DON'T GO HIKING WITH CAPTAIN PAIN
Croke, Bill
Don’t Go Hiking W Don’t Go Hiking W A mountain man’s search for a summer paradise. BY BILL CROKE IGH COUNTRY HIKERS” hikes are “led” affairs. As many as a half dozen people have taken...
...And there’s sometimes a participation attrition rate after a Captain Pain hike...
...There was always that sultry breeze, and the gurgling of the creek...
...We also didn’t see any moose, though the habitat was perfect for one or two to be hanging around...
...Because when Kevin has me as his sole hiking companion (captive audience...
...We didn’t see any elk (the middle of the day is a poor time to view wildlife), but small piles of brown “scat” were present here and there, the pellet droppings rather large, the size of acorns, as compared to deer scat, which is smaller...
...It was our typical middle-aged August means the windblown grass was brown crowd of both sexes, with a few newcomers...
...A mountain man’s summertime paradise...
...it was jus eado M TWAS HARD FOR US TO ESTIMATE the size of Grinnell t plain big, . And it was a three-sided box, the sides being the towering mountains, stony and gashed with the remnants of the previous winter’s snow...
...BY BILL CROKE IGH COUNTRY HIKERS” hikes are “led” affairs...
...Soon, I see his genial, optimistic, bespectacled Midwestern (he’s originally from Minnesota) countenance beaming through the windshield...
...No sign of grizzlies either, though they’re known to frequent the meadows earlier in the summer...
...For this reason, I came up with a nickname for him: Captain Pain...
...Later, when we stopped for lunch by the creek, a few of our number decided to turn back, having lost patience at not reaching Grinnell Meadows...
...Dead branches tormented us as they poked at head and body and snagged our clothes and backpacks...
...How the elk got there to shed it the previous spring is beyond me...
...I’ve always thought it as fair a place as any,” he said...
...I named him thus because not only does Kevin tend to lead us “off-trail,” but it always seems to be up...
...This means consulting a trail guide or the Internet to research a particular area...
...He likes a hike that will give us a couple of thousand feet of vertical elevation (and great views) during the course of a day...
...He gazes longingly up at extremely high ridges as if wanting to be immediately there...
...Once, while searching for an interesting route back to the trailhead (Kevin hates to go back the same way that he came in) at Painter Creek in Sunlight Basin, Captain Pain led me down the west fork of the creek (neither of us had ever taken this route and were ignorant of the terrain) through a large blowdown (in this case, dead, fire-scorched trees felled by wind...
...The creek was bordered by thick willow brush and short-butsteeplyeroded cutbanks that lent a feeling of entrapment and made for slow progress...
...After further discussion, it was soon apparent that everybody but Kevin and I were turning back, and after lunch we bid our companions goodbye...
...I always walk over— pack on my back—because it’s only a couple of blocks from my house...
...on the designated weekend morning in the parking lot of the Cody Recreation Center, and we carpool from there...
...They chewed their cud and seemed to be watching us as if they thought us to be complete idiots...
...According to the trail guide, the best guess was five or six miles...
...He seems to love “bushwhacking,” as if it’s worth the struggle to slug your way through brush and overandunder deadfall (large downed trees) to get to an interesting place or to see a nice view...
...And I swore to myself that I would hike with Kevin Lehman again...
...That’s an understatement...
...Old Gabe smoked his pipe and watched the breezedrifted clouds shadow the mountains...
...The other guy is usually a stick-tothetrail type, while Kevin, well, likes to wander...
...No pain, no gain...
...Many times when Kevin leads a hike (remember: “Kevin’s hikes are hard”) his car is the only 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 With Captain P With Captain Pain ain one there...
...We were immediately in awe of the place, and that’s saying something, because both of us have lived in the Northern Rockies for years...
...But most of Captain Pain’s hikes that turn into mountaineering expeditions start out in an improvisational way...
...For Captain Pain, my souvenir was justification for the rigors of a nightmarish hike...
...Ihundreds of yards by hundreds of yards ws (100-200 acres...
...his Hawken rifle leaning on the log next to him...
...It wasn’t long—maybe a half mile through the pines as the trail hugged the creek—before we came out of the trees and into Grinnell Meadows...
...As many as a half dozen people have taken the responsibility to do the homework required to properly lead a hike...
...the Shoshone River...
...We sat on a smooth old gray cottonwood log by the creek, and I could imagine Jim Bridger himself sitting with us as his horse grazed contentedly nearby...
...One woman put it to me succinctly: “Kevin’s hikes are hard...
