This is an old story, both because it took place more than 40 years ago and because I wrote it more than 20 years ago. It's also the second part of a story. The first, I put up more than a year ago. It is "Sunburn: Getting Huk out of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness." I include a link to it directly below. But I do recognize that each of these stories are longer than my typical stories, so, if you are only interested in reading the second half, the first half can be summarized as Huk got badly sunburned while deep in the wilderness. The story includes some pre-sunburn fun, and some post-sunburn pus filled blistery anguish. And, just in case I peaked your curiosity, here's the link:
Seven of us started this trip. Five of us are in part two. The second part of the story follows:
1. Up The Stillwater
Early July 1983: As we broke camp the next morning all eyes were on Huk. His white painter’s pants were colored with a bloody pussy ooze from the knees on down. “Gonna have to burn those pants dude.” “No way. It’s abstract art. Pollack made buck selling stuff that looks a lot like this. I even have chunks of skin that are starting to attach themselves to my pant legs. Pollack’s got nothing that textured. These pants will be hanging at the Met, make me a millionaire.” We all had a good laugh; he was clearly starting to feel better.
Today’s assignment was pretty straightforward. We hike up the Stillwater, while keeping a better eye on Huk. It was a beautiful morning and the Stillwater Valley was bordered by peaks on both sides: the Absaroka Range, which we had been hiking in thus far was now to our west; the Beartooths, were to the east. Occasionally, a break in the forest would give us a view of one range or the other.
Ed was leading the charge when he spooked a black bear and cub. “Whoa, did you see that?” We all saw a flash as the mom and cub cleared our path. We hung out for a minute to see if they were going to come back. “Is Gary here?” “Yeah, dad I’m here.” Huk was clearly feeling better.
We started running into the occasional downed tree across the trail. “Season is still young. Trail crews ain’t been out here yet.” We waited for Huk at the first tree crossing. He wasn’t that far behind, and he managed to get over the tree without assistance. Things were looking up. We had put about 10 miles underfoot when came into a section of wet bottomlands. Rocks, puddles and mosses filled the spaces between the trees. The Stillwater likely flooded this area not too long ago. There were downed trees everywhere, and there was nowhere we would consider camping even if we could find a spot. We had to push on. We were humping our way along the trail when we saw it. A literal wall of downed trees crossing our path. It involved at least 10 trees and stood more than 10 feet high. There was water everywhere in the forest and the Stillwater was close at hand. We were going to have to go over the tree pile. More importantly, we were going to have to get Huk over.
We took off our packs and formed an assembly line. Erik went over, Rich sat up top and Ed sat partway up. We broke some limbs off to clear a path and started handing packs up. Huk came along. “Are you fucking kidding me? You guys built this as a practical joke right. Okay, you got me, now take it down.” We all had a laugh, then gave him a drink of water, a shot of precious Solarcaine, and handed his pack up and over. I climbed up with Ed. Huk grabbed branches, we each grabbed one of his arms and pulled him up. “Dude, you stink.” What, you think you smell any better.” His knees were more flexible today. He couldn’t bend them far, but he was able to get himself up on the first level of logs. Ed climbed up with Rich, made a spot to stand, grabbed Huk’s arms and pulled him up to the top. This second climb was higher and Huk had to bend his knees more. I could see the pain on his face, then “Oh fuck,” pain was seared into his expression as a blister popped. I could see the ooze dripping down his pants and into his socks.
We finished getting Huk over and got back on the trail. We were ready to stop for the night, but the wet bottomlands didn’t want to end. About a mile later we came to a second wall of trees. This one was a little shy of 10 feet tall, but it was wider. Same assembly line to get the packs over, same process of getting Huk over, same stinking armpits, more ooze dripping into his socks. We kept hiking. These bottomlands had to yield eventually. Finally, at about 13 miles the trail steepened and we left the bottomlands behind. It was maybe another mile before we found an opening in the forest where we could set up out tents.
This would be our last night together. Eric and I had decided to bushwack into the Beartooth Range. Rich and Ed would get Huk to Cooke City. But for tonight, we built a fire. Hydrated our refried beans, and ate them on tortilla shells with cheese and avocado.
