Montana Headwall

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SUMMER 2012

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A tote-to-float on the South Fork nets perfection.

ULTRA MARATHON MAN He runs 100 miles nonstop and wins court trials in between. Nothing’s too far for Mike Wolfe.

MIND OVER MOUNTAIN

INSIDE On Belay

Grub 40

6

Go with the grain

Contributors

8 Head Trip 48

Head Lines 11 Mountain bikers mass in Missoula Bakken’s bad spin Polishing the Sapphire trail

The Pioneers spirit

Head Out 52 Your summer recreation calendar

Head Gear 55

Head Light 22 Here comes the fuzz

Hot stuff you need right now

The Crux 62

Head Shots 24 Our readers’ best

A climb that’s a long time coming

Wild Things 38 Warts and all

STAFF EDITOR GENERAL MANAGER PHOTO EDITOR ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER PRODUCTION DIRECTOR CIRCULATION MANAGER SPECIAL PROJECTS COORDINATOR

Please recycle this magazine

Montana Headwall (ISSN 2151-1799) is a registered trademark of Independent Publishing, Inc. Copyright 2012 by Independent Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reprinting in whole or in part is forbidden except by permission of Independent Publishing, Inc. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively.

And yeah, we’re having fun.

CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Linn Lynne Foland Chad Harder Carolyn Bartlett Joe Weston Adrian Vatoussis Chris Melton Skylar Browning, Noah Couser, Emily Downing,

Matthew Frank, Chad Harder, Matt Holloway, Caroline Kurtz, Ari LeVaux, Megan McNamer, Noël Phillips, Kathy Witkowsky COPY EDITOR ART DIRECTOR PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES FRONT DESK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

David Merrill Kou Moua Jenn Stewart, Jonathan Marquis Tami Johnson, Steven Kirst, Alecia Goff, Sasha Perrin, Lorie Rustvold Matt Gibson

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Climbing St. Nick requires hope and a rope.

Cover: Descending Natoas Peak toward Mount Merritt This page: American dog tick Photos by Chad Harder

317 S. Orange St.• Missoula, MT 59801 406-543-6609 • Fax 406-543-4367 www.montanaheadwall.com

CONTENTS

16 30 42

PACKRAFT PARADISE

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ON BELAY

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I

once wrote on this page that the narrative arc of a Headwall story typically pivots around mishap. Not that we plan it that way. It’s just that our plans rarely work out. It snows in summer. The fish don’t bite during the hatch. The pheasants jeer from the next field over. But once in a while there’s grand success. In this issue, we’ve lucked into three, count ’em, three outings, verging from epic to easy, that hit the expected high notes, with barely a blister to dampen the delight.

First-time contributor Noah Couser takes the prize for most enviable adventure for his packrafting float through the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the South Fork of the Flathead River. It’s one of Montana’s iconic backcountry trips, and Couser and his crew carry it off with satisfying self-sufficiency.

On a more leisurely foray, Noël Phillips successfully gets her tenderfoot boyfriend up to scenic Torrey Lake in the Pioneers, where a little cold weather only whets her appetite to return.

That’s a solid win on the scorecard.

And in Glacier National Park, Matt Holloway returns to the scene of two previous misses to finally summit Mount St. Nicholas. Along with climbing partner Kyle Fedderly, Holloway blitzed the route in a gutsy 23-hour push up a remote peak that conventionally takes three or four days to climb. His story on page 42 reminds us all that even the strongest people—and Holloway’s as strong as any we know here at Headwall—have to push well beyond their comfort zone to pull off the dream adventures.

Ultra-runner Mike Wolfe, who’s profiled by Kathy Witkowsky on page 30, clearly knows all about pushing through discomfort. Wolfe’s dual career as one of America’s top ludicrous-distance runners and assistant U.S. attorney clearly shows he’s got something special inside that prefigures personal success. It seems to start with desire, builds through committed practice, and likely hardens every time he endures the pain of going farther.

When the conditions are right and it all comes together, whether it’s at hour 20 in a 100-mile race or day three of a mellow backcountry tour, it’s gloriously good fortune. Here’s hoping we all get out this summer to find some for ourselves.

Matt Gibson Editor-in-Chief

Chad Harder

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CONTRIBUTORS

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After graduating from Cornell University, Witkowsky followed the lead of alum Kurt Vonnegut and took a job at Chicago’s City News Bureau. She later moved west and became a freelance writer, contributing to Vogue, Mother Jones and a wide variety of other publications. She has directed award-winning documentaries, co-authored a guidebook to the Northern Rockies, and produced and reported numerous stories for National Public Radio. A Missoula resident since 1991, Witkowsky is also a certified yoga teacher.

When she’s not sucking the marrow out of life outdoors or undertaking new indoor adventures (fencing and aerials are the latest), Phillips might, for a moment, be found catching her breath on the couch reading, pursuing her writing dreams or curled up watching good and oh-soawful-they’re-great films.

Phillips owns ShapeShifters Personal Training in Missoula, where she’s managed to turn her playtime into a career for the last seven years. You’ll find her at ShapeShifterspt.com.

Noah Couser

Kathy Witkowsky

Noël Phillips

Montana Headwall Page 8 Summer 2012

Matt Holloway

A Whitefish-based freelance photographer, Couser’s specialty is action shots, especially those involving skiing and snowboarding. The native Idahoan graduated in 2007 from the University of Montana and fell hard for the mountains and rivers of Montana. When he’s not working as a school teacher— an occupation he shares with his wife, Megan—he spends much of his time with friends and fellow adventure addicts in and around Glacier National Park, toting his camera. You can view his portfolio at www.noahcouser.com.

Holloway lives with his wife, daughter and son in Columbia Falls and claws around in the wilderness almost every day. His work has appeared in Montana Magazine, Big Sky Journal, and Glacier Park: 100 Years, 100 Stories, as well as in the inaugural issue of Whitefish Review, where he is currently the fiction editor. His essay “Distance” will be included in the anthology A Natural History of Now: Reports from the Edge of Nature, to be released this fall.

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NEXT STOP, OLYMPICS

Missoula race preps mountain bikers for London tive feedback from racers, locals and sponsors,” says Horan. “That made it easy to look for things to improve rather than things we had to completely fix.”

All of which bodes well for Schultz.

If things break right, he’ll be able to gear

up for London against top-flight competition, in front of a hometown crowd, on a course he helped design.

“It would be hard to top last year,” he says, “but I’m certainly up for trying.”

Skylar Browning

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Sam Schultz beat teammate Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski by 1:03 to win the 2011 Pro XCT in Missoula, and finished third overall in the season standings.

“I would expect both the full U.S. and Canadian Olympic teams to be there,” says Ben Horan, the race’s technical director and co-promoter. Horan’s planning on as many as 400 amateur and professional riders this year and more than 2,500 spectators.

Aside from the prestige and attention, not much else will change for the 2012 event. Horan says the 6-kilometer “figure-eight” course will undergo minor tweaks, but largely remain the same. He specifically notes that the signature “A-Line” jump, Schultz’s favorite feature and a crowd pleaser that produces big air as well as the possibility of wreckage, will be back.

“By all accounts last year was a huge success, and we heard nothing but posi-

HEAD LINES

Few things get Sam Schultz riled up.

The 26-year-old Missoula native and top-ranked professional mountain biker is known for possessing a surfer’s laidback attitude and a champion’s poise.

That makeup is partly why he’s a favorite to lead U.S.A. Cycling’s Olympic team in London later this summer and why he’s a perennial contender on the UCI World Cup circuit with the SubaruTrek team. But ask him whether this summer’s jam-packed schedule could preclude him from defending his title in his hometown Pro XCT race and the clinically calm Schultz perks up.

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he says. “No matter what, I’m there.”

Schultz isn’t the only one looking forward to the race. After drawing more than 1,500 spectators and 250 racers to its inaugural run, the 2012 Hammer Nutrition Missoula XC at Marshall Mountain is set to be one of the biggest cross-country events of the season. UCI, or the International Biking Union, elevated it to a C-1 race, its highest status, which doubles the prize money and increases the amount of UCI points awarded to winners. The race is also scheduled for July 14—a week earlier than last year—making it the last domestic tune-up before the Summer Olympics. Both changes should attract more elite-level riders.

Chad Harder

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DETOURS

Last summer, Scottish filmmaker and cyclist Graham Kitchener found himself pedaling through Williston, N.D., the de facto capital of the Bakken oil boom, when a parade of heavy equipment

turned an otherwise calm stretch into the most dangerous, white-knuckled part of his cross-country trek.

“There was a chaos about it,” Kitchener says in a video diary from the

trip. “There were so many tankers at points it was like cycling beside a train.

They were so constant, one after the other.”

The 16 million barrels of oil a month sucked from the plains of western North Dakota and eastern Montana is treasure for oilmen, and treacherous for touring cyclists like Kitchener.

Graham Kitchener is finishing up Sleepless ’Til Seattle, a documentary about his 4,300-mile cycling adventure across the country.

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HEAD LINES

The Bakken ain’t for biking

In 2008, the Missoula-based Adventure Cycling Association, which produces maps for its network of cycling routes around the country, began hearing about incessant truck traffic along its Northern Tier and Lewis & Clark routes. In 2010, a cyclist was hit and killed by a pickup.

