It’s been quite some time since I last posted, but the project is not dead!

I spent the first week of October in a cabin near Livingston Peak, at the north-east corner of the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness area. This is the area known to Dave as the Crow Mountains - the location of his third hike. The wilderness area was officially declared in 1978, the year after “In the Shining Mountains” was released.

It’s a strikingly beautiful area. In October, the valleys and low lands are bone-dry grasses and dust surrounded by rocky mountain peaks already bearing patches of snow. Separating the two is a thick band of conifers, dense and dark. It’s a spectacular but terribly wild area.

Dave’s third hike began at Slough Creek trailhead in Yellowstone, and ended somewhere in the Boulder River drainage. Despite my research I’m not confident about his exact path for the last days of the hike - much of his time was spent off-trail, and the details he gives will be impossible to verify except by a hiker on the ground. However, the exact route is probably unimportant as long as I follow the path of least resistance north along the ridges above the Boulder River. The fact that the route crosses a number of deep drainages helps explain why Dave didn’t move too fast through the area.

The complete trip report is now available:

Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 1
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 2
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 3
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 4
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 5
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 6
Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 7

After much research, thinking, and training, I have prepared a 40-pound pack to spend 9 nights / 10 days on the trail. Roughly 20 pounds of that is food, water, and fuel. I hope to cover at least 10 miles per day.

My planned itinerary is as follows:
June 5, 6: Hike from Selway Falls Campground to Moose Creek ranger station along the Selway River
June 7, 8, 9: Continue to Moose Lake along East Fork Moose Creek
June 10, 11, 12: Back to ranger station
June 13, 14: Back to trailhead
June 15: Drive back to Missoula

For most of the trail, my emergency fallback will be the Moose Creek ranger station. Close to Moose Lake it may be easier to proceed north to Elk Summit guard station - although I will first verify with the local rangers that it is staffed at this time of year!

Comments

Subscribe

So why am I not also in the mountains today? As it turns out, Dave’s 1977 hike coincided with the lowest snow year since modern records have been kept in the Bitterroots. On his starting date, there were 19.70 inches snow-water equivalent (swe) on the ground at Lost Horse Pass. Today there are 39.80 inches snow-water equivalent. Until this snow melts down at least to the 1977 level, I will get turned around even earlier than Dave did.

I plan to monitor the snow level until it approaches 20” before starting my hike. Referencing the typical snowpack curve, this may not be until early June. Unfortunately this creates a conflict between two goals for the trip: is it more important to hike in early season? Or is it more important to try to cross the divide?

Comments

Subscribe

For those 25 glorious days we rose with the sun, spent most of the day in light but continuous exercise moving to the next camp or exploring side canyons, enjoyed dinner and some social time, and then went to bed as darkness fell.

If I woke in the night, I would see familiar stars above me and then go back to sleep rocked by the cradle of the water beneath the raft. Each night we camped in a new place but I never felt the dislocation that's natural when sleeping in hotels or couch-surfing.

When we met another group, we greeted them as friends and fellow travelers - cheering them on, exchanging plans, and even sharing supplies if necessary. For most of the time we saw no one except ravens and canyon wrens.

The experience was of a small tribe moving through the wilds under our own power and without outside support. An illusion naturally, since all of our gear and food had been carefully prepared for us by an outfitter. But for all of my skepticism about evolutionary psychology, this tribal situation felt absolutely and completely right for my mind and my body.

Sadly I spent the first half of the trip carrying the stress of my previous life with me - a world in which one's best effort is never enough. Eventually I came to hear the message of my tribe: relax and enjoy. Take each day as it comes. Lead or follow as appropriate. Forgive.

I'm back in the "real world" again but I feel like a stone skipping over the surface of a pond. I look normal, I act normal, but inside I struggle against assimilation. As the experience fades into memory, I'm scared that the lessons will slip away before I can integrate them into my life. But perhaps that's still the old Marc talking.

If you’d like to join me on my next Grand Canyon trip, get in touch! I’m already working on getting a permit for next time.

Comments

Subscribe

To save money, I moved out of my apartment at the end of February and will be nomadic until the weather turns cold again next winter.

Many changes, much excitement.

Wish me luck.

Comments

Subscribe

Last week an old college friend donated her time to create this massive wall map of the Bitterroot hike. As the print scrolled out of the printer, the scope of this trip finally became obvious to me. At a scale of roughly 1” = 1 mile, the map is nearly an arm-span across, but an average day of hiking will only cover a hand-span of trail.

In the front range of Colorado, a combination of high trailheads and shallow mountain ranges means that it’s possible to cross the divide on foot in a day. In the Selway river valley, especially early in the season, it will take nearly a week just to reach the divide.

On Dave’s trip, a mishap with his campfire burned most of his map early in the trip. Although route-finding was easy enough because this hike is all on-trail, it was still a bold move on his part. Stepping into the unknown is a luxury that most of us do not appreciate in this era of gps and satellite imagery. Still… I think I’ll bring a map on this trip.

Besides custom map printing, certain other advances in technology make planning easier now than in the 70’s. For example, there is an automated weather station near the Twin Lakes trailhead at the eastern terminus of the hike. This weather station broadcasts temperature, wind, and the amount of snow on the ground for anyone to see. Its spooky to think about that lonely little weather robot sitting up on the divide, surrounded by snow and wind and the long winter nights. I’ll be there soon.

For more details about planning for this first hike, see the Hike > Bitterroot Mtns page.

It is a shame that it's necessary to quit one's employment in order to undertake any real adventuring in this world. This restriction encourages people to spend years working without taking time off to enjoy and explore the world around them. Luckily, Dave did not have this reluctance and kept his eye clearly on his goal - get enough of a bankroll to enable his further adventures.

In fact, by the second page of the book Dave has already quit one job - at a seedy motel on Colfax in Denver.

"[The manager] stayed on my back, and I started to get mad. Finally, about the fifth time, he came down a little in his tone and told me gently that he thought I had a problem with my attitude and wondered what it was. I told him that his motel made me feel like puking. He told me I was fired.

I was happy. That was the way any good mountain man would have handled it." (pb 4)

After the motel he moves on to a night shift doing paperwork at the hospital, another pouring concrete for bridge foundations, and one building swimming pools for "rich people in the suburbs" back in Minnesota. Each one of these positions follows a trajectory ending in quitting when the siren song of the wilderness or his own tolerance for bullshit outweighs the benefits of one more paycheck.

"One bright spring morning at the pits, I looked around and noticed that the snow was almost all melted, the birds were singing in full, and the sun was shining down out of a big blue sky full of warmth and freedom. I put my hammer down, walked up to the boss's younger brother, and told him I thought he was full of shit. I had been carrying that for five months. He didn't say anything, he just stared. The birds were singing away. I picked up my tools and walked off the job." (pb 32)

In keeping with this theme, last week I submitted my resignation and will be done on this Friday, January 18th. The logistics of this are complicated and uninteresting but the catharsis will be recognizable by all. I held this job for six years and made many friends that I will miss, so I did not tell anyone they made me feel like puking on my way out. Not quite how a mountain man would handle it.

Here's to future adventures!

This year I plan to repeat each of the hikes that Dave did - in the Bitterroot Mountains, in the Swans, and finally in the Crows. One of the defining characteristics of "In the Shining Mountains" is Dave's mountain-man alter ego "Old Gabe", who Dave uses as inspiration and companion during his travels. For my part I will turn to Dave himself for my companionship - attempting to faithfully follow his hiking philosophy and routes as best I can determine them.

This website will serve as a repository of my research on Dave, on his book, and on the current state of the mountains that he explored.