes, I had left food inside my tent.  

Shit, shit, shit.

Someone had told me there were only a couple of black bears in the Big Horns and they were pretty timid — not that I felt too reassured by that now.

It was definitely something large out there. Stumbling around, whacking up against branches.

I unzipped my bag and my tent, sprang out without shoes and swung my headlamp beam through the darkness. Nothing appeared beyond the branches of the pines.

Cursing, I moved away from the tent, and sprang on top of a log, taking care not to put my socked feet through any snow. The blue lamp from the headlamp played over the trees and along the snowdrifts. Then I saw the tracks, maybe elk, or moose. Little kicks of powder rested on the crust, indicating that they were recent.

I let the pent up breath hiss past my lips, heard my heart careening in my ears. I went back to the tent and cocooned myself into the bag, praying that nothing else would wake me before morning.

When my alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., it was still dark outside. I wrested my boots from the sleeping bag, put on my parka, and crawled back from the tent.

I re-bashed a hole through the lake ice and took in a hearty breakfast of oatmeal.

So far so good though, I had enjoyed a warm night, and felt far more energized than I had on my last summit attempt. The fact that I had brought enough gas for two warm meals was another advantage, as was the fact that I had a reliable source of water instead of the frozen swamp I had camped next to last time. I was also getting an earlier start.

By the time I had finished breakfast it was almost 7 a.m.. A rumor of sunlight glinted through the drab clouds. To the west, the 12,275-foot summit of Darton Peak was hidden behind a steep ridge. An arctic canyon wound its way between the peaks, defined by thousand-foot walls of craggy stone. The path I had plotted on the map started on the south side of the rift, gaining elevation sooner, before I became trapped between the steep sides of the canyon.

As soon as I started up the pitch, I knew it was going to be hard, slow progress. The mountain slopes were defined by an exquisite chaos of boulders, made all the more challenging by the snow, which hid deep crevices between the rocks until I unwittingly discovered them by stepping through.

It was good to have the bright red gaiters protecting the tops of my boots from snow.

To make walking easier, I stayed in the trees, where there tended to be fewer boulders and shallower snowdrifts. In other places, I hopped from rock to rock, avoiding the guesswork about which snow would hold my weight or wouldn’t.

Inevitably, this led to a series of strange movements as I worked to maintain both forward momentum and balance on the rocks. Though I am far from graceful in many things, I will brag that after years of practice, I can handily weave a path over a forbidding landscape of jumbled rock.

It is a ballet of boot on stone and for the first hour or so, it’s fun solving the puzzle of where to put feet down, while keeping momentum. It seems like my feet know where to go before I do. After a couple hours however, the ballet becomes one of those hellish dance marathons with plenty of opportunities to fall or twist an ankle. You want it to end, but the  dance floor is stretched out for miles yet in front of you.

As I climbed merrily up the ridge, congratulating myself on how well I was handling the boulders, the pine trees fell away. An icy wind rose up to greet my progress, blowing snow off the drifts and into my face. There was no view of the summit. It was lost in a gray cloud of whirling flakes.

Some of that weather would be coming my way, I realized. Or else it was one of those stationary storms held in place by the mountain.

In any case, if I kept going, my visibility was going to get very poor. This made me think about whether it would be best to turn around and avoid the risk of getting disoriented on a high peak.

This was not the most appealing option considering that I had already aborted that earlier attempt on Darton, I had come back to seal the deal, so I could put it behind me and start obsessing about other mountains.

On the other hand, if things were really about to going to go to hell up on the ridge, it was unlikely I would make the summit anyway, and it would behoove me to get my ass off the mountain sooner rather than later.

I took out my compass, and checked the bearing of where the summit should be. The potential that things could get ugly when I got higher was real, I thought. But I also had a pretty large margin of error heading down. There was a trail below me that ran miles north and south. I could mess up big time, but as long as I could follow my compass roughly east and walk the distance, I was virtually assured that I would find the trail on the way down.

 Just as helpful, the landscape set some pretty clear parameters: go too far to the left and you take a long fall, too far to the right, there were tall boulder piles and another drop beyond them — both would be indications that I had gone off course. The worst thing that could happen is that I could trip or fall in a bad way and not be able to get down. That is why, as excited as I was about hopping rocks and making fast progress on the peak, I also had to be very, very careful.

Now there were fewer rocks to step on and more snow to plunge through. I was grateful for those fancy-pants gaiters, which were doing a fine job keeping the snow out of my boots, even when I fell into waist-deep traps between boulders.

Tiny particles of ice flew out my face out of the wind, making it almost impossible to look straight ahead. The small amount of exposed flesh on my face felt like it was getting sandblasted.

Christ, maybe I should turn around after all.

But, sometimes mountains have a way of revealing their most incredible beauty at the height of their cruelty.

This time it was a rainbow.

The clouds had opened to the east, allowing the warm gold light to spread over the stony walls below me, for the beams to shine through the icy droplets in the air and paint an arc of brilliant color from the tops of the mountains down into the canyon.

I’m not particularly superstitious, but it was hard not to take that as a good omen.

Reinvigorated, I marched on beneath the brilliant bow of color. I weaved further south to get to the other side of the ridge, where I hoped to get some shelter from the wind.

The rocks were now crusted with a sheen of ice. I found myself slipping helplessly even on slightly tilted surfaces. No more ballet, back to the snow.

I was plunging in knee-deep with each step, leaning into the slope. I began to think of one of those Discovery Channel documentaries about the arctic and all those musk oxen, plunging through the deep snow, their coats clumped into icy dreadlocks.

