Late October means bugling elk and a chance to get outside for 10 days to find myself. No internet, Faceplace or Amazon prime; just me, the supplies I’ve hauled on my back and the solitude of the woods. I love it. I need it. I couldn’t choose to be anywhere else.
This year we picked a new route to camp. It shaved a mile and avoided hills steep enough to make you curse once you can catch your breath. On the flip side, the new route was untested in snow and in order to to avoid a very steep stream bank and swamp, required navigational skill.
I’ve spent my time in the land nav penalty box. I’ve forgotten maps, neglected to turn off GPS units and drained their batteries (and done it again with the spare batteries I just replaced) and tried to use a compass with little understanding beyond knowing that one side of the needle should point North. Failure is a great motivator. I’ve since read enough books on land navigation and how to use a compass–and tested myself in the field–to all but teach a class.
My pack–according to one of the handheld scales that I’ve convinced all of my backcountry accomplices to use–weighed 90 pounds. But with snow–possibly lots of it–in the forecast, my gear choices reflected that possibility.
I’m obsessed with the weight of my pack–and everything in it–because carrying too many things has often been my downfall. I weigh everything in the gear closet–and then write the weight on each item. “Just one more thing.” has resulted in the consumption of ibuprofen by the handful and a grumpy constitution at the end of the day.
Adam, Dave and I arrived in camp Friday afternoon, a mere three hours and under a half-dozen miles after we set out from the brown gate marking the end of motorized travel in the national forest. The sky was cloudy and the air wonderfully, refreshingly cool; we could see storm clouds gathering in the distance. Camp was set up with plenty of daylight in reserve. Eric couldn’t get off from work and was planning on arriving Saturday afternoon.
We started elk hunting before dawn the next morning; the weather was cooler and colder, with clouds stacking up and slowly blocking out the sun. The snow started in the late afternoon–small flakes, falling thickly and quietly. It was beautiful and I remember thinking that I was glad I had stocked on up the small pieces of wood my tipi’s wood stove requires. A hot tent is a beautiful thing in the winter.
No one saw any elk, nor did we find much sign of elk–you look for their distinctive tracks and, of course, scat (which is how proper outdoorsmen say “poop”). I followed fresh bear tracks for a mile or so and crossed lots of deer sign.
I remember failing this test as well. Trying to figure out which way the elk were walking. Did that poop–err, scat–come from a bull or a cow elk? Yes, most of the time you can tell. The bull scat typically has little dimples in the otherwise round shape. All things that take time and effort to learn.
Sometime Saturday afternoon, someone’s phone–defying our non-existent in-camp cell service–registered a text message sent hours earlier from Eric. He’d be a day late and would hike out to meet us tomorrow. In the snow.
Dinner was eaten around a fire, the pit for which Adam had carefully dug the night before. The snow hadn’t let up; there was six inches on the ground. We’d unanimously decided that there was no way Eric would show up tomorrow because none of us would have hiked an untested trail in these conditions. I went to sleep with the smell of woodsmoke in my tent, snow still lazily falling on the other side of the nylon wall.
And snow it did. By the middle of the next afternoon, there was at least a foot on the ground. The snow continued falling slowly, steadily, as it had for the past 18 hours.
For some reason Dave took a walk away from camp. I was in my tipi at the time and didn’t immediately hear the commotion. However, the words: “Help,” “Eric,” “shivering” and “lost.” made their way to me. Minutes later, Eric was helped into my tent and spent the next hour warming up next to the stove.
Eric had hiked out to us in the middle of the storm. He’d been lost several times and spent six-and-a-half hours hiking what had taken us less than three. The route he showed us on his cell phone’s GPS app showed, amongst other missteps, what could be described as a large loop-the-loop.
Adam, Dave and I cleared a level area of snow, set up his tent and threw his sleeping bag inside. Eric–again a shivering mass–crawled into his bag as we unpacked his gear and stacked it next to him.
I’ve only been cold–can’t think right, can’t use my hands because my entire body is shaking too much–once in my life. I was probably 11 and hunting with my dad in Pennsylvania. Well, my dad was hunting and I was walking along with him, scaring away any animals that he might have had a chance to see if I hadn’t been there. Small, hard ice crystals were being blown at us–the kind of snow that feels like it might cut you–and I was sweaty and tired. My dad and I paused behind some downed trees and I rested on some frozen leaves next to an oak stump. I still don’t know how long I was asleep…minutes, an hour, it doesn’t matter. When I awoke, my skin was so cold I later wondered if my sweat had frozen to me. After walking and walking in circles, swinging my arms and opening and closing my hands, I eventually warmed up.