***
We broke camp in the morning and continued to hike along the Stillwater. We were about a mile into our day when the trail terminated on the bank of the river, it started again on the other side, but this was little comfort as the raging torrent that was the Stillwater stood between the two parts of the trail. The crossing was just above the confluence with Goose Creek, itself a raging torrent that drained the western peaks of the Beartooth. Goose was just about as large as Stillwater. If the crossing was below the confluence, it would have been impossible to execute safely. Even now we had to keep our balance crossing about a 50-foot stretch of knee to thigh deep froth. We couldn’t see the rocks underneath. We were going to be moving slowly in frigid water. There was a rock that was above the water line about halfway across. No one wanted to stop and take a break on the rock because that meant having to step into the froth a second time.
Camp shoes, which doubled as creek crossing shoes, were weight that we could not all afford to carry, so we shared. I had the only pair. This meant that I went first. I did not react well to cold water. I had frozen my toes skiing so many times that they had become incredibly sensitive to cold. I opened the waist belt of my pack, tied my boots together hung them around my neck and stepped in. The shock of pain was immediate. “Ahhh, freezing, freezing, freezing!” I searched out secure purchase with my right foot, took a step, I couldn’t feel my feet, I couldn’t feel my knees, the pressure of the water was intense. I was determined to get to the other side without climbing up on the rock in the center, but by the time I got there I was so cold I was desperate. Full body shakes started. “Just tough it out dude!” either came from my buddies or from my own head, but I knew what we were all thinking. I gripped the rock and slid my legs back in feeling for a secure landing before I let go. I continued across. I wanted to race across, but slow motion was all I could manage. I made it to the opposite bank, dopped my pack, shook off the chill then took off my shoes and tossed them across one at a time. Ed was next, then Rich. Huk tried on my shoes, but they were too small. He was going to have to go across in his boots. He just plunged in. Eric followed. Everyone climbed on the rock in the middle. It seems that even those with good foot circulation needed a break. Huk was the only one that seemed to enjoy it. He was keeping up today, but his skin was wrecked. The cold was shocking but it was like a long blast of Solarcaine.
This was our parting spot. Rich, Ed and Huk would continue up the Stillwater for about another mile, then connect to a dirt road and drop-down Miller Creek drainage into Cooke City. They had about 7 miles ahead of them. We were standing at the base of Scotch Bonnett mountain. Eric and I were going to bushwack up to try and get above the forest and get a better sense of where we could camp for the night.
Before parting we checked our food supplies. This was day 7. We’d been eating well on the trail. Our packs were noticeably lighter. The guys that were exiting offered us everything they didn’t need for today’s hike. It was altruistic, but not really. After 6 days, cheese is soft and nasty, peppers are mostly rotten. Anything that’s not dried is ready for the trash, anything they exited the woods with would be trashed. So, why not give it to Chuck and Eric to carry instead.
The original plan for the hike was 12 days with 120 miles of travel. Eric and I hadn’t given up on this plan. We laid out our supplies, talked over what we needed for 6 more days and grabbed the least nasty remnants offered to fill in our holes. Huk passed around the last bag of M&Ms.
2. Into the Beartooth
We said our goodbyes, and Eric and I turned and started climbing up Scotch Bonnett’s steep forested slope. Huk yelled to us from below, “You guys go, finish the trip.” We replied with “Ka-Dook-a-Doo” a few times, then the silence fell around us, and we ground our way upward.
The climb was steep, the grasses were deep making it difficult to see the ground. The footing was uncertain. There were lots of downed trees that had fallen directly downhill. We found that hiking on the tree trunks was preferable to hiking in the grass. We did our best to jump from tree trunk to tree trunk, making a game of staying above the forest floor.
After about 2000 feet of climbing, we came to an opening in the forest. In front of us was a small scree field topped by a short rock face. The rockface extended as far as we could see in both directions. We wanted to get above the face to get a better sense of where we were and to plan the next stage of our route. Eric offered, “I think we can climb that.” I was a bit more circumspect. “Maybe there’s a line in that chimney,” I replied pointing at about 11 o’clock. “Yeah, that looks like our best shot.”
