Early July, 1983: We awoke to brilliant blue skies on the third morning of our journey. The first two days had been stormy. First came the rain squalls, each one chillier than the last, then the snow, eight inches in total with temperatures in the 20s. We were on the Lake Plateau in the heart of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, and after spending yesterday waiting out the storm, we were ready to get on with our trek.
The plan had been to make a 120-mile crossing from the Boulder River Valley in the heart of the Absarokas to Beartooth Lake on the Beartooth Plateau. The weather already put us a day behind schedule and the 4-mile hike we had planned for today to Wounded Man Lake would put us further behind. There were 7 of us on this journey. Two of our crew, Rune and Gary, had to head back to Bozeman tomorrow. Wounded Man, was a good jumping off point for them. The rest of us, Huk, Ed, Rich, Eric and myself would continue south to the Stillwater River and into the Beartooths.
The Lake Plateau sits at 9500 feet, and its lakes were still sealed in snow and ice. Large snowfields dotted the plateau, and with the 8 inches of fresh we couldn’t tell where the snow was 8 inches deep and where we would be post-holing to our crotches. The was a lot of post-holing, it was early afternoon before we had completed the trek to Wounded Man.
Bright sunshine and comfortable temperatures enabled us to shed the layers of dank wool that we’d been wearing. These were the days before high tech wicking clothing and zip-off pants; we all wore long sleeved cotton shirts. I wore wool knickers every day, regardless of the weather; my buds generally had cotton pants and cotton shorts to choose between. Everyone except Huk chose to wear pants to cross the plateau.
Upon arriving at Wounded Man Lake, which was a few hundred feet lower than the lakes of the Lake Plateau and free of ice, we each jumped in to clean off now 3 days of stink. We took turns. Someone would run into the freezing water buck naked and screaming, get wet, run back up on shore away from the water, soap up and a buddy would then pour unheated lake water over his head, while laughing at the discomfort of his friend and trickling the water for maximum anguish. The pièce de résistance, for those who dared, was to run back in for one last lung heaving dip.
All clean and with camp set up we grabbed our maps and some snacks and headed up the unnamed 10,450-foot rocky peak just across the lake. We got to the top, and pulled out the maps and the snacks, and were generally enjoying ourselves feasting and trying to name all of the surrounding peaks. It was about this time that we started to notice that Huk’s face and his legs, in particular, were red and getting redder. Not just a little red, no, this was no namby pamby sunburn, or even your basic too much sun at the beach lobster bake. Fair skinned Huk was turning red. We got off the peak, and made it back to camp about the time his first fever chills struck. He was in bad shape. He retired to his tent for a long uncomfortable night. Sitting around the fire that evening, we penciled in a name for the heretofore unnamed peak we had just climbed ... Wounded Man Peak. It seemed apropos.
* * *
We awoke the next morning to another fine sunny day. The new snow was melting quickly. We had spent the first two days of the trip screaming “It’s July you know,” into the teeth of the storm. July was finally making itself felt.
We all had a little sunburn on our faces. This was the early 80's, before the days where links had been made between sunburn and skin cancer, and before the hole was discovered in the ozone. Sunblock wasn’t even a thing back then.
Huk was in bad shape, and the question of what to do with him was tossed about. There was no way that he could hike that day, that was obvious. His chills had subsided but he couldn’t bend his knees. Seeing him hobble around the camp that morning was sickening. This boisterous beast of a man was stricken and moving like an old man. He bore his pain silently, though it must have been intense. Occasionally, he would scrape his legs and would shudder as the pain reverberated through his body.
Trails headed in three directions from Wounded Man Lake. The shortest way out would be to get Huk back to the van, some 12 miles distant. Problem was that Gary and Rune needed to leave today. Both had obligations back in Bozeman. The second option was to get Huk to Cooke City, Montana, just outside the northeast entrance of Yellowstone Park. This started us in the direction that we had planned on going, as we would first hike to and then up the Stillwater River. But, instead of crossing the Stillwater then bushwhacking into the Beartooths as planned, we would continue along the trail all the way to Cooke City. Problem was that Cooke City was a distant 33 miles from where we stood. A good three-day hike with full packs.
The third possibility was to take the trail north from Wounded Man. This trail crossed into the West Fork Stillwater drainage and followed the West Stillwater to its confluence with the main Stillwater drainage which took you to the end of a long dirt road. Our maps didn’t make it as far as the road, but this was clearly going to be a longer hike than the one to Cooke City and leave us the possibility of a long hike down a dirt road until some helpful soul with a vehicle happened by that could help us along our way. This option was quickly discarded.
