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.