Beyond the traffic, cyclists can’t find places to rest weary legs as oilfield workers overrun hotels and campgrounds.

P2K Please Like “Deke Tidwell

Missoula MT Real Estate Agent” © Photo By Jessica Tidwell

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Kitchener documented the bedlam, and sent his video to ACA. It proved to be the pump that broke the oil derrick’s mast: ACA decided it was time for a detour.

“This is the first time in our history that we’ve ever had to do a major re-route of this magnitude,” says ACA cartographer Jennifer Milyko.

After seeking direction from the state transportation departments and dispatching a staffer to collect intel on services and road conditions, ACA pushed both its Northern Tier and Lewis & Clark routes from U.S. Highway 2 about 100 miles south all the way to the I-94 corridor. The new maps are due out this summer.

Milyko knows cyclists hate the interstate as much as headwinds and hemorrhoids.

“But the fact of the matter is,” she says, “in rural states like North Dakota and Montana, sometimes that’s all there is.” And it sure beats sharing the road with a never-ending convoy of oversized oil equipment.

Matthew Frank

Kalispell climber Blake Passmore released the second volume of his Glacier National Park climbing guides this spring, detailing non-technical routes to 22 peaks in the Two Medicine and Firebrand Pass areas of the park. Like the first book in the series, which focuses on the Logan Pass area, Climb Glacier National Park: Vol. 2 gives detailed route descriptions, including GPS coordinates which provide clear directions to alpine explorers. What sets Passmore’s books apart, though, are the exacting color photos of the routes. Multiple shots of each mounClimb Glacier National Park: Vol. 2 tain reveal passages Montana Outdoor Guidebooks through the toughest 192 pages, $19.95 spots, all but eliminating “where do we go from here” uncertainty. High on a mountain surrounded by perilous cliffs, that’s helpful information indeed. Buy it directly from the publisher at www.climbglacier.com or at area bookstores and climbing retailers.

Matt Gibson

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HEAD LINES

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DREAM TRAIL

Sapphire in the rough Somewhere deep in the web of logging roads and clear cuts spread over the northern part of the Sapphire Range is a series of trails. Neglected throughout decades of timber harvest, it’s now virtually nonexistent and hard to find. If local hikers and bikers have their way, though, the trail won’t be lost for much longer.

Along with the U.S. Forest Service, Stevensville-based hiker Kirk Thompson is working on a route that would connect this long-ignored area southeast of Missoula with the Continental Divide Trail in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness area.

Called the Sapphire Crest Trail, the project is waiting on only one thing: the right time for the Lolo and Bitterroot National forests to devote the resources needed to build it.

At this point, the Forest Service isn’t prepared to do the work. Al Hilshey, a staff officer from the Missoula Ranger District of Lolo National Forest, says the first step is an environmental assessment. More than anything, the project requires money, manpower and time— three things the Forest Service is short on right now.

“That’s a time commitment we don’t have at this point,” Hilshey says. “We have to get some of the other projects we’re working on finished.”

Most of the trail is already in place.

The route connects existing logging roads and trails in the Sapphire Mountains, ultimately spanning about 100 miles from the Pattee Canyon Recreation Area to the CDT. Only about 20 of those miles would need to be created, since the majority of the distance is already covered by a trail that goes from

larly because it’s not marked in the lower sections and it crisscrosses logging roads.

“There’s such a network of roads up there that ultimately don’t go anywhere,” Weyhrich says. “If you’re not familiar with the area up there, you can waste a lot of time riding around.”

With a little care and a lot of work, Thompson thinks the trails could be revived. He says he has hiked nearly every step of the route and helped survey the area for the Forest Service. He’s committed to making the project happen.

The Department of Agriculture, home of the U.S. Forest Service, has suffered more than $3 billion in budget cuts since 2010.

Skalkaho Pass north to Ambrose Saddle, and by existing trails in the Pintlers.

Although it’s mostly convoluted on the north end of the Sapphires, the trail does have a foundation near Missoula.

About 10 years ago, local mountain biker John Weyhrich began single-handedly clearing a trail between Pattee Canyon and Miller Canyon. The Miller Divide Trail is tricky to follow, he notes, particu-

“I’ve been interested for a long time in protecting the wildlands on the Sapphire Crest,” Thompson says. “This trail was the perfect tie-in.”

For now, however, the Sapphire Crest Trail is little more than a dream and a plan. Until the Forest Service can wrangle the funds and the time for an assessment, all Thompson can do is wait.

Emily Downing Chad Harder

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HEAD LINES www.mtheadwall.com

Missoula-based triathletes Jennifer Luebke (left) and Linsey Corbin transition between swimming and cycling during the 27th Annual Grizzly Triathlon at the University of Montana on April 21. Ranked as one of the best female triathletes in the world, Corbin won the event with a time of 1:02:33, beating a course record she set last year.

Chad Harder

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1705 Bow St.wMissoula, MT 59801 549-5283wsapphirept.com Montana Headwall Page 15 Summer 2012

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“W

hat the hell are we doing?” I asked myself.

It seemed like a logical question after glancing at the map one last time and mulling over the distance we had to travel in the next five days. When our ride pulled away from the Pyramid Pass trailhead a few minutes later, the reality of the trip began to sink in.

My wife, Megan, our friend Doug Casey and I were setting out on a 65mile packraft adventure through the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, including a 10-mile paddle down Youngs Creek and a spectacular grand finale: a 38-mile float down the South Fork of the Flathead River.

But it was the first part of the journey—a 17-mile trek over Pyramid Pass— that had me worried. The three of us had carried some pretty decent loads on past wilderness trips, but we’d never tackled 1,800 vertical feet with paddles, fly rods, PFDs, throw ropes, five days of food and clothing, 15 pounds of camera gear, and three inflatable 5-pound Alpacka rafts.

It was a new experience all around.

I’d never actually sat in the boat before, unless you counted floating in it at Whitefish City Beach a few days earlier, just to practice inflating it and to make sure it held air. None of us had ever spent this much time in the Bob, or been in this particular area. None of us had seen (let alone rafted) Youngs Creek, a main tributary to the South Fork and a passage we couldn’t do without.

Our friends were worried, too. “Why don’t you try a warm-up trip before this?” they’d said.

But Megan is game for whatever adventure I cook up and Doug, our compatriot, is one of the biggest fly-fishing addicts I know, so as soon as I said “South Fork” he was in. There was no doubt in my mind this would be the greatest trip ever. Until, well, now.

“Ready to go?” Megan asked.

“Yep,” I lied.

T

here was good news about Pyramid Pass: It was the only climb in the trip. Once we conquered it and hiked

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down to the put-in at Youngs Creek, Megan and I could throw off 60-pound packs—Doug’s was 80 pounds, from the looks of it—and start the real joys of packrafting.

For now, though, we were stuck with sweating and dodging mule turds.

The Pyramid Pass Trail is a major thruway, chewed up by mule trains and horses carrying outfitters, boats, gear, and clients to the South Fork. Unfortunately in our case, we were the mules.

The pack straps carved into our shoulders, a misery multiplied by the intense heat and hungry mosquitoes.

After slogging for more than an hour, Megan turned to me and asked between gasps, “How much vert do we have left?” She almost seemed afraid to ask.

I checked the altimeter on my watch and saw we’d only climbed about a third of the way. “You don’t even want to know,” I told her.

For my part, I fought the misery by focusing on things I’d read. Google “packraft” and you’ll see dozens of trip reports describing amazing wilderness adventures that would be unappealing or unimagin-

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able without the lightweight watercraft, which carry heavy loads, deftly maneuver in whitewater and pack down to the size of a small tent. (Full disclosure: I’ve also taken promotional photos for Alpacka, so I’d seen the products up close.)

The minute I heard about the rafts I knew I wanted to try them for a trip on the South Fork, a river with some of the best fly fishing in Montana, surrounded by roadless wilderness.

short order we inflated our rafts with ultra-light pumps and lashed our packs to the bows.

“I guess there’s no turning back now, huh?” Megan joked.

We hoped the joke wasn’t on us. The ranger at the Spotted Bear Ranger Station had told us a few days earlier that the South Fork normally ran at about 1,200 cubic feet per second in early August. Due to the snow-laden winter

riverbank to scope out our approach.

Doug and I, filled with excitement, plotted what we thought would be the safest path through the rapids. But as I was visualizing my line, I looked behind me and noticed Megan wasn’t with us. I scrambled over the rocks back to our boats to find her sitting on the bank, terrified. With tears forming in her eyes she said, “I think I’m going to pack my boat and bushwhack to the

too bad,” Doug said. A moment later all I could see upside down in the tumbling water.”

“I don’t think it’ll be was his blue boat

It took about three hours to reach the top of the pass and tramp downhill. At dusk we finally crashed at a dusty, wellused campsite about 1.5 miles from the confluence of Babcock Creek and Youngs Creek, where we’d put in the next day.

The flocks of mosquitoes that had chased us for miles and the blisters forming on our heels didn’t prevent us from enjoying some bean burritos by the campfire, along with one of Doug’s best contributions to the trip, some strategically packed Jim Beam.

