Crossing the Rockies: Day One (9/23/09)

With my hands on my hips and Duke wagging his tail beside me, I looked out over the water.  Our packs lay on the dirt behind us.  This spot will be a great camp, I thought.  Near Cottonwood Creek, but elevated above the creekbottom so the bugs wouldn’t be too bad.  On the west side of the drainage, so the sun would hit the campsite early in the morning.  Nice flat spot for the tent.  And best of all, it overlooked a beaver pond.  This area would have been trapped out of beaver in 1833, but the dam was a reminder: this is what the trappers were after.

Below me, Cottonwood Creek twisted and turned as it slowed from a busy mountain steam to a meandering flatland creek.  Loops, cutthoughs, islands, oxbows in the making.  Waters swollen behind the dam.  Along the creek’s banks, and for a few hundred yards in either direction, greenish-yellow willows grew so thick that they obscured the creek until you climbed above them.  Above the willows, the drainage’s slopes supported tawny grass speckled with olive sagebrush.  Higher still, the sagebrush steppes gave way to deep green conifer forests.  Above the forests – although I couldn’t see them from my camp – gray peaks shouldered their way into the sky.  Triple Peak to the south and McDougal Peak to the north, the Wyoming Range’s guardians of McDougal Pass.

Cottonwood Creek, seen from my camp.

It had been a tough day.  The first day on the trail always batters a hiker: legs unused to walking, lungs unused to altitude, hips unused to supporting a pack.  We had hiked about twelve miles, mostly on a gravel road with little change in elevation, but the sun had been hot – eighty degrees or so.  Duke was carrying his food in his pack, and had borne the weight well.  He was tired, and had lagged behind me in the late afternoon, but there was no sign that the weight had bothered him.  Tomorrow would be harder for both of us, I knew, but after that our bodies would begin to adjust to the workload.  It had been a good first day.

Satisfied, I turned toward my pack to pull my tent off my pack.  And the son of a bitch wasn’t there.

My pack was lying on the ground – but no tent.  The strap that held the tent to the pack hung loosely.  I looked around the campsite.  Maybe I had removed the tent and forgotten.  But the baby blue bag wasn’t there.  I swore.  This was important.  I wasn’t going over the mountains without a tent.  I threw my hat in the dirt and stared at it.  “Duke,” I said, “this is a bad start.”

A few miles before reaching camp, Duke and I had turned off the main road.  We followed an old road that crossed Cottonwood Creek, and then paralleled it for awhile on the opposite bank.  But then the road veered to the north, so Duke and I had set out across the sagebrush steppe to remain on course  But the sagebrushes were set so tightly that Duke, with his sidesaddle pack, couldn’t squeeze between them.  So I removed his pack and carried it as we turned back toward Cottonwood Creek.

First, however, we had to get through the willows.  They were thick enough in places that I could barely see five feet ahead, and the grew as high as my head.  So I crashed through them as best I was able, with Duke following.  Mud sucked at my boots and willow stobs jabbed at my chest and face.  Occasionally I found moose trails headed across the creekbed, and although they were soggy I followed them where I could.  I found a place to jump across the creek, then crashed my way through the remainder of the willows to the main road on the other side.

That, I figured, is probably where I lost my tent.  Somewhere in those damn willows.  I stuffed a water bottle and my GPS into the detachable head of my pack, intending to take them with me as I searched.  I had about two hours left of daylight – not much time.  I would have to quit the search with enough time to hike back to this camp before nightfall so that I could build some shelter from pine boughs, fix dinner, go to sleep and head back to the truck in the morning.  It was a mile or more from my camp to the spot where I’d crossed through the willows.  There was probably not enough time to find the tent, I thought, but I would have to try.

As I was checking the head of my pack for emergency supplies, a white truck drove by on the main road and slowed.  The driver’s window was down.  I hated to hitch a ride – Walker didn’t have automotive courier services – but I time was short.  Without a tent, this hike was over.  The driver looked at me.  I considered it.

“Hold on just a minute,” I shouted.

Mark Hamilton, who was bow hunting for elk, gave Duke and me a ride back to the point where I’d left the willow swamp.  I told him about how my tent had fallen off my pack, and how I thought it was probably somewhere in the willowed creekbed.  He asked where I planned on hiking to.  I said the far side of the Salt River Range.  He shook his head.

“Well, I’ve got a spare sleeping bag, but you don’t need that,” he said.  “I don’t have a spare tent.”

I thanked him for the ride.

“Good luck,” he said.  He drove away.

Duke and I set off into the willows.  I retraced steps as best I could – this moose trail looked familiar, these branches were freshly broken at a man’s height, I think I might have stepped in this puddle, I think I crossed the creek upstream of here.  But it was guesswork.  My GPS had been off as I crossed the creekbed, so I didn’t know where I had gone.  This was, I thought, a fool’s errand.  But I couldn’t come up with any better ideas, so I kept looking.

And in about fifteen minutes, there it was.  A baby blue tent bag lying on a patch of grass.  I picked it up incredulously.

Back at camp, at the bottom of the hill by Cottonwood Creek, I squatted in the grass to fill water bottles.  I submerged a bottle and felt the chill of the water on my hand as I waited for it to fill.  It was nearly dusk.  The bottle gurgled full.  I lifted the bottle and screwed on the cap.  Water dripped from the bottle onto the still surface below.

“I guess you found it,” someone shouted from the top of the hill.  I turned.  Mark stood at the hill’s edge, near where I had pitched the tent.

“Yeah, I can’t believe it,” I shouted.  “Hey – thanks for coming to check on me.”

“No problem.”  He waved dismissively.  “Good luck.”

Later, I stared into the coals of my campfire and thought about good luck and kindness.  Both exist, and no amount of intellectual cynicism or mean-minded ugliness can eradicate them.  An irreducible minimum for good in the world.  The campfire light flickered on Duke’s sleeping body.  Good luck and kindness, just floating around out there waiting to find you.

That’s a good thing, because sometimes you need them.

The hike for Day One.

My camp, and where I found the tent.

Duke sleeps in the grass where we stopped for water in early afternoon.  Duke is a purebred lab, but for reasons no one understands his legs only grew to about two-thirds of normal lab length.  His street name is Lowrider.