T
The_Wraith
Guest
Far off clouds obscured the light of the moon, forcing me to use my headlamp to light my way to my spike camp, far above timberline. I'd planned on coming in during the daylight but responsibilites wouldn't wait and now I was very late or very early depending on how one looked at it. It wasn't much, just a little tent perched precariously on the side of a mountain, snuggled on a little bench with a few trees and a stream born of snow melt that was so cold it made your teeth hurt. I'd put it there this past july when I started scouting these alpine ridges for wide racked mule deer that called this high, lonely place home for a few months out of the year.
September in the rockies is a place of extremes, especially this high up, one minute it's summer with temperatures that require short sleeves and sunscreen and the next your in a full on blizzard, hunkered under the closest form of cover that you can scramble to. I've seen the snow pile so deep that it would come to the belly on a tall horse and within a few days all that's left is traces in the shade. It's why I come here, the uncertaintude of mother nature, the quiteness that envelopes all, the continual fight that nature wages against itself.
Often I get asked why? Why do you do it? Why would you go alone to a place that within the blink of an eye and with one misplaced step you would find yourself hurtling at freight train speed to your death and none the wiser. Up here there is no help, there is no corner drug store to get what you may have forgotten and you don't dial 911. My answer is always the same, I tell them to hold their hands out, balled up into fists and I tell them your right hand is point A that's where you're born, your left hand is point B that's where you die, all the space in between is your life and what you do with it is up to you, you can either make something of it or not, the choice is yours.
I digress from the point at hand and that is to get to camp and shuck this backpack and get some sleep. The way to camp is all cross country, no trail to be found and honestly none is wanted. This is my fourth and final trip up here this year and when I leave in ten days all my gear must come out with me till next year. My three previous trips have filled my brain with visions of tall racked mulies, basking in the sun and eating grass till their pot bellies almost scrap the ground when they walk, swaying to and fro as they waddle through the high crags they call home...
September in the rockies is a place of extremes, especially this high up, one minute it's summer with temperatures that require short sleeves and sunscreen and the next your in a full on blizzard, hunkered under the closest form of cover that you can scramble to. I've seen the snow pile so deep that it would come to the belly on a tall horse and within a few days all that's left is traces in the shade. It's why I come here, the uncertaintude of mother nature, the quiteness that envelopes all, the continual fight that nature wages against itself.
Often I get asked why? Why do you do it? Why would you go alone to a place that within the blink of an eye and with one misplaced step you would find yourself hurtling at freight train speed to your death and none the wiser. Up here there is no help, there is no corner drug store to get what you may have forgotten and you don't dial 911. My answer is always the same, I tell them to hold their hands out, balled up into fists and I tell them your right hand is point A that's where you're born, your left hand is point B that's where you die, all the space in between is your life and what you do with it is up to you, you can either make something of it or not, the choice is yours.
I digress from the point at hand and that is to get to camp and shuck this backpack and get some sleep. The way to camp is all cross country, no trail to be found and honestly none is wanted. This is my fourth and final trip up here this year and when I leave in ten days all my gear must come out with me till next year. My three previous trips have filled my brain with visions of tall racked mulies, basking in the sun and eating grass till their pot bellies almost scrap the ground when they walk, swaying to and fro as they waddle through the high crags they call home...