Huk was confident that he would be able to hike with just one more day's rest, we all were somewhat less confident than he. But maybe he was right, it was only sunburn after all, and its worst effects typically last only a few days, and his face wasn’t that badly burned. On the previous afternoon, we all had draped tee shirts over our heads, that were held there by hats or bandanas depending on preference, in an effort to limit our sun exposure. The worst of the burn was limited to his legs in the area between the bottoms of his shorts, and the tops of his socks. Maybe he would be able to make it to Cooke City. Even if we couldn’t start out tomorrow, we had plenty of provisions to keep us going for the planned 11 days, and this was only day 4.
The Cooke City option was decided upon, and after breakfast Rune and Gary packed up for their hike out. Huk’s plan was to hang out in his tent and hide from the sun all day. Ed and Rich decided to hang out with him in case he needed any aid. Eric and I opted to climb 11,153-foot Chalice Peak, which stood to our north and from our vantage point had the look lizard with its tail facing us and its head turned right. Goodbyes were said and all were off.
* * *
The next morning, Huk was determined to get moving. He didn’t look good, but maybe he didn’t want to be a burden, or maybe he, like all of us when are sick, just craved being at home in his own bed; a sanctuary to recuperate in. We packed up and got moving.
None of us got a good look at Huk’s legs that morning. He came out of his tent wearing the white painter’s pants that were his sole leg protection against the sun and other elements. He had worn these same pants in the few moments that he was up and about yesterday, so none of us really had a good sense of just how bad his legs were. We could see that he couldn’t bend his knees, and he wasn’t much help taking camp apart, but he continued to bear his pain in silence, so we just kind of monitored him with one eye as we organized our gear.
Hiking with Huk was going to take some adjustment. We are all used to hiking pretty much together, with at most, maybe 100 yards or so between the first and last in the group; five minutes out of camp, Huk was already four minutes behind. We couldn’t just leave him, this was grizzly country, and well, it just wasn’t good form to leave a buddy behind. We hung out and waited. After a bit, Huk and his stiff legged gait appeared. He had found himself a good walking stick and was leaning on it as much as he could figure out how to. It was a pathetic sight. Ed blurted out, “Huk, why don’t we go back to Wounded Man and set camp back up.”
“Yeah, you ain’t looking like you’re up for this,” I chimed in.
But Huk would not hear it. “Here’s what we need to do,” he said. “We need to choose a stopping place for tonight, and you guys just have to go on ahead and get there, and I’ll just get there when I can.”
“We can’t just leave you,” Rich retorted.
“I can do this man. I can,” was Huk’s somewhat agitated response. “Look, we were planning on making it to the Stillwater tonight. You guys go there and set up camp, and I’ll make it there.”
“But the Stillwater is 10 miles Huk, and you can barely walk, how you gonna hike that distance,” I queried.
“I can man, I have to.”
And with that a shudder of pain suddenly went through him that seemed to seize him for a moment. Then we noticed that his white painter’s pants had some yellow and red stains forming on the backs of his knees. He had blisters, they were popping and he was oozing blood. He needed help. Yeah, he did have to keep moving, we had to get him out of this wilderness.
We picked up our packs and started moving. We were going to go out ahead of him, but we weren’t going to just leave him and hope that he made it all the way to the Stillwater River. We would wait for him periodically, and wait at spots that we thought he might need help if the trail proved difficult.
The first such obstacle was Jordan Pass, some two miles down the trail. It wasn’t a very high pass, topping out at 9395 feet, but the climb was on the north side and the trail was still buried under snow. The four of us made it to the top of the pass, found some rocks to lounge on and put our packs down to wait for Huk. We shared some snacks around for a few minutes, and then I announced that I was going back down to see how he was faring in the snow. I hiked back down the trail we had just come up for a good ten minutes. I heard him before I saw him.
“Please stay up there, don’t slide back down.”
I looked in the direction of the voice, and there was Huk. He was splayed out on the snow. His pack was off his back and he was pushing it up the steep slope ahead of him, imploring it to not slide back down. He was trying to climb the pass by digging his hands into the snow and pulling himself up. His stiff legs were useless on a slope this steep. “Hey ... you’re one sorry som’ bitch,” I blurted out, as I reached down to pick up his pack. I hoisted it onto my back and then I reached down and helped him stand up. “So we’re just supposed to leave you like this to hike 10 miles.”