That was how I was going to get to the top of this mountain. Nothing fancy, just leaning into the slope, plunging through the snow like a stupid machine. I would fall a lot and get back up again.

The times I did find a patch of snow strong enough to hold my weight were mitigated by other times when I fell through to my waist and had to wrench my boot out between stones. The wind was still terrible.

At last I spotted a peak in front of me, a deranged pile of rock and snow standing proud amidst the flying ice.

“I’m gonna get you, you sonofabitch!” I shouted into the wind, then fell through the crust again, bashing my knee into a sharp rock.

More profanity. I picked myself up and began climbing anew.

My heart hammered in my chest as the sweat trickled down beneath the windbreaker I was wearing. My hands were still cold and numb.

White was all around; on the ground, whirling in the wind. It messed with my sense of balance as I clutched at boulders for stability, buffeted by hard gusts of wind. My muscles were slow and confused, probably weakened by the altitude. I crawled my way over another pile of icy boulders and looked around.

It had to be the top; it had to be. I looked skeptically at the topography on either side of me, unable to see very far in any direction.

It was 10:30 a.m., meaning I was still well ahead of the 11:30 turnaround time I had given myself. But I wasn’t sure if I'd actually summited.

As I pondered, I grabbed a sandwich out of my bag and threw on my heavy parka for extra warmth. Another savage gust of wind ripped out of the west and then I saw the real summit, still far above where I sat. First there was disappointment, then the inner argument about whether I should head back, or try and struggle the rest of the way up.  There wasn’t much time to sit and think. I decided to go for it and see how far I could get.

With that, I clambered down the stone pile and walked across a field to the next peak. Thankfully, the strong wind had blown most of the snow off and it was easy going compared to before. If I had managed to tough it out through the wind earlier, I probably would have saved a bunch of time by walking here, instead of steering into the boulder field.

The top of the peak was still lost in the snow. But it couldn’t be much further. Could it? In order to stay off the treacherous boulders, I picked a steep snowy slope. The average depth was less than a foot here, otherwise, I would have worried about avalanches. I was learning that the steep snow tended to have a thicker crust and was less likely to collapse under my weight.

Sure enough, I found it easy to kick my feet into the slope and work my way up, just like I was climbing an enormous ladder. Well, it was relatively easy. My heart was pounding wildly and I found myself wanting to just lie against the snow, a comforting white blanket where I could rest.

After a couple hundred feet, the snow ladder was gone, and it was back to stumbling through boulders and powder.

It took me about another half hour to make it up the treacherous crown of the mountain, and that’s where I found the the biggest boulders yet. The fact that they were still covered in ice made them no easier to grapple with.

The final boulder, the tippity-top of the damn mountain, was so icy that I didn’t dare try to stand there and risk getting knocked over in the  wind. I flopped on top of it and quickly cowered back into the shelter of the other boulders.

Victory!

Self-portrait atop false summit. If I'd taken a picture on the real summit, you'd see the same damn thing.

It was noon, and I knew I was pushing daylight. I clutched at the headlamp in my pocket. It was likely that I would need it before I got back to the car, hopefully not before I reached the tent.

Looking back down over the slopes, I could barely see more a hundred yards through the whorls of flakes. I was the house in the snow globe. I began working my way down the boulders, tracing my footsteps when I could, using the compass when they disappeared.

One thing that was going right was that I had the wind at my back. Now that I was going down, I was able to move a little faster, and could even glissade in a few places where it was possible.

When I reached the bottom of the summit pyramid, the weather had abated some, and I had much better visibility. I followed a new route where the wind had blown a lot of the snow off, and for about half a mile, I didn’t have to deal with falling into booby traps under the snow crust.

Soon enough, the going got tough again when I stumbled into another snowy boulder field. I tried to get off the ridge early, and ended up kicking holes on a very steep snow pitch in order to get down. Toward the bottom, the crust began getting harder, requiring several kicks in order to get a foothold. I wondered if I would have to clamber back up the way I came. Fortunately, I found a route over some rocks and made it down.

Not the effort was worth it. When I got down I found the going to be just as treacherous with boulders as what I had found on the ridge. At least I was out of the wind.

The sun was low in the sky when I finally made it to the tent.

By the time I got everything packed, I knew I would be using the headlamp.

But now that I was on the trail, I was sure everything would be fine. It was about a hundred times easier to walk on. I clicked the headlamp on before I got to Sherd Lake.

Puffs of cold breath went before the beam.

I was below the snow line now, walking easily between the lodgepole pines. God, it felt good not to be stumbling over crazy rocks.

There was no question that I had corrected a lot of things that I had done wrong on the previous trip. If I felt compelled try the peak a third time, there would be other things that I would do differently to make the trip even better and more safe.

Looking back, I probably should have done a bear hang at camp (why chance it right?), gotten up earlier, saved some distance by sticking to the north side of the ridge going up, and skipped the “short-cut” going down. Even though I hadn’t done everything perfectly, enough things had gone right to give me the privilege of the summit and getting back to the car with sore legs, utterly exhausted.

It seemed like I had spent the last 12 hours pitting all my mental and physical energy against the elements.  I realized that this quiet stretch of darkened trail was the first time I could actually afford to take in a moment. Even the rainbow had been dimmed by the fact that snow was flying into my face.

 Before I got back to the trailhead, I paused to stare up through the trees. Beyond the branches, all the stars in the cosmos were out, shimmering like a spray of ice across the cold mountain night.

You can see the rainbow if you squint. Yeah, I'm kicking myself for taking the cell phone camera instead of the real deal.