We started up the scree field, I took the lead heading up the chimney. It wasn’t quite vertical and there were good holds at first, but about halfway up I couldn’t find any more holds that were solid enough for me to balance myself with my pack. I don’t think this is going to go.” I yelled down to Eric. “The holds aren’t good and the chimney is narrowing. I’m starting to scrape my pack on the walls and that’s throwing me off balance.” Can we climb it without our packs and pull our packs up?” Eric asked. “I don’t think we have enough rope; besides I don’t think there’s anywhere up top to tie the ropes to. I’m coming down.”
We hiked on the scree and wet grasses along the base of the rockface for about 15 minutes before finding an opening we could ascend. Once up, there was a nice wide shelf we could hike on and we had a great view of the valley below us and the mountains beyond. I pulled out the map. “Huckelberry Lake looks like it has flat terrain around it, could be a good camp spot,” I offered. “Let’s head there.” “That’s Mt Fox just north of Huckelberry,” Eric chimed in. Looks climbable. Could be a good climb for tomorrow.” I agreed, but for now, we needed to find a way off this shelf and down to Huckelberry Lake.
“What’s that?” Eric asked pointing ahead in the distance. “Looks like a cabin. Let’s check it out.” We approached it nervously. “What if a critter lives in there?” We pulled out our ice axes. Yes, we carried ice axes for 7 days now. As experienced as I was in the mountains, there were still some things I hadn’t figured out in my 5 years out here. Ice axes don’t make sense in July unless possibly you are trying to ascend a north facing ice filled couloir at midnight. We had tried to climb exactly no icy couloirs. We just carried the axes around day after day for no good reason. But as were approached the cabin, our ice axes found their purpose. We dropped our packs, slid out our axes, and cautiously approached the cabin. “Any bears in there?” we yelled and tapped the cabin with our blades to let any wildlife know that we meant business. I jumped in front of the cabin, axe at the ready, but nothing. No bears, no cougars. Just an old empty prospector’s cabin. The door hung open, we stepped in. The cabin was empty except for an old broken handmade bed frame. It filled most of the cabin. “Not much bigger than a prison cell,” Eric suggested. I agreed, “this is a tough way to live. You’re either in a hole hoping to find paydirt, or your trapped in this cell.” “We gonna camp in here?” Eric thought out loud. “No water. Let’s head down to Huckelberry.”
It was early afternoon when we got to Huckelberry and it was sunny and warm. Neither of us had cleaned up since our first day at Wounded Man. So, our first order of business was to jump in. The lake was cold. Frigid cold. We soaped up on the shore back from the waterfront, then each of us poured a potful of water over the other’s head to rinse them off. Eric has a devious side to him and he seemed to take particular pleasure watching me shiver uncontrollably as he slowly poured the pot of water over my head. No matter, we were now clean enough for the next few days.
We awoke to a beautiful morning and set about getting ready to climb 11,245-foot Mt Fox. Within a mile of leaving camp, we were at the Goose Creek crossing. It wasn’t too bad, calf deep with froth that reached our thighs. I went across first, tossed the sneakers back to Eric then he came across. We left the sneakers near the creek for our return trip. Fox was a nice class 3 rock climb followed by a long ridge hike to reach the peak. As we approached the ridge we could see a storm building. We had to move. We raced up to the ridge and then ran it to the end. It ended in a chasm about 100 feet across and followed by another short section of ridge. Was that section of ridge higher, or was where we were standing higher. Neither of us could tell. Getting there would require some difficult climbing both down and up. The storm was coming. We didn’t have any time. We decided that we had made the peak.
Before starting back, we took in the view. Goose Lake was below us and it was surrounded on three sides by stunning steep rocky 11,000-foot peaks. Mt Fox was a non-technical climb. The others all looked more challenging, Wolf Mountain, in particular, looked daunting. The Aero Lakes and the Granite Range were off to the east a few miles distant. Many of those peaks cracked 12,000 feet. They looked large, even in comparison to our present company.