T

he short stretch to Youngs Creek went quickly the next morning, and we were elated to take off our packs. In

and delayed spring runoff, it was now cruising at three times that flow, she’d told us. She couldn’t offer specific information about Youngs Creek except to say, “Just be careful, and be sure to scout all the rapids.”

But Youngs Creek turned out to be friendly. Thanks to an introductory stretch of flat water, we gained coordination and confidence with every paddle stroke—which soon came in handy. A friend had told me we’d see an impressive limestone wall and a bottleneck where the river sped up a bit, and he wasn’t kidding. The towering cliffs made a formidable entrance to a gorge.

We pulled out at the top of the wave train and carefully walked the

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trail. I’ll just meet you guys below this canyon.”

I’d like to say I was a comforting and understanding husband, but that’s not exactly what came out. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to let you go by yourself. You can totally do this. Just follow my boat, and we’ll get you through.”

After further coaxing, Megan was ready—or perhaps resigned—to drop in behind me. This was only a Class II rapid, but when you’re sitting on crashing water in a tiny one-man inflatable, about 20 miles from the nearest help, with no means of communication and sharp rock walls squeezing in on either side, the rating doesn’t mean much.

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five or six nice cutthroats before dinner, comforted that the trout we’d hiked all this way to catch were hungry for almost every type of fly.

B

It turned out to be a thrilling ride. We bounced safely through the first set of waves and pulled aside to scout the next.

Megan had a big smile of accomplishment on her face. “That was actually kind of fun,” she beamed.

We ran each set of rapids, carefully scouting each one, until we were out of the canyon. And then it was smooth water down to the convergence with

Danaher Creek, where the South Fork begins.

The wide riverbanks welcomed our waterlogged boats. It was just past noon, and the sunshine let us dry off and tie on our first dry fly. Doug and I fished while Megan basked in her triumph over the rapids.

With every fish rise we forgot the suffering of the day before. We each landed

reaking camp over the next few days was simple: We packed our gear into dry bags and loaded up the Alpackas, which continued to impress me with their kayak-like dexterity. We encountered a shocking amount of downfall from the spring’s tumultuous runoff. Three logjams were so massive we had to portage around or over them.

But the boats maneuvered the rest of the obstacles with ease.

On day three we reached the remarkable White River, with its pale pastel rocks that give it a distinctly ghost-like look. We set up camp, and Doug and I decided to fish while Megan read a book by the bank. “We’ll be back in a little while,” I shouted as Doug and I made our way upstream, knowing that if there were fish, we’d be much longer than a little while.

Continued on page 58

by Chad Harder

HEAD LIGHT

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Here comes the fuzz

F

No focus? No worries. rom speed-flying to mountain biking or even tailgate riding, today’s adventure sport athletes are moving faster than ever. And the more hardcharging the action, the harder it is to capture the scene without blurriness. While few things spoil an action photo like blur, used selectively it can also be your friend and create very cool effects.

To make the most of the situation, it’s helpful to understand what causes blur in the first place.

Typically, it’s because the camera moves, the subject moves, or both things happen at once. More simply, if the subject’s reflection moves across your camera’s sensor while the shutter is open, it blurs the image.

Both problems usually occur by accident, the result of your camera compensating for a low-light

scene and leaving its shutter open longer than normal. What’s normal? Well, shutter speeds are described in fractions of a second, and most camera shutters can be set to stay open from a few seconds (very long) to 1/2000th of a second (very short) or faster.

It’s also valuable to know which shutter speeds capture action scenes without blur, so here are some examples: 1/1000th of a second or faster will completely freeze any adventure sport athlete—downhill skiers and skydivers included, and 1/250th of a second will freeze most, but not all, human-powered activities.

Choose

1/60th of a second or slower and you’ll likely get blur. At 1/20th or 1/10th of a second, getting a sharp photo (without a tripod) is frequently a losing proposition.

To solve the problem, start by bending the rules (and I’m not talking about defying any laws out there that ban riding in the backs of trucks). I got this photo sitting on a tailgate after hitching a ride home from the mountains. I needed a shutter speed short enough to keep my feet in focus but long enough to blur the moving road— 1/20th of a second did it perfectly.

Any faster and the road would be too sharp; any slower and I’d have to struggle to keep the camera (and my feet) motionless.

But don’t take my word for it.

Turn your camera from auto to manual, and have fun with the fuzz. Then send us your most amazing, spectacu-blur images.

We’ll happily publish the best.

Chad Harder

We know you’re out there, having epics and snapping photos. Instead of cursing them with an anonymous death in hard-drive purgatory, go for the glory and send your best

images to us at hweditor@mtheadwall.com. Include the location, your name, the names of all people shown and any information you think is useful. We’ll take it from there.

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HEAD SHOTS

Paul Queneau

Mark Mohorcich reaps the reward of a dawn ascent: The mile-long shadow of Lincoln Peak and the fog of Lake McDonald, 4,000 feet below.

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Matt Rogers

Jess Douglas (#62) keeps Dylan Johnson at bay during week three of the 2011 Kettlehouse Beer League mountain bike series at Marshall Mountain.

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HEAD SHOTS

Pete Siudara

Dave Smith is the only moving object at Harrison Lake in Glacier National Park, on a warm, late summer’s day in 2011.

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COME PLAY IN THE HIGH COUNTRY & STAY CLOSE TO THE ACTION • Only 12 miles from Lolo Pass & 10 miles from Jerry Johnson Hot Springs!

• Located just 55 miles SW of Missoula on Hwy 12.

• 20 cabins/rooms available for rent.

• Lodge open daily for breakfast, lunch & dinner.

• Plenty of parking year-round for trailers, campers, snowmobiles, and large groups.

Montana Headwall Page 27 Summer 2012

Charles Mann

Fiona Gough scrambles through a Bitterroot boulder field en route to the second of the Camas Lakes in August 2011.

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HEAD SHOTS

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H

e sounds like a Montana-style superhero: Crime-fighting assistant U.S. attorney by day, one of the country’s top ultra-runners by night—sometimes all night and into the next day. Because even when you’re as fast and strong and focused as he is, which is to say, very fast and very strong and very focused, that’s how long it takes to race—on no sleep and very little food—100 miles through the Rockies, or the Sierras or the Alps with just a headlamp to illuminate your way over snowy mountain passes and singletrack, down steps and over deadfall. That’s what it takes when you’re trying not only to reach the finish line, but also, in the depths of your pain and your exhaustion, to find and hold onto that razor’s edge of awareness, that sense of being totally and singularly present. And to get there—to come smack up against the limits of your endurance and push beyond them—is what keeps you literally putting one foot in front of the other. Over and over and over again.

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Knowing this, I’m not sure exactly what I’m expecting when Mike Wolfe shows up to meet me last summer at Break Espresso in Missoula, but it certainly isn’t this: a polite, ordinary-looking 34-year-old, with a slender build, short brown hair and glasses. The only reason he stands out at all is because he’s come from the federal courthouse where he’s been involved in a grand jury investigation, so rather than the Montana summer uniform of shorts and a T-shirt, which undoubtedly he would prefer, he’s wearing slacks and a tie.

Until he’s prodded, he doesn’t talk about his phenomenal athletic accomplishments, which include finishing first or second in 18 out of 21 starts at 50K to 100-mile distances, often in record times.

He doesn’t mention the other stuff, either, too much of it to list, like his canoeing expeditions in the Arctic; or his mountain climbing feats with his brother in Yosemite and Patagonia; or his win in a seven-day race through the Brazilian jungle with his North Face-sponsored teammates. Nor does he mention that he prosecutes crimes in Indian country, or that he’ll represent the feds in one of the hotly

debated medical marijuana cases based on federal raids that busted providers across the state.

Instead, once he sits down with his double cappuccino, Wolfe happily chats about coffee, of all things, which he’s so passionate about that he’s thinking about buying a $900 coffee grinder. If you didn’t know better, Wolfe could be just another Missoula java snob, getting his mid-afternoon caffeine fix.

After all, he, too, is a fly-fishing and hunting fanatic who enjoys “The Wire” and “The Daily Show,” loves his iPhone and his rig (a Toyota Tundra), craves Big Dipper ice cream and likes to kick back by watching pay-per-view cage fights. In those regards (with the possible exception of the cage fights) he’s probably not much different from the rest of the Break’s customers.

“He is extremely committed to just kind of being an ordinary guy even though he does extraordinary things,” says Wolfe’s fiancée, Stephanie Draper, a doctor.

But as much as Wolfe might prefer to blend in, the fact is, he’s not like the rest of us. As far as I know, he can’t leap tall

buildings in a single bound. But I do know that if there were still a phone booth anywhere nearby, he could exit Break, change outfits and run almost all the way home to Helena. Assuming he didn’t stop to help someone fix a flat tire (the way he risked victory in a recent race to help an injured rival), he’d arrive in time for a late morning espresso.

I

n March 2012, seven months after our first meeting, Mike Wolfe decided to end his Clark Kent-like existence and leave his post at the U.S. attorney’s office to move back to Missoula and focus on his running career. He loved the job, but felt time slipping away. “I’m in my prime in this sport. It’s not like I’m going to be able to do this five years from now.

