Taking it to the top

“You two won’t be the only ones on the trail, after all,” my husband reassured. Brad had to bow out of the spontaneous hike along Bass Creek in the Bitterroot Mountains due to a prior commitment so my visiting childhood friend Helen and I would have to go it alone—without that 6’2, square-shouldered and bear-spray wielding man in the lead.

Brad and I had undertaken Bass Creek Trail several times with family and friends; it was the day trip of choice when visitors landed at our log home in the woods; such a perfect way to show off Western Montana’s scenery while getting good exercise in the great outdoors. Picnic lunch and a thermos of freshly brewed coffee at the top of a spectacular waterfall was most definitely the prize worth pursuing.

I’m not some faint-of-heart femme fatale, and I am all for equal opportunity in the wild as well as civilized world, but neither am I adverse to the chivalrous gesture. When you’re heading uphill into bear and wolf country, there is that certain something about seeing at a tall man’s broad back on the trail, especially in the autumn when pre-hibernating species are stalking food. Without his leadership, perhaps I shouldn’t select tuna for my backpack?

“Almond butter and jam isn’t much better,” Helen pointed out as she slathered an ample share onto a slice of wheat bread.

We’d be fine; like Brad said, we’d have company on the trail, we’d be hiking at high noon, and Lord knows we’d make enough noise with our chatter (we hadn’t seen each other in years so there was much catching up to do) to dissuade any animal attack.

“I’ll toss the bear my tuna while I’m aiming the bear spray!” Brad rolled his eyes as my announcement did not serve to soothe Helen’s sudden misgivings, but overall, she was as game as I was, so onward and upward we climbed. Alone. All afternoon.

Two hours into our intrepid undertaking when I realized we really were the only ones on the trail, I began to feel a bit edgy about the adventure. The sun had abandoned us behind clouds, the air was chilly, and I wondered about our vulnerability as we prepared to languish on a rock with our backs to the forest, nibbling on our much-needed meal. Not wishing to alarm Helen, once seated I casually turned so that my peripheral vision could detect any encroaching intruder—be he man or beast, and as we talked old times, sure enough we began to shiver with the cold.

“I kinda can’t feel my fingers,” Helen confessed. “They don’t feel cold; they just don’t work!” I knew of what she spoke—my extremities were numb, despite being gloved and shod.

We swallowed the last of the coffee and proceeded down the trail, my bear spray poised, but I have to admit, useless in any pinch since my frozen fingers would obviously fail me. We shook, fisted, rubbed—everything we could imagine might thaw our thumbs to begin with, but to no avail. That’s when I flashed back to the glory days of youth when I’d had a crush on a boy who was part of an outdoorsy group of purely platonic friends. One day when we were hiking and my fingers froze to the extent that they could no longer grip the rocks around us, Ben had come to the rescue by suggesting I nestle my hands in his armpits—an offer so intimate, in my naïve mind it was tantamount to marriage proposal. My recollection was that the maneuver had fairly well warmed my hands, but indubitably warmed my heart.

I stopped dead in my tracks on the trail.

“We have to put our hands in our armpits!” I smiled to think of long lost innocence. Helen looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Do it!” I ordered, and as swiftly said, lifted my fleece jacket and Patagonia shirt, careful to conceal the abominable abdominal area, crossed my arms and pressed each palm under its opposite pit. Helen obeyed, desperate. Nearly 40 years later, it still did the trick.

Heated by hubris, we’d negotiated the trail sans husband and had utilized a survival technique I’d formerly filed away as more flirtatious than necessarily effective. Such prowess under pressure deserved reward, and so I drove us to a bakery in town where we purchased a sourdough boule loaf that had moments before been lifted from the oven. On the drive home we ripped off great hunks of what arguably woman can alone live on and devoured it like the beasts we’d all day been avoiding. Meanwhile, the prorietress of the establishment, after hearing about our afternoon outing, had recommended several other hikes we might enjoy.

“This is the perfect time to do Burnt Fork Pinnacle because of all the fall colors!” Susan urged. “And then there’s Stark Mountain—it really kicks butt!” Our eyes flashed from her gaze and locked. In a glance we wordlessly concurred: Susan is tiny and lovely, very feminine and gentle natured. We could beat her butt!

Over-confidence in the wild is a dangerous thing. So full of ourselves were we back at the cabin, our toes lifted to the fireplace, that we made plans for tomorrow. I unearthed Brad’s Missoula area hiking trail books and between those and the Internet, we gleaned the exact trailhead location. Susan had said it was just three miles to the peak where we would enjoy a view unsurpassed by any other, and in every direction. The maps told us 2.5 miles to victory. Easy peezy.

This time Brad agreed to position of fearless leader. We got a late start—after lunch—so packed high-protein snacks. Relieved of bear spray duty, I carried only a small camera. Ansel Adams I am not, but even a snapshot might be required to prove we’d been there—where as it turned out, no man was going. Helen and I slathered on the sunscreen and were good to go. 70 degrees and sunny. No hurting hands today.

Less than a mile up the marked trail, we paused so that I could take a couple of pictures, whereupon Brad turned on his heel and handed me the bear spray canister.