...The goal was a purported garden spot called Grinnell Meadows, but we weren’t exactly sure how far it was because none of us had ever been there...
...Out of earshot I ribbed him: “Well, Captain Pain, you don’t have to worry about those guys ever hiking with you again...
...those are the hikes where I say: I’ll never hike with Kevin Lehman again...
...In the middle of this Green Beret training exercise, I found a small, two-foot-long elk antler lying on a log...
...These scenic journeys are certainly worth the effort, but after some of them I swear to myself that I will never hike with Kevin Lehman again...
...Bill Croke is a writer in Cody, Wyoming...
...As we “switch back”—huffing and puffing—up rocky, windswept ridges, we sometimes call out : “Kevin, when are we going to run out of up...
...Two guys are especially good at this, and one is Kevin Lehman...
...Afternoon thunderhead shadows drifted across the peaks and the meadows...
...Don’t Go Hiking W Don’t Go Hiking W A mountain man’s search for a summer paradise...
...The first four miles or so were quite steep, as the trail climbed steadily up the drainage through thick timber above the creek, and there was some grumbling back in the ranks...
...The views were good from this lofty height, but after this difficult trek back I swore that I would never hike with Kevin Lehman again...
...HEN “HIGH COUNTRY HIKERS” hikes , we meet at 8 A.M...
...Kevin and I continued to joke about out friends who gave up before the great payoff...
...One firm hiking club rule is that no one who turns back does so alone, but the consensus was fine with Kevin, as a group planned to return...
...I approach, smile, wave, and think: “What am I doing here...
...2 2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7...
...Using my binoculars, I spotted a pair of gray bighorn J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 2 1 D O N ’ T G O H I K I N G W I T H C A P T A I N P A I N sheep—a ram and a ewe—on the opposite ridge across the creek...
...Grinnell Creek, here near its headwawood, willo co NE SUNDAY LAST AUGUST,Kevin led eight of us up spo tton tted with clumps of trees w, chalky white aspen, and pointy w with two separate channels , both hardwood and soft: crony of Theodore Roosevelt) from the North Fork of that were easily forded across shiny, wet gravel bars...
...He once led a group of us to the Copper Lakes near Sunlight Basin, climbing some eighteen hundred feet in just a couple of miles on a steep grind of a trail without switchbacks through a long hot summer morning...
...For two hours we made our way downhill (Thank God for that) through the old burn, a charred forest that reminded me of a carelessly tossed pile of black stick matches leaning on each other...
...A couple of hours of this torture gained us maybe a mile...
...There are variations of this theme...
...Kevin and I had a good laugh about this...
...I was happy to find that elk horn, but despite it I swore that I would never hike with Kevin Lehman again...
...We climbed over some trees, and crawled under others...
...A place of ease and plenty: well watered, with abundant grass for horses, and wild game for the cookpot...
...Oh, well, it sounded better than going back the way we came, and after sweating the 500 or so vertical feet to the crest of the ridge, I followed the Captain as we carefully treaded its wind-scoured spine with the boulder-strewn creek far below...
...There hadn’t been much more of an elevation gain from our lunch spot, so the grumblers had almost got there anyway...
...Another time—without a trail most of the way—we scaled 12,348-foot Carter Mountain to its summit...
...The waving grassland was and the early summer wildflowers were gone, but Kevin and I still spent a couple of hours exploring the meadow and the timber lining its edges...
...And the mosquitoes were troublesome, which is common in summer when hiking amongst the trees and sheltered from a breeze...
...It should be noted that Captain Pain’s wife and two teenaged sons mostly refuse to hike with him...
...For an hour or so we negotiated the ridge, frequently triggering talus (unstable rock fragments on a steep slope beneath a solid rock outcropping, and akin to walking ankle-deep in marbles on a steep incline) slides that threatened to carry us down too...
...We can climb that ridge and follow it back down to the trailhead,” he said...
...Another hike found us a couple of miles up Boulder Creek (which drains into the South Fork of the Shoshone River) following a fading trail that crossed the creek about a dozen times, making us hopscotch across on rocks, sometimes precariously...
...Grinnell Meadows is the sort of location that the 19th-century fur trade era mountain men called a “Park” (as in North, Middle, and South Park in the Colorado Rockies) or a “Hole” (as in Jackson Hole and Pierre’s Hole, both in the Yellowstone region...
...O ters the Grinnell Creek Trail (named for author and ethnologist George Bird Grinnell, an outdoors lodg , threads the meado epole pine...
...Captain Pain looked up and studied the adjacent high ridges, and I knew what was coming...
Vol. 40 • July 2007 • No. 6