It’s a finite opportunity,” Wolfe says. “I don’t know if I’m capable of more, but I guess that’s a risk I’m willing to take, to find out.”

It’s not fame he wants: Ultra-running is infamously obscure, which is fine by Wolfe. To date, he’s perhaps one of Montana’s best-kept athletic secrets.

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Although he’s among the country’s top ultra-runners—people who are just getting warmed up where traditional 26.2-mile marathons end—he doesn’t have a website or a Facebook page. And he says he feels a little silly when he’s asked to sign autographs.

More surprisingly, Wolfe says he’s never thought of himself as competitive and doesn’t care all that much about where he finishes (although he’s clearly a fierce competitor). He says racing is not so much about beating other people as it is about testing himself. “More than anything it pushes me to see what I’m capable of.”

Which turns out to be quite a lot.

After he began endurance running in earnest at age 27, Wolfe won his first four events, including a debut 100miler in which he came in ahead by an hour and 42 minutes. By 2011, UltraRunner magazine judged Wolfe second in its “Runners of the Year” award, highlighting two outings in Northern California: his second-place finish in the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run, one of the sport’s most legendary events; and his record-time win in the North Face Endurance Challenge 50 Mile, despite a head gash that left him splattered in blood.

Impressive, yes, although Wolfe tries to keep it in perspective. Equally impressive, his fellow runners say, is that he cares to.

“He is very confident. But he is not egotistical,” says his friend Kiefer Hahn, also a competitive trail runner.

“And I think that makes him pretty damn special.”

See Mike run: On Helena’s hilltops, trails and courthouse steps

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Wolfe puts it this way: “There are days when I certainly think: Who gives a shit if you can run 100 miles? There’s a lot of selfish things about it.” It takes him away from friends and family, for starters. On the other hand, he says an outdoor challenge is what makes him tick.

“Maybe I’m not right in the head,” he says, although the idea doesn’t seem to bother him much. “But I really do have fun out there.”

And if you don’t think “fun” and “running” and “100 miles” go together, you’re not alone.

Once they learn that he’s an ultra-runner, the question on people’s lips, Wolfe knows, is: Why? What would possess you to run that far? Why would you inflict so much suffering on yourself? Because no matter what kind of

“Maybe I’m

not right in the head,”

he says, although the idea

bother him much.

“But I really do have fun out there.”

doesn’t seem to

shape you’re in, there’s a lot of pain involved in running 15, 18, 24 hours or more.

“People wonder: ‘Why are you so stupid?’” Wolfe says, right up front. “That’s the look on their faces.” I expect him to get a little defensive, but instead, he acknowledges: “That’s the question you ask yourself.”

Especially, when, say, it’s June 2011, and you’ve just completed that Western States 100 race in California, where, after more than 15 and a half hours, you’ve lost to one of the world’s top ultra-runners, Spaniard Kilian Jornet, by a heartbreaking four minutes. But you’re due at your desk in Helena on Tuesday, so you squeeze in a little sleep Saturday night and hit the road Sunday morning to make the long drive home.

Or when, say, it’s August 2011 and you’re above treeline in the 100-plus-mile North Face Ultra-Trail du MontBlanc, a race in the Western Alps that usually roller-coasters up and down 31,000 feet as it travels through France, Switzerland and Italy—but that this year, due to a course change announced mid-event, includes an additional 5,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, which has so demoralized a number of your fellow competitors that they’ve simply dropped out. It’s dark and freezing and the wind is howling and you’ve already run through one night’s torrential downpour, which turned into a snowstorm as you gained altitude. And now you’re borderline hypothermic, so frustrated that you’re yelling something—swear words, probably—which you can’t remember afterwards but which were meant to keep you focused…and you finish 26th, while the winner—again— is Kilian Jornet. By the time you shuffle into Chamonix, the crowds that lined the streets to greet Jornet are long gone, and it’s all you can do to drag yourself past the welcoming lights of your hotel and continue to the finish line a quarter mile beyond.

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“These races are about the unknown, the uncertainty,” Wolfe says. “You never know what’s going to happen. You can’t always expect to go in and have the best race ever. I had to gut it out, and not give up.”

That’s something else he likes about the sport: the humility it fosters. “It’s humbling to try to run 100 miles and to not know if you’re going to be able to pull it off,” he says. “In modern life, everything’s about safety and security. I guess I’ve just always loved the kind of thing that strips all that away.”

years his junior, he spent as much time as he could hunting and trapping, brain-tanning hides and making black-powder rifles and leather clothing. In high school he was obsessed with soccer. But he never considered running for its own sake until the summer after he graduated from Bozeman High School in 1996.

At the urging of family friends, he entered his first race that August, the 20mile Ed Anacker Bridger Ridge Run outside of Bozeman. The route extends nearly from one end of the Bridger Mountains

scaled The Nose route up El Capitan; in Patagonia, they made a first ascent in Torres Del Paine, a Chilean national park renowned among climbers.

He became a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) guide and led month-long climbing, paddling and hiking courses. He also joined with friends to complete two separate self-supported canoe trips in the Arctic, including a three-month, 1,600-mile adventure in northern Canada. The trip raised thousand of dollars in scholarships to help

The North Face

A bloodied Wolfe after winning the December 2011 North Face Endurance Challenge. Right: Wolfe (in green) en route to victory in the January 2012 Winter Triathlon near Butte, which he entered on a whim.

L

ong before he was running ultra races, Wolfe was “running wild,” as he puts it, in the fields and mountains of Montana.

Growing up in Bozeman, he and his only sibling, Patrick, an equally gifted athlete, viewed Huck Finn as a role model, and they were blessed with parents—Tom, a farrier who is now director of Montana State University’s Farrier School, and Mary Ellen, a mediator specializing in natural resource issues—who encouraged their independent spirits. The Wolfe boys weren’t the only adventurers in their neighborhood: Celebrated mountaineer Alex Lowe lived down the street and was Wolfe’s greatly admired friend.

As a kid, Wolfe helped his father shoe horses; as a teenager he worked summers in Wyoming as a wrangler. He liked playing cowboy, but he aspired to be a mountain man. With Patrick, two and a half

to the other, over what at the time were poorly marked, rough, rock- and screestrewn trails. Wolfe tackled the race in a cotton T-shirt, swim trunks that he bought at Salvation Army, and borrowed shoes.

“He was so talented, what did he need fancy clothes for?” says Matt Lavin, one of the people who got Wolfe into running.

The strategy, such as it was, worked.

Wolfe completed the Bridger Ridge Run in just under four hours and 15 minutes, earning him fourth place in his age group and 10th place overall, out of 99 competitors.

He had a great time, but aside from a few road marathons he can hardly remember, Wolfe didn’t bother racing again for years. He enrolled at the University of Montana (UM) but dropped out after two years to “vagabond around.” He took extended trips with his brother, sometimes living out of his truck, to climb mountains. In the Sierras, they

kids attend a Wisconsin summer camp where Wolfe had worked as a counselor.

“He was always the guy we were trying to keep up with,” recalls expedition member Brook Yeomans, a Jackson Hole, Wyo. resident who is still one of Wolfe’s close friends. “Wolfie doesn’t do anything for glory,” Yeomans adds. “He doesn’t do it for any reason other than to have fun and push himself to the extreme.”

It wasn’t until 2005 that Wolfe began racing again. By then, he’d graduated from The College of Idaho with a political science degree and was preparing to enter law school at UM. This time, he decided to take things a little more seriously.

He still insisted on used clothing, in particular pearl-snap polyester cowboy shirts, but he invested in some decent running shoes. If the earlier strategy was marginally successful, this one proved to be wildly so: Wolfe not only won his first

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attempt at a 50-mile event, the Devil’s Backbone in Bozeman, but he also broke the course record. The following summer, in 2006, he won what he considers his first competitive 50-miler, the USA Track & Field 50-Mile championship in Washington state. He won the race in 2007, too, and then topped off the summer with a victory in his first 100-miler in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons.

T

his is what Stephanie “Dr. Steph” Draper says about her fiancé: “Running doesn’t define him. I think if it did he wouldn’t do it anymore.”

The two were introduced by a mutual friend, who had to overcome Draper’s resistance. “I thought someone who was an ultra-marathon runner and a lawyer wouldn’t be very interesting. Or at the least would be very intense. But Mike has this ability to do what he does and then let it go. He’s just very present with what he’s doing in the moment.”

Or as Wolfe puts it, he’s not just the crazy runner man. Which is how he managed to graduate from law school, clerk for Montana Supreme Court Justice Brian Morris, and, in 2010, start work at the U.S. attorney’s office while racing on The North Face team, juggling training runs two and three times a day. Now that he’s given up full-time lawyering (he says he’ll try to pick up contract work) he can ramp up his already intense training regimen.

“Not only is he physically talented, but he works harder than anyone else,” Hahn says. “He’s willing to go longer, he’s willing to go faster, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to be a better runner.”

Wolfe tracks his training on a massive spreadsheet. He records how many hours he’s put in. He records his food intake, his sleep patterns and how he’s feeling. He doesn’t have a coach; he says the sport is so new that he knows as much as anyone out there.