“Hiking straight uphill is just not pleasant for me; you two go on and I’ll wait for you here on this rock.” Our path was, so far, unrelentingly vertical. There is, after all, that word “pinnacle” in there, so what did we expect?

“Do you know how to use that?” A husband is wise to double check these things, even though there was assumption that yesterday I could have. And he didn’t mean the camera. I inspected the tigger on the canister more closely.

“I pull this off and then push here, right?” We rehearsed an imaginary bear scenario. Then off we went, Helen and I ready to face any foe.

Today we were even deeper into bear habitat: the heart of the Lolo National Forest. And as we climbed and climbed and climbed, stopping every twenty feet to catch our breath, I was hyper-aware of time: What time had we begun? When does it get dark? How long has Brad been waiting? When will he begin to worry? Nagging anxiety not conducive to the outdoor experience.

“Are we kicking butt yet?” Helen inquired of the surroundings, which were—really were—spectacular. I groaned and gasped and swallowed more water.

“This is not the hike that’s supposed to kick butt,” I reminded her. What sort of camouflaged Amazon was Susan anyway? If she can get her butt kicked more than this, what is she doing in the kitchen?

Long story shorter, the switchbacks started. Trudge to the left, circle and zig right, zag back left. We’d long ago passed several summits, the arrival at each one a tease that revealed only another. Here stood two born city girls bred by mothers whose idea of wilderness was an already pilfered sale rack at Macy’s and whose notion of exercise was the Los Angeles Times Crossword Puzzle. I inhaled deeply---ahhh, the unmistakable aroma of non-fiction fodder.

“This must be how Lewis and Clark felt,” I said at one point, literally, when it only permitted us to see yet another within our grasp, “when at the top of each mountain all they could see were more mountains.”

We agreed that it was important to stop periodically, not only to catch our breath and hydrate, but more importantly to look up and around at what really was the most spectacular array of autumn color and sweeping view of valley and mountain range I’d ever witnessed. I knew that each time we paused to take it in, we were both secretly contemplating surrender.

“Isn’t it really all about the view, the colors, and the magnificence of what we are seeing…or is it about getting to the top?” Helen rationalized as the devil toyed with her to call it a day. That look we’d exchanged in the bakery passed between us as we uttered in unison, “Getting to the top.”

We were invested; into it this far, I considered as I maniacally checked the hour on my watch, allowing us 15 minutes more—just another 15 before turning around.

“How do we not keep going?” Helen wheezed behind me while rounding yet another switchback corner. By this time, I’d gone just far enough ahead to earn the honor of “scout,” and several feet to my rear, she would await my whoop and holler of “Eureka!” signaling summit. At 3:00 (we’d been hiking for two hours) all she heard was my exasperation.

“What’s this 3 miles? How long would it take us to go 3 miles? I normally walk a 15-minute mile; have we gone past it?”

Helen insisted that it would be fairly difficult to pass the top. Unless we were now nearing the top of some other range of mountains. Were we now perched atop the Reservation Divide? We scrambled to determine our usual walking pace, how that translated into mileage, figuring in steep hill scaling. I shook off ever-increasing bear fear as we tromped through a densely forested span. When we emerged, there it was—yet another crest to climb, with the trail winding off to the left of it.

“Want to just go straight up and see?” Helen proposed. Half crawling, half crouching, we scaled the last bit hand over fist and bellowed, “Eureka!“
Whatever that tiny rise was on our left would just have to wait. We would access TOPO maps at home to discover where we’d been and where art thou, o summit! Not to mention there would be a reckoning with Susan next time we crossed paths on level ground.

"Aren’t you going to take a picture?“ Helen panted. Perspiration dripping from my forehead, I turned a full circle to absorb the breathtaking sight that spread 360 degrees around me. I knew then and there that the only photos I would have would be ones I’d taken near the bottom—such panorama could never be captured on a Canon Sure Shot.

Downhill is always swifter than up, but harder on the knees and quads—especially in your late 50’s. Suffice to say that by the time we stumbled down to Brad who had napped peacefully on a rock and deftly whittled a stick into a deadly spear lest he require a weapon while we were away with the spray, we didn’t feel like walking for a few days. Nor could we have managed had we tried. It has been three days and I still can’t make my way down our front porch steps without wincing.

“Did you feel a little insecure without your man?” Brad shyly asked. I was indeed relieved to see my husband especially since once again there had been no other living soul on the trail; only after we were toes up by the fire again did I admit to Helen that I’d pictured us in the newspaper headlines, having been mauled by a grizzly or gored by a goat.

And when we garnered the quad strength to once rise to our feet in search of TOPO maps to tell us? Seems we had indeed trekked beyond the top! From the Ninemile Valley floor we’d reached an altitude of approximately 6,900 feet. The dotted line that mraked our path stopped before we had, at the base of that last four-legged sprint we’d crab-walked. Off to the left on the computer screen was another dotted line that rose to a nagging little knob marked 7,000-something. Ignore it; another mountain, another day. High five and Alleluia; at last we could relax, nibble on what’s left of sourdough, and since my pictures were utterly pathetic, talk about the view.