I’ve never put myself in that situation again. In the winter, being sweaty in the backcountry can end you. Adding a case of exhaustion makes getting warm an order of magnitude harder. I’ve learned to slow down so I don’t overheat, add and remove layers no matter how irritated I am at having to stop hiking, and sometimes, pausing to remove a layer and wait until any sweat evaporates. I also do as much as I can to stay in shape so I have enough energy to tough it out.
Eric eventually thawed out, though he was so cold that night he’d had to open a space blanket and put it underneath his sleeping pad to try and stay warm.
The next morning it was still snowing; there was at least 14″ on the ground. We decided that hiking out to our trucks made the most sense. Shooting an elk is the easy part of hunting them. Butchering that animal takes at least three hours; trying to do that in over a foot of snow makes for a cold, wet, miserable experience. Then of course you have to take several back-and-forth trips to hike out 200 or more pounds of meat. In a foot of snow.
As I’d packed in a pair of snowshoes, I was lead dog on the way out. If you’ve never hiked in snowshoes, over deadfall, with a heavy backpack and rifle slung over your shoulder, you’re not missing anything fun. I was thankful for all the squats, burpees and sit-ups I’d done in the preceding months. Adam, Dave and Eric followed in my tracks. It was still snowing and the clouds looked low enough to reach up and touch.
I’d hike until I could feel myself begin to perspire, then I’d stop to cool down. I’d average about 15 minutes of hiking at a slow, measured pace and then a few minutes of cool down. I expected to see the guys catch me at any moment. On the hike out, there was only one area where my sense of direction differed from my infrequent check-ins with my GPS unit.
Again, I remembered times in the past when my first reaction would be to disregard the GPS because I thought I knew better. This time, I reconfirmed my endpoint, my current location and then compared the topography on my device’s screen with where I was standing. All the variables matched up, so even though it felt wrong, I veered a few degrees to my left, continuing to slowly push my way though deep slow in the quiet new growth pine forest. In another 15 minutes I hiked directly past some orange flag tape that Adam and Dave had tied to help Eric on his journey in.
After I’d linked up with the first quarter-mile stretch of abandoned logging road, I removed my pack and took off my outer layer, waiting for my slightly wet back to dry off. It was cold, sure, but warmer than trying to shiver myself warm after my entire body was covered in sweat.
I heard from Adam and Dave a little while after I stopped to dry off. Eric was tired, wasn’t feeling motivated and refused to drink any water, they said. I radioed back that once I hit the truck, I’d unload and turn around to help carry his gear.
Hiking out took me about four hours, not bad considering the time I’d spent cooling down. I unloaded my pack, removed snowshoes, changed into a fresh shirt and began cleaning off the truck. For some reason my fingers chose that moment to lock up and loose almost all feeling. I guess my gloves were more damp than I thought and cleaning off all the snow from my truck and untying snowshoe bindings with my bare hands had caught up to me. I spent the next 20 minutes waiting for the truck’s heater to warm my hands. Once I could feel my fingers I grabbed a few candy bars, took a long sip of the three liter water bladder that I had nearly emptied on the hike out, put my snowshoes back on and went to find the guys.
I met them about 3/4 of a mile up the logging road. Eric felt strong enough to keep his pack, but handed me his rifle for the trip back to the trucks. I heard a few updates on the way out. Not far past the spot I’d taken my pack off to dry off and cool down, Adam and Dave had fired up Dave’s stove under a loosely bundled tarp to warm Eric. Eric hadn’t had taken more than a sip of water on the way out and had neglected to eat much, if anything, before or during the hike out. He was exhausted when we reached the trucks.
I’ve been thinking about how this trip played out for the last month. At the time I was disappointed because it seemed that Eric didn’t comprehend how one decision could have resulted in a completely different outcome for him. What if Adam, Dave and I hadn’t received his text and headed back to the trucks, missing him completely? What if we left anyway, reasoning no one would head out in such nasty conditions? What if he had taken a slightly different detour on the way in and not made it to camp before dark?
Eric had made it, yes, but all I could see was how close to calamity he had traipsed. Before I come down too hard on him, I have to wonder: Would I have fared any differently, had I not learned from my failures over time in small increments?
At times I revel in failure, I celebrate the lessons it teaches me. Failure shows us ways that do not work and encourages us to seek alternatives that do. In a world that seems hell-bent on eliminating risk, teachable moments, and the importance of differing viewpoints, failure is an incredible tutor; the lessons it imparts about how to succeed are more important than ever.
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