Above all, what he knows is this: He needs to rack up a lot of hours on the trails. Preparing for a 100-mile event is “pure feel. I don’t really pay attention to my specific mileages ever, because it’s all on hills. I don’t run with a GPS watch.”

Speed isn’t nearly as important as volume, which he varies: “There will be weeks when it’s real high volume, and then sometimes five days in a row where it’s real slow—I might be running a nine, 10, 11-minute-mile pace.”

For 100-mile races the key is “getting your body used to running when you’re tired. Forcing yourself to keep moving when you have a certain level of fatigue in your system.”

But you never truly know what you can handle until you buckle. Or don’t.

Say, for instance, it’s December 2011, and you’re 20 miles into the 50-mile North Face Endurance Challenge in California’s Marin Headlands, where you’re facing not only steep terrain but also some of the steepest competition of your life, and you feel what seems to be a water fountain on your head, which turns out to be blood spraying from a

Jones for the last 10 miles of the race, completing it in a record time of 6:19:04—which averages out to an astonishing 7.6 minutes a mile. In a post-race photo, he stares into the camera, bloody and etched in dust, looking a whole lot more Dirty Harry than Clark Kent.

“You never know how fast you can run until you and some other competitor commit and bury yourself in the pain and go for it,” he writes in an email. “It’s hard to describe, borderline reckless, but it’s an all-consuming focus and synergy. Pretty special, rare and probably the addiction that makes us want to feel that again.”

wound you got when you had to dodge a fellow runner and ran into a low-hanging tree branch.

What do you do? Wolfe pressed on, although he did stop momentarily, along with another front-runner, to give a hand to a competitor who had badly twisted his ankle, even as two other racers passed them by. (“When someone’s hurt, my first instinct is to help them,” he says. “That’s more the spirit of the sport.”)

At the next aid station Dr. Steph gave Wolfe a thumbs-up and told him to get with it, and he agreed: It was high time for some redemption after the 26th-place finish at Europe’s UTMB. So he kept going, staving off dehydration by stuffing handfuls of salt into his mouth at the aid stations, half choking it down.

In the end, Wolfe eked out his hardest-fought victory yet after a neck-andneck battle with 21-year-old Dakota

He’ll have plenty more chances. In May, he was scheduled to run two overseas races, the 50-mile Transvulcania in the Canary Islands and the very steep 40K called Zegama-Aizkorri, in the Spanish Pyrenees. In June, he’s on deck to return to the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run; in August he might retry Bozeman’s Bridger Ridge Run, where he first experienced the joy and agony of trail running. In September he’s slated for a 100-miler in Colorado. But he’s also exploring even more extreme tests, such as an 1,800-mile, 50-day self-supported race in New Zealand, which another runner has invited him to join in December.

It would entail covering 30 to 50 miles a day for nearly two months, he tells me.

“Is that even possible?” I ask him, incredulous. His response tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Wolfe’s approach to life. “It’s not easy,” he answers, “but it’s possible.”

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WILD THINGS

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S

by Caroline Kurtz

mall creatures are wild, too. This thought occurred to me as I was poking around a friend’s place above Salmon Lake recently.

A greenish-brown object, looking a bit like a muddy tennis ball, plopped by a nearby pond and caught my eye.

It turned out to be a boreal toad, elsewhere called the Western toad, and I was struck by how integral a part of the landscape it was—as much as bears, elk and wolves are a part of theirs.

Like their vastly larger wild counterparts, boreal toads—the only toad species in western Montana— are intrepid travelers. After courtship is over and eggs are fertilized, the adults wander off, going their toady ways. They’re known’to wander for miles from

Chad Harder

their breeding grounds, past lakes, ponds and marshes through coniferous forests and subalpine meadows. They’ve been seen in the high country of the Great Bear Wilderness and the Swan Range, the Little Belt Mountains, Crazies and Absarokas.

Kerwin Werner, author of Reptiles and Amphibians of Montana, has even found boreal toads atop the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park, 1,500 feet above any water source.

The squat little amphibians (Bufo boreas) are a classic camo color, with “warts” (really just bumps) to help them blend in, and a characteristic white stripe down their back. Instead of leaping like frogs, they shuffle along and take occasional modest hops in search of flies, ants, spiders, dragonflies and, occasionally, smaller boreal toads to eat. Females, four inches long or so, are bigger than males, but males don’t make noise about it: None of them have vocal sacs.

Given that a hot toad is a dead toad, the creatures also have a seemingly odd liking for burn zones left by forest fires, much like many insects, birds and other animals. A study around Lake McDonald in Glacier Park found noteworthy knots of boreal toads in the most severely charred acreage from the 2003 Roberts Fire.

Researchers surmised that the warmer nighttime temperatures on the burned ground made it easier for the cold-blooded creatures to move around and find snacks. Any increased risk of losing moisture during the day was offset by the ability to take refuge in burrows or under logs, where temperatures were just as cool as at unburned sites.

Look for the toads in early June at their breeding grounds, generally in warm, shallow water without much cover. Tadpoles hatch and morph into terrestrials by late summer. A lucky hiker might find clumps of the juveniles piled on top of each other, basking in the sun.

It’s said that the hoppers protect themselves by puffing up, and that their warts secrete a viscous substance that’s either toxic or very nasty for would-be predators, though raccoons and garter snakes don’t seem to care. My inner 10-year-old was tempted to pick up my fat, lumpy discovery that day. But rather than risk being peed on or covered in foul-smelling goo, I instead stretched out alongside to enjoy the ground’s warmth and a toad’seye view of a summer day.

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Montana Headwall Page 39 Summer 2012

by Ari LeVaux

GRUB

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For backcountry cooking, go with the grain

W

hen I’m not threatened with starvation, I’m a picky eater.

This can be a challenge on the trail since the yummiest ingredients tend to be heaviest. My stomach may say steak, but my shoulders prefer a freeze-dried meal. Luckily, there are tricks to packing light and eating well.

My strategy starts with finger foods for breakfast and lunch, like mix, jerky, rice sticks or energy bars. This way, cooking and cleaning don’t slow me down. The majority of my focus is spent on dinner, where the key is selecting a carb-loaded base and pairing it with a flavorful sauce.

I avoid pasta like the plague, because without a big pot of water at a rolling boil, it’s guaranteed to be a soggy mess. Rice—particularly brown rice—is much better.

Long before your trip, explore the rice in your grocery’s bulk bins and find your favorite—then practice making it. Start with two and a half cups of water per cup of rice, and put it on medium heat with a tight-fitting lid. Once the pot starts to steam and shake, check it often. After about 20 minutes, when the water is almost gone and the rice almost done, test it. If it’s crunchy, add more water. Whatever you do, don’t stir rice once the lid has closed. Peek as often as necessary, but don’t touch.

Once you’ve found your favorite rice and you know how much water and time it needs, you can start attempting high-level moves. For example, soak it to reduce cooking time, and take it off the heat as soon as the water level sinks below the rice, leaving it covered to finish on its own. You can also punch up the taste by adding lightweight ingredients like bouillon or dehydrated vegetables.

If you can master making your favorite rice at home, all things are possible on the trail. When you reach camp, simply place it in the pot with the appropriate amount of water. By the time the tent is up, your rice is already halfway done; just cook it like you did in the kitchen.

That leaves plenty of time for the sauce.

Even though onions are heavy, I try to carry one for each meal.

You can skip it for powder or flakes if you want, but there’s no replacement for the thickening power of a finely chopped real onion.

Start with placing your choice of chopped meat—I prefer jerky, summer sausage or bacon—in a pan, oiled as necessary. Once the meat starts to brown, add the onions and stir it well. When the onions reach the translucent stage, add salt, pepper and garlic powder.

To keep my shopping and preparations simple, everything up to this point is the same each night of the trip. The variation comes with my choice of spice powder. Use red chili powder one night, followed by curry powder the next, and garam masala powder with tomato paste for a third dinner. With each variation, add water as necessary to thicken the sauce without turning it to soup.

If you do add too much water, be patient and let it congeal. And remember: your sauce can also thicken when removed from the heat, just like the rice.

Melissa Bangs stirs the pot at Gunsight Lake campground.

Chad Harder

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HEAD TRIP

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U

nder a smoky gauze of September sky, I wedged my back into the cold, dihedral, dangled my legs over a narrow ledge and peered 4,000 feet down to the V-necked bottom of Coal Creek. Curved like an eagle talon, the burned valley swung north around the Cloudcroft Peaks and disappeared toward Surprise Pass. Mount Doody, sharp as a wolf’s tooth, stood directly across the way. I shuddered and forced a deep breath.

This was all wrong.

I shouldn’t be looking north. I shouldn’t be staring at Wolftail. I should be gazing east instead, across Battlement and Caper and toward the red

argillite mountains of Two Medicine. I should see Rockwell and Rising Wolf looming against the hazy afternoon sky.

My climbing partner Kyle Fedderly was out of earshot, already climbing up through the next pitch of wind-whipped cliffs. With no choice but to keep feeding rope and belaying him, I’d have to explain my fear at the next anchor point. Which also meant that I would have to climb up this sheer wall of gray rock.