“I couldn’t hike up the snow slope, I kept slipping, so I laid down to try working my way up. Thanks for coming back.”
“No problem,” I replied, “I’m just trying to keep things moving. We’ve got a lot of miles ahead.” I wanted to say, you’re my friend, I just couldn’t leave you behind, but I’m a guy, and showing emotions, other than anger or impatience, isn’t one of my strong points.
We hiked on to the pass. Huk was moving better without a pack on. I pushed to get to the pass a minute or so ahead of him. Enough time to rip open his pack and start taking things out. Everyone took something. I took the tent poles that he’d been carrying, and Ed, Rich, and Eric, each took a bit of his food. Huk had insisted on carrying his share that morning, but when he arrived and saw what we were doing, he just said, “Thanks.” He understood now that he was going to need help getting out.
Shortly beyond Jordan Pass the trail crossed a beautiful wide meadow. We were surrounded by major peaks in close proximity. A ridge of 10,000-foot peaks was a little more than a mile to our west and south, and the Granite Range some 10 or so miles to the east. It was late morning now, on what was shaping up to be a fine sunny day. Part way across this meadow, we noticed a large camp with big tents and horses on the edge of the meadow about 100 yards away. Eric and I walked over to inquire if they could help us, while Ed and Rich waited for Huk.
Walking over to the camp, it seemed to me that this was a sure thing. This was how we were going to get Huk out. We were going to stick him on the back of a horse, and he’d be in Cooke City by nightfall. We found two women in the camp. “Hi,” I said, as we walked up, “we were wondering if you could help us?” “What’s the problem,” came the response. “My buddy back there is badly sunburned on the backs of his knees. We need help getting him to Cooke City, he can barely walk.” We sized each other up. We were hippie looking college kids, in filthy clothes, with shirts draped over our heads that were kept in place by old bandanas. They probably figured that we were out of our element; city kids, trying to cut our teeth in the Montana backcountry. The way we looked and the trouble we were in looking for help would have given them reason to stereotype us this way. These were ranch women: cowgirls, or “Ka-girls” in the local parlance. Both were in pretty good shape. Mid 30's maybe, wearing jeans, denim shirts and cowboy hats. One was a redhead, the other a brunette. The brunette responded, “Well we can’t just leave our camp and ride him to Cooke City. Our boys are out riding and won’t be back till late. Besides, how’s he going to ride a horse if he can’t bend his knees.”
The redhead chimed in, “We ain’t headin’ to Cooke City no ways. We’s going north from here, but not fer a few days.”
Suddenly, I understood. We had no right to ask these people to rearrange their plans to help us. Riding a horse to Cooke City from here wasn’t like asking someone for a ride to a hospital down the local freeway. It was a two-day journey if Huk could ride and it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. By now, Huk was walking toward the camp with Ed and Rich.
“Which one has the sunburn,” the brunette queried.
“The guy in the white pants,” Eric responded.
“Well he ain’t walking too awfully bad.” She was right, with the lightened pack, and on the flat terrain of this meadow, he was moving alright.
The redhead began digging through their supplies. “I know we’ve got some Solarcaine in here, I can give him a spray of this if that’ll help him out.”
So when Huk came up she met him with a can of Solarcaine. Without taking off his pack, without even the slightest pretense toward modesty, he unbuckled the waist strap of his pack, then undid his pants, turned his back to her and let his pants fall to the ground.
We were all aghast. His skin was bright red. The blisters on the backs of his knees were huge. Some measuring a full two inches long, and yellow ooze and watery blood coated the backs of his legs and was coloring his socks. The redhead bent down, “My word, that’s one heap o’ sunburn,” she said as she sprayed the backs of his knees.
The cold spray sent a shockwave through Huk’s body. “Oh God that feels good,” he said, with a visible sigh of relief. It was his first measure of pain relief in days.
“We’re sorry we can’t help more,” the brunette said. She better understood now that we had a serious problem.
Ed went over, and lifted Huk’s pants up till where he could get a hold of them. Then we said our goodbyes and made our way back to the trail. As we continued our way down the trail through the meadow, we suddenly heard a call from one of the women who was riding up to meet us on her horse. It was the brunette. “Hi, thought maybe you could use this,” and she handed me the can of Solarcaine. “We don’t need it, and maybe it will help your boy get down to Cooke City.” We thanked her, and she rode back to camp.