We started scampering back along the ridge and down Mt Fox as the storm closed in. We made it to Goose Creek. I was untying my boots to put on my sneakers when the sky let loose. It poured. There was nowhere to take shelter. We were screwed. “Let’s just get across the creek and back to camp,” Eric yelled. I nodded in agreement and we plodded through in our boots.
3. Getting Ourselves Out
It stormed the rest of the day. We were stuck in the tent making small talk and checking out the maps, thinking about where we would head next. The Aero Lakes Plateau looked promising. It was a vast area of alpine tundra with two large high mountain lakes. Lower Aero Lake sat just below 10,000 feet in elevation, while Upper Aero sat a few hundred feet higher. Once there we would either keep backpacking further east or find another peak to climb. The Granite Range was above Aero Lakes. The map showed lots of potential climbs, which ones, if any, were feasible would be determined once we got up there.
The storm continued all night. We didn’t sleep well. Early in the night, the sound changed from rain to ice, by early morning it had gotten quiet. We opened the tent to a cold morning with fresh snow. About 4 inches was on the ground and it was coming down steadily. It was beautiful, but it placed our plans in a new light. We decided that it was time to head for the exit. We pulled out the map. We would head for Cooke City.
Once we left the immediate vicinity of Huckelberry Lake, we found that once again, we couldn’t tell where there was only 4 inches of snow and where feet of old snow still lay with a veneer of fresh on top. The going was slow. We post-holed up to our crotches in many places. The worst issue was that we knew that at some point we had to turn south, but we had no idea where that point was and we didn’t know if we would see it when we came to it. We hiked through a meadow with forest to our immediate right. We were fogged in, and couldn’t use the mountains to help us gauge where we were. We kept testing anything that looked like an opening in the trees for signs of a trail. We’d post-hole into the woods, decide that couldn’t be the trail, then make our way back to the meadow.
Eric lost it on one of these feints. We were cold and wet, and feeling like we might hike all day without finding a way out of this wilderness. He just kind of melted down for about 30 seconds. I was feeling it too, but my greater experience in near disasters in the mountains gave me a little better grip. He pulled himself together, we headed back to the meadow and kept trudging.
After maybe a half-hour or so of hiking we came to an unmistakable opening in the forest. This was our trail. We were on our way home. After a few miles the trail morphed into a dirt road which we just trudged along through falling snow and cold wet slop descending toward Cooke City.
We made good time until we came to Fisher Creek. With all the current precipitation and snowmelt, this wasn’t just some little creek to be hopped across. It was a river that cut across the road with no obvious way across. It was maybe 40 feet wide, moving fast, and there were no visible rocks, which indicated that it was deep. How deep? We weren’t sure, but we were already wet and cold and we really didn’t want to find out. There was one wet snow-covered log that spanned the creek well to the right of the road. It wasn’t a huge log and it laid about 5 feet above the creek. A fall would mean a serious dunking. Neither of us moved toward the log; it didn’t strike us as a good option. We checked the map. We had to cross this creek. Then we had maybe 2 miles of walking to Cooke City. “We need to hold hands to help both of us keep our balance and get across this thing,” I suggested. Eric agreed, while intimating “Wow I really don’t want to do this. Do you think we should search out walking sticks?” “I’m not sure they would do us much good and we’ll just be spending more time standing out here getting cold and wet. Let’s just do it,” Eric agreed.
I held out my hand, Eric was about to grab it when we heard the sound of a truck coming. We turned around, it was coming up behind us. “You guys need a ride?” “You bet!” “Well hop in the bed.” We clambered up, making ourselves as comfortable as we could in a snowy wet truck bed. He drove through the creek. 10 minutes later he dropped us off in Cooke City. We were cold and wet, but we were out of the mountains. We headed to a nearby bar to put in a call to Eric’s roommate to pick us up and spend the few dollars we had.
Great story! I definitely Eric's 30 minute breakdown. Those are the times you really find your ability to push through the hard shit. (-jeremy)