I was no rock climber, just a lover of wild country and a mediocre mountaineer.

Over the past decade, I had managed to make my way to the top of more than a hundred peaks in Glacier National Park, many of them several times, but had purposefully steered clear of any that required ropes, belay devices, cams or carabiners. I had used an ice ax every summer, but other than climbing Blackfoot and Logan via Blackfoot Glacier once—making that highangle maneuver above the bergschrund, hammering in snow pickets and belaying my buddy up behind me—I had never used ropes. I decided that if I needed ropes to climb it, then I didn’t need to be there.

The reality, however beneficent my intentions, was that I probably stuck myself in more dangerous situations by climbing certain mountains without protection than I would have by climbing others a hundred times with protection. For instance, after free-soloing Mount Wilbur, I down-climbed wet, Class 5 rock in a September snowstorm. I got hung up in a gully while coming off the

Kyle Fedderly leads the way

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knife ridge of Kinnerly once, too, which was as close to the big slip as possible.

The bottom line is that I love being offtrail, exploring remote and wild mountains.

In Glacier Park, going without ropes would limit me from sitting atop a few particular summits. This doesn’t work because I genuinely hope to climb every peak in the park before I die or get old and decrepit—not out of some self-aggrandizing need to conquer or check numbers off a list, but because I love these mountains fiercely and want to explore each and every one of them. I want to know them firsthand, up close, and intimately. Then again, who the hell wouldn’t want to swim in every lake, bushwhack every drainage, sleep in every subalpine basin, and climb every mountain in Glacier Park?

Back on the rock, the rope began whizzing through the belay device. It was Kyle, anchored somewhere above and pulling in slack. I stood on the narrow ledge, mindful of the pink tuft of moss campion that called this spot home, and fed rope. When it finally pulled taut, I leaned a shoulder into the cold rock, dug the hexes out of the dihedral and clipped them on the harness. Three tugs on the rope and Kyle responded with the same.

It was time to face the music. It was time to climb.

>>>>>

Mount St. Nicholas was my Moby Dick of Glacier Park peaks—a vertical thumb of a spire that had towered over countless days of my life and consumed my brain for years. When I was a backcountry ranger in Walton, I slept many a night under the mountain’s shadow and woke many mornings to

sun streaming across its northeast shoulder.

I had even tried to climb it twice. Sort of.

On the first attempt, I found myself delusional, dehydrated and sucking at a tiny seep of water a thousand feet below the “Great Notch.” I was racked from a good, weeklong bender of booze. The second attempt took me to the Notch, where I chickened out. Instead of climbing, I sat atop a small, subsidiary peak to the east and photographed my buddy Jason Robertson free-solo his way up and down. It was mind-blowing to watch.

Robertson is like a skilled machine, though, and a resident expert of St. Nick.

He had climbed the mountain six times, four by free-soloing it. He had even climbed St. Nick and Mount Doody (equally as technical and almost as tall as Nick) in the same day (23 and a half hours round trip) and alone. I, on the other hand, was a few years older than Robertson, in my late 30s, and two weeks away from the birth of my second child. There was no denying that I suddenly felt tempered by age, responsibility, and a new tendency toward self-preservation. The bedrock of my life was shifting.

That said, my need to overcome silly mental barriers is equally as real and visceral. I knew I could climb St. Nick, but I had never roped up and done anything like it.

Climbing the mountain actually scared me less than rappelling down—at several rap stations you had to face the rock, hang your ass out over space, and then lean back, trusting the rope.

Worst of all, however, was the thought of never exploring the summit.

>>>>>

Ten or 12 feet above where I stood, a flat ceiling blocked the top of the dihedral.

Fortunately, hanging to the east was a rock face split by a lovely, climbable crack. An inch-wide lip ran from my ledge out to the break in the rock, and I just needed to sidle out there and get myself headed up toward Kyle. What worried me was that the ceiling from the dihedral also ran out to the crack, becoming a large bulge, and I would have to strong-arm up and over it.

With all my weight on my toes, I inched out onto the face, using the minutest plasticity of rock for finger holds. At the crack, I powdered my hands with chalk and wasted no time in starting up the break. The climbing was good, what with St. Nick being one of the few mountains in the park with solid rock, and the crack proved a perfect place to wedge fingers and toes. But this was an aberration for Glacier Park. Most mountains in the park are made of crumbly, sedimentary rock—horribly rotten slab—and demand great care climbing them. You never trusted a handhold, for instance, and you always pulled down and not out, if at all.

Beneath the large bulge, I stopped to yank loose a hex nut, well placed by Kyle. I hung from a tripod position, leaned on the nut tool and pushed. Nothing. I shifted my weight and hammered at the nut, whacked at it, jabbed at it and pried at it. Still nothing. My calves began to tremble. Each leg began to shake. With an eternity of emptiness beneath me, I carefully reversed my feet and reached for the hex with my left hand. The thing still wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t slip a millimeter. Against all rational thought, I pushed away from the rock, out over nothingness, and then fell back against the hex. In a quick break of resistance, the nut gave way and flew deep into the crack. I slammed into the rock with my shoulder and without hesitation I

The horn of Mount St. Nicholas

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grabbed the hex, unhooked it from the rope and clipped it to my harness.

“You’re out of your element,” I muttered, barely audible over the frozen wind.

There was no turning back now. Kyle was ahead of me, and so was the possibility of being back on route. To descend would mean rappelling from our anchors and leaving hexes behind, and I didn’t like the prospect of dangling from a few nuts anymore than I wanted to leave metal garbage on the mountain. With no choice, I sucked in a deep breath and reached blindly up and over the bulge.

>>>>>

The first recorded summit of St. Nick was in 1926 by Conrad Wellen, although the 1966 discovery of his logbook beneath a rock at the Great Notch casts some doubt over whether he actually made the top. In 1933, Robert T. Young and R. T. Young Jr. completed the second climb of St. Nick. The first winter ascent of the rugged horn didn’t occur until December 28, 1985, by the Columbia Falls father-and-son team of Tom and Trenton Cladouhos. Trenton was a teenager.

For the past decade, a dozen or so people had climbed St. Nick every year, most using the Coal Creek drainage. The drainage burned in 2003, creating a direct and easy bushwhack to the Notch that avoided what used to be a threeday venture up Muir Creek or Park Creek.

Robertson used the new route once, sauntering up and down the mountain, from truck door to truck door, in 13 hours. That wasn’t long after Coal had burned, but now vegetation was growing taller and the forest was thickening again.

What baffled me most was that Robertson and Terry Kennedy, perhaps the most accomplished Glacier Park climber ever, had tackled this beast without ropes. With one hand above the bulge, I glanced over my left shoulder and laughed. Talk about exposure! I hung on a nearvertical rock face that buckled back into the mountain, leaving nothing but cold air between me and scree fields thousands of feet below. A slip without ropes and the party was over.

Needing to make my crux move, I prayed that the crack continued far enough above the

Fedderly heads up from The Notch

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bulge to keep finding handholds, but I couldn’t see up there yet. My gut wrenched at the thought of slipping backwards, groping for purchase, and having to trust the rope as I fell and dangled in space.

“Hold tight,” I hollered, not sure whether Kyle could hear me or not.

I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and opened them. I reached with my toe, blindly stuffing it deep in the crack of the bulge, the meat of my foot wedged in the rock. Then I sucked in one more lungful of air, growled like a bear, and stood. The world disappeared. My focus narrowed with all my energy funneled into the rock.

Riding the momentum, I reached and slapped my left hand onto the cold rock.

My fingers splayed out, felt the crack. I

jammed them in and held tight. I pulled again, then wedged in my other foot.

Standing, I reached, found the break, and pulled. Then slung a knee over the bulge.

Then the other knee. Then flopped onto my belly and inched along, the slab mellowing, the rope slithering above me, guiding me.

Gasping for air, I scampered up three small ledges and found Kyle. My heart thundered in my chest and my arms and legs tingled with adrenaline.

“Holy shit,” I yelled, anchoring in beside him. I leaned back and groaned.

“You made it,” said Kyle, who had shimmied seamlessly up and over the bulge, like the experienced climber he is.

“Barely,” I sighed. “Wasn’t sure for a minute there. But, we’re too far north, bub.

Jason Robertson solos St. Nick in 2005

We need to work our way back east.”

“I was worried about that, too. We haven’t seen a rap station in a while. What do you think?”

“No choice but to keep climbing, right?

You’re the expert.”

“That’s what I’d hoped you’d say.

Climbing is definitely easier.”

“More than one way to shimmy up a mountain, partner.”

“Damn straight,” he smiled. “Belay me up this way, and we’ll cross our fingers.”

“Copy.”

With cold hands, we unclipped carabiners, reclipped carabiners, and Kyle began climbing. I fed rope through the belay device and soon he disappeared over a shelf of cliffs. Since the bulge, we could have climbed the Class 3 and 4 rock without the rope, but we needed it to rappel back down.

“Rap station!” hollered Kyle in no time, his voice tumbling down over the rock, unmistakable. Then three tugs on the rope.

“Hell, yes!” I screamed back at the top of my lungs. “Coming up.”

“All good!”