We hiked across the meadow about a mile to Jordan Lake. There, we stopped for lunch and waited once again for Huk. “How far we gone,” Ed queried, as he gnawed on a peanut butter and jelly bagel sandwich.
“Maybe three miles” I replied after perusing the map.
“I don’t know if he’s got 10 miles in him today,” Ed said. “We ought to start setting up camp right here. This way, Huk just has to accept that we’ve decided to stop here when he shows up.”
“We can offer that,” Rich allowed.
We all seemed to have this sense that we didn’t want to just impose upon Huk to stop if he wanted to keep going, but we wanted to make sure that he knew he had an option to stop. We also understood that it might be best for him to keep moving. Each step brought him closer to home.
Huk appeared a little while later. He refused to take off his pack. He claimed that it was too difficult to put back on. It could be that the temptation to keep it off would simply be too strong if he took it off. He stood for a minute munching down a bagel sandwich and gulping down water. Then unceremoniously dropped his draws, and pleaded for one of us to take the Solarcaine out of his pack and spray the backs of his knees. Rich obliged. It didn’t strike us at that point that he couldn’t administer the Solarcaine to himself nor could he get himself water. None of us carried much water. We relied on coming across clear running streams every 1/4 mile or so, and just dipped cups that we kept hooked onto the outsides of our packs. But Huk couldn’t bend over far enough to get himself a “dipper,” nor could he get to his water bottle without taking off his pack. And since he couldn’t get his pack off by himself, and was remiss to take it off even when we were around, he didn’t have much to eat or drink that day and the Solarcaine did him no good when we weren’t there to administer it.
With the sandwich stuffed down and as much water as he could snarf in his belly, he moved on. We followed shortly. From here the trail descended steeply down to the Middle Fork of Wounded Man Creek, which we would follow to its confluence with the Stillwater.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. Clouds boiled up in the hot afternoon sun. We crept slowly down the Middle Fork drainage, and by early evening we were only a few miles from the Stillwater. At one stop, Huk chided us to keep going until we reached the river so that we could get dinner going and get camp set up. We obliged him and took off vowing to have a hot dinner waiting for him at the river.
Shortly after this parting the clouds let loose a brief but powerful thunderstorm. We were crossing a short meadow when the first drops started to fall. As we came to the edge of the meadow the trail forked. Eric was leading. He turned to me as I was the keeper of the map and asked, “Which way do we go?”
“This isn’t on the map,” I said. I pulled the map out of my pack to make sure.
We all stood there for a moment, trying to figure out which way to go. The map was no help so we tried to garner information from the trails themselves: was one trail old and the other new, was one well-worn and the other relatively unused. Our deliberations were cut short when the sky suddenly let loose. The trail to the right headed into thick forest, while the trail on the left, hugged the edge of the meadow. The choice was suddenly clear ... we plunged into the forest. Ensconced under the protective cover of the forest, we quickly got our rain gear out. The storm was intense, but brief, so soon we were stopping again, this time to remove our rain gear and attach it to the outsides of our packs.
A little way above the Stillwater we came across a beautiful opening in the forest. A small stream ran through it and the soft grasses looked like just the thing to provide some sleeping comfort. We debated stopping for the night but then pressed on and continued down to the Stillwater.
Stillwater is a misnomer. It was a raging torrent, but the trail dumped us out in another nice flat meadow along the river.
We got camp set up, built a fire and I was building the first sausage and pepper sub sandwich when Huk came into view. “What the?” He didn’t come down Wounded Man Creek, he was hiking up the Stillwater. “Huk, how did you get there?”
He wasn’t ready to talk. He grabbed the sub out of my hands and started wolfing it down. “Water.” Ed handed him a water bottle. We weren’t going to get an answer until he had a few bites. Then it came out in a tirade. “What the fuck, I got to the trail fork and you didn’t leave me a sign as to which way you went. How could you not leave me a sign?”
At that moment I had the chilling realization that if we had camped in that meadow above the river, Huk would have walked past this spot on the Stillwater. We wouldn’t have crossed paths.
It took two more days to get Huk out. We hiked up the Stillwater together for a day, then Ed and Rich accompanied Huk the last seven miles to Cooke City, while Eric and I split off to bushwack into the Beartooth. But that, is a story for another time.
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