Soon, I joined Kyle at the rappel station—a small boulder wrapped in neon-colored slings—and we peered over the sheer northeast face. Our packs were tiny dots on the rock near the Notch.

“You want to keep climbing, or go ahead and rappel down?” asked Kyle. “I know that bulge was sketchy.”

“I’m not going down yet,” I said. “I have to rappel down this beast either way, so we might as well climb it first. I don’t think we have far to go now.”

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“Me, either,” Kyle said, with a bigger grin than usual.

Sure enough, the next few hundred feet was mellow, Class 3 stair-stepping.

We moved quickly and freely, having left the rope at the rappel station, and before we knew it, we crested the small summit.

Smoky skies hung in every direction, obscuring the distant peaks of the park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness. More than 5,000 feet straight down, Coal Creek drained the valley, a sinuous thread of gray through the red autumn. I spun a quick 360, snapping pictures, and spent the next few minutes studying the shape of the summit and the rocks that lived there. I still couldn’t believe I was atop Nick. It seemed like forever coming. And I didn’t know if I’d ever make it back—this might be a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

With sunlight waning, we paid our respects to the mountain and then hurried back to the rap station. If the rope got caught on the way down and it took half an hour to shake loose, we would be rappelling to the Notch in the dark—a scary thought. Kyle played guinea pig and hopped over the cliff while I sat on the ledge, anchored to the boulder. Racked by fatigue and driven by a desire to be on flat ground, I didn’t hesitate when it was my turn and cruised down the rope. The descent was surprisingly fun in that it offered the most bizarre view of the mountain, what a bird sees sailing down a cliff face. I studied the rock as I lowered myself, fascinated by the perspective and suddenly

Fedderly savors the summit

filled with the desire to rappel down every mountain wall, like a pioneer or explorer.

Before I knew it, I had descended four rap stations and we stood at the Notch.

I howled, loud as I could, and then hugged Kyle.

“Amen, mountain,” I said, too, and bowed.

No rest for the wicked, though. Before we could relax, we still had to drop a thousand feet down a precipitous goat trail.

Following the bouncing halo of our headlamps, Kyle and I managed to joke about how peaceful it was to stumble along without seeing the tremendous exposure that fell away just beyond the beam of light. We could have been walking in a valley and it would not have appeared any differently.

Never, however, did we let our guard down.

Hours later, we forded Coal Creek and retrieved our gear from the Elk Creek campground. We had stayed there for a short spell of sleep the night before beginning the climb. Back out on the trail, we followed our high beams, plodding numbly ahead, one foot in front of the other.

At 4:30 a.m., more than 23 hours since we first left the backcountry campground, we threw our packs into my car and collapsed onto the seats. Exhausted. Spent. Barely able to focus.

An hour later, at home in Columbia Falls, and without a wink of sleep, I helped my 18-

month-old daughter, Harper, from bed.

Like always, we made cereal, shuffled some Coltrane on iTunes, and began our day.

“Daddy went hiking,” she said in her cute bird voice, milk dribbling down her chin.

“Yep, Dad climbed Mount St. Nicholas,” I replied. “In the park.”

“Harper hike, too!” she hollered, tossing her head back and dunking her spoon for another bite.

“You want to hike this afternoon?” I asked. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah,” she squealed. “Harper hike with daddy.”

So we did, up the North Fork. Nothing crazy, just a mellow walk in the park: whistling at birds and looking for bears.

Counting clouds and rocks. Naming trees and flowers. Flat ground felt good beneath my feet.

Looking south, in the direction of Nick, I couldn’t help but wonder if someday Harper and I would climb mountains together. Or if the new baby would. Or maybe all of us.

I hoped so.

Maybe I would see the top of St. Nick again, after all.

Story and photos by Noël Phillips

HEAD TRIP

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Oh, Pioneers!

M

A rocky start in the mountains leads to a happy ending

y original college major was animal behavior, but I gave that up and embarked on a circuitous path to a Frenchlinguistics degree (long story) before settling on my personal training career in Missoula. Par for the course for this do-whatever-you-can-to-live-here town.

I like to think that personal training is a bit like animal behaviorism, as is life in general—only now, the animal I observe is Homo sapiens, including myself. Take, for example, the subspecies Long-ride-icus road-bikerus. It was with one of these spandex and windbreaker-clad groups atop carbon fiber bikes that I discovered the Pioneer Mountains and the Beaverhead-

Deerlodge National Forest. Each pedal stroke on the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway carried me deeper into the val-

ley between the high, jagged eastern peaks and timbered, gently sloping West Pioneers. The paved two-lane

Montana Headwall Page 48 Summer 2012

road bisects the Wise River and Grasshopper Creek drainages, meandering past flowered meadows wet with streams, grassland ranges speckled with livestock, and thick lodgepole forests. The mountains captivated me—I knew I couldn’t be satisfied with just one bike trip. I needed to get into them, on foot.

Unfortunately, detailed information about hiking trails in the Pioneers proved difficult to find. The area seemed mostly undeveloped and under-explored (read: if you hike there, bring a topo map).

But after much research and many discussions with my boyfriend, Jason, and two friends, a late summer backpack finally came together.

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foam-filled, vinyl-encased The four of us agreed on box for his fishing rod. what looked to be a moder“Are you sure you realate 8.5-mile trek in the eastly want to bring all of ern range, from the Mono that?” I asked. My spinCreek campground to ning set was tied up with Torrey Lake, a lonely cirque rubber bands. with the promise of good “Why not?” he innofishing. We could cently replied. possibly even try to summit one of the nearby peaks, 11,147-foot Torrey Mountain or 11,154-foot Tweedy.

I had unknowingly Jason and I both enjoy planned the trip, however, sleeping till noon—somewith the dreaded Amigos flake-ius. As is to be expectthing I loved about him after having been married ed with this genus, my to a fanatically early riser. friends canceled a week Somehow we managed to before the trip, leaving hit the road by seven.

Jason and I peeved at the It only took a few secprospect of going on a trip onds to load my stuff in the we’d pushed back to truck. I was bringing a dayaccommodate their schedpack, an uber-light setup ules when we would have I’d used even on weeklong preferred leaving earlier in trips. Jason was still carrythe summer.

“This will be the first time I’ve actuing enough for a trek up Everest, minus The weather for the weekend was ally backpacked,” Jason announced as the sherpas, and with an ill-fitting, not promising—forecasters predicted we sat amidst the sleeping bags and Costco-bought pack that dug into his late summer snowstorms. I growled and fishing gear. shoulders. When I’d tried to give him grumbled and muttered and hemmed I paused, stunned. I was the and hawed. I’d done my fair share, advice the night before, he’d just transplant here. Jason grew up in smiled and said, “I can handle it,” and more, of the trapped-in-a-snowthe Northwest. How had he missed and went back to packing. I’d kept cave-in-a-blizzard routine and its backpacking? my mouth shut. variations: the climb up a mountain After leaving I-15 for in frigid temps and gale-force Montana Highway 43-W, we winds; the wet hikes; the hikes drove the scenic serpentine during a tornado through wet When I’d to give along the Big Hole River toward clay; the hypothermia; the miserthe town of Wise River, the start able campsites. I’d belonged to him the night before, of the 49-mile Pioneer the Mugs Stump school of Mountains Scenic Byway. Fly thought—“If you wait for the weather, you won’t do shit.” he’d just and said, fishermen cast their lines in the early light, appeasing the The famed mountaineer didn’t urges, common to Montana mince words.

“I can it.” males, to stand in frigid waters But at this point I knew what hoping something would bite I could handle—and what I their lures. wanted to handle. I felt like I’d earned “Um…well…put the heavy stuff The miles drifted away with each the right to go outdoors in warm and lower in your pack and close to your fisherman. So did my confidence. dry and sunny (oh, please dear God, body,” I offered, lamely.

“Did we already pass Wise River?” sunny!) conditions.

At this point I took a really hard “I don’t think so … maybe,” Jason And yet, for whatever reason—perlook at the gear strewn around us. And offered. haps the old spirit in me, or the principle it hit me. There, surrounded by food, “Pull over, please,” I said. of the thing, or Jason’s gentle coaxing— clothes, tent and other sundry items, He stopped at the next sight of a the two of us decided to shake our fists Packus everythingius was about to make fisherman, and I hopped out. at the sky and go through with our the mistake so common to that species.

“Excuse me, sir, where’s the Pioneer plans. We figured we’d spend one night We were going to be gone one Scenic Byway?” out instead of two, owing to the forecast. night, and he was cramming enough If it got really bad we could turn around The angler turned watery eyes toward food and clothing into his pack for a and hike the 17 miles in a day. me, his nose red with the telltale signs of week-long expedition, including a The night before the departure we sat long years of alcohol consumption. thick, inflatable bedroll suitable for caron my apartment floor sorting out what “Pioneer? There’s no such thing. camping and a two-foot-long plastic, to bring.

You mean the Pintler Scenic Loop. Well,

tried

advice

smiled handle

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you’re in the wrong place. You need to…”

I interrupted him. “No, no—the Pioneer Scenic highway—it goes between the Pioneer Mountains…”

He stared at me blankly.

I sighed. “Where’s Wise River? The town?”

He smiled a near-toothless grin and pointed in the direction we were heading. “Just go down there another half hour or so and you’ll find it.”

Five minutes later, and with a huge sigh of relief at not having been lost after all, we reached Wise River and its six buildings—two of which are bars— and headed south on the byway, past the mountains, pastures, and old homesteads in a landscape that has changed little in centuries. The meadows and hillsides, surprisingly, still clung to their early summer green.

Twenty-two miles down the road we pulled into the Mono Creek parking lot. The cold air froze my sandaled feet almost instantly upon our arrival, but the sky held some promise of sunshine, so we decided to camp at the lake. A group of horse packers studied us for a while as we organized our gear, then one of them walked over and asked about our plans.

“This is the time of year the bears are really out—you’ll definitely see them,” he warned, after noting that we did not have guns or pepper spray.

“Oh, we’ll be fine,” I said, cheerfully. Yes, this was an area I’d never hiked in, but I’d been in bear country many

times. Sometimes I carried a gun, but mostly I didn’t worry about it.

I could practically smell his skepticism as he went to confer with his group. Figuring they’d rather not read in the papers about the young couple who were brutally mauled en route to Torrey Lake, the group stopped their horses at our truck, handed us a can of pepper spray and asked us to please take it.

We did. Jason assured them that he’d bring his pistol, as well—not that

Map by Jonathan Marquis

it would do any good, as I saw it, but maybe it could be a noise deterrent.

This seemed to ease their worries enough for them to wish us well.

Cattle were the only “wildlife” we encountered on the hike, and the vicious man-eaters kept their distance.

The broad, well-maintained Jacobson Creek Trail 2 led us through meadows and across creeks (with bridges!) before

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turning right after 2.5 miles to Trail 56, taking us under craggy cliffs and into forests of fallen trees that reminded me of Bev Doolittle paintings. I kept expecting to see hidden faces appear in the lines of the jumbled timber.

The path climbed gently for six and a half miles. The final two miles were steeper—not calf-burning, since they ascend only 1,000 feet over that distance, but steep enough so that Jason became fully aware of his tonnage. The trip took less than five hours, but we were both thrilled to pop out of the forest at nearly 9,000 feet onto the boggy, flat meadow leading to Torrey. Since we were the only visitors, we had our pick of several campsites at the edge of the forest.

Looming over the lake like protective parents stood Torrey and Tweedy, the two tallest peaks in the Pioneer range.

We arrived at the lake too late for a summit climb. Maybe next year.

My first thoughts now were warmth.

Temps had plummeted along with the sun, and we were freezing. It didn’t take long to get a bonfire roaring, so we thawed our fingers and then decided to cast our lines into the limpid water. I could see a few trout following my lures with interest and got a few test nibbles, but my fingers soon froze again and I could no longer tie anything to the end of my line. I gave up and celebrated with the more determined, less frozen Jason, as he brought in a small rainbow.

After the obligatory “I caught a fish” picture, we released it and watched it swim away.

As an Eternallyius freezingus, the temperature rating on my sleeping bag makes no difference.

I could be in a -40 degree bag in the summer and still shiver, so my night, like most camping nights in my life, was spent tossing around to try and stay warm. The

morning dawned too early and too cold.

And then it really pissed me off.

“What the f---?” I yelled back to Jason once the call of nature had become stronger than my need for warmth. I’d stepped out of the tent to find snow on the ground. It was just a dusting, but it was still snow. In the summer. Any optimistic thoughts of early morning fishing disappeared. We were freezing again. It was time to move.

I’d lie if I said I wasn’t happy to see the truck, but only because of the weather. Once I’d defrosted, Jason and I talked about returning next year, when it was hotter and we could stay longer. The allure of good fishing was just too promising.

“And I think I need a different pack,” Jason pointed out.

I agreed. Jason was evolving, as did all of us who entered the backpacking world. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives ... It is the one that is most adaptable to change,” as Darwin put it. Jason was ready to adapt and start traveling light. I think he’ll survive just fine—and maybe even teach me a thing or two.

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www.mtheadwall.com

HEAD OUT

JUNE June 2 Pull the trigger and head to the Powder River Buffalo Shoot near Broadus, where participants bring out the big guns and fire at metal targets up to 1,000 yards away. Hit home at 4362270 or broadusfire@rangeweb.net.

June 9 Keep kids grinning at the 39th annual Governor’s Cup Race in Helena, featuring a 10K, 5K and a fun run. The fundraiser for the Caring Foundation of Montana helps children get access to dental and medical care.

Make an appointment at govcupmt.com.

June 3 Join the corps and discover the Lewis and Clark Marathon, which features a marathon/relay, half-marathon and kids’ run through the scenic Gallatin Valley. Trek to lewisandclarkmarathon.com.

June 16 Scamper, scuttle and sprint during the Montana Made Run 5K and 10K, a race/walk that begins and ends at Ogren Park in Missoula, featuring Montana-made coffee, energy bars, beer and more. Proceeds benefit the International Association of Firefighters Burn Foundation. montanamaderun.org

June 7 The old ’uns are golden at the Montana Senior Olympics Summer Games in Great Falls, a threeday event with archery, basketball, golf, cycling, track and other contests. Medal up at montanaseniorolympics.org.

June 17 Say hello to summer at the Summit Solstice Triathlon/ Duathlon, a half-mile swim, 12.7-mile bike ride and 5K run at Foys Lake near Kalispell. Zip over to nwhc.org or call 751-4133.

Divide your time during the Wulfman’s Continental Divide Trail 14K and run between Homestake and Pipestone Pass.

Proceeds help pay for trail maintenance, so head to buttepissandmoanrunners.com.

June 27 Get stoked by strokes at the Montana Whitewater Championships at Brennan’s Wave in downtown Missoula. They’ll float your boat at mtwhitewaterchampionships.com.

June 30 Life is grand at the Gran Fondo Kootenai, a two-day, timed and supported road cycling event in gorgeous northwest Montana. The 172mile route follows the Kootenai River and traverses the Kootenai National Forest, from Libby to Eureka and back. Proceeds help support needy kids, so cruise over to gfkootenai.com or call 543-6608.

Chad Harder

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along a rugged mountain trail—then the Bridger Ridge Run is for you.

But you’ve gotta be ready for one tough trail race. Find out why at winddrinkers.org.

JULY July 4 Try not to flag during the 4th of July Team Challenge in Eureka, where contestants bike 3 miles, kayak 3 miles on Lake Koocanusa and run 2 miles on a trail. Light the fireworks at welcome2eureka.com.

August 18 Run for the right reasons at Bozeman’s Scramble for Ethiopia, a 15K and 4-mile fundraiser whose proceeds help bring water to a community in Ethiopia. Be a good egg and hustle to scrambleforethiopia.com.

July 8 Long may you run during the Missoula Marathon, named “Best Overall Marathon” by readers of Runner’s World. Lace up and go to missoulamarathon.org.

July 13 No need for a keelboat during the Yellowstone Boat Float, a raft trip that retraces the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition from Livingston to Columbus, including two overnight stops and a street dance.

They’re expeditious at 696-1996.

July 14 Get hooked at the Broadwater Rod & Gun Club’s Walleye Derby, a catch-and-release fishapalooza at Goose Bay Marina on Canyon Ferry Lake, with a $1,000 cash prize for winners. The lines are open at 266-5279.

Go with the flow during The Glacier Challenge, a six-leg, 50-mile relay in Whitefish that features canoeing, road biking, mountain biking, kayaking and a 4K and 10.5K run. Slide on over to theglacierchallenge.com.

Spin to win at the Hammer Nutrition Missoula XC, a USA Cycling event that draws top mountain biking pros to Marshall Mountain for a pre-Olympics tune-up.

Get rolling at missoulaxc.org.

July 15 Root for the home team and support the Bitterroot Land Trust during the Tour of the Bitterroot, a non-competitive ride for adults and kids alike. Find the route at tourofthebitterroot.org.

July 22 Gasp at the views during the Madison Marathon, the highest road marathon in the country, held in the Gravelly Range near Ennis— where the starting line is at 9,100 feet.

Hightail it to themadisonmarathon.com.

Chad Harder

August 25 Get jiggy with it at the 6th Annual Whitefish Jigfest fishing tourney on Flathead Lake.

Hook something at 444-2449.

July 28 Be a whitewater hog during the River Pig SUP Challenge, a standup paddleboard race at Alberton Gorge. Dip in at strongwaterkayak.com.

Gear up for the York 38 Special Mountain Bike Ride, a 38-mile trip near Helena, or double the distance in the Spirit of 76. Pump up at york38special.com.

July 29 Don’t be a nag at the XTERRA Wild Horse Creek Triathlon held in Hyalite Canyon near Bozeman.

The event includes a 1,200-yard swim, 16-mile mountain bike ride and 6-mile run (with shorter options, too). Saddle up at bigskytri.com.

August 26 Get to the root of the problem at the River City Roots 4-Mile Run/Walk, part of Missoula’s multi-day River City Roots Festival. Boogie down at runwildmissoula.org.

AUGUST August 3 Don’t get hammered at the Missoula Gun and Antique Show, a three-day event featuring 800 tables of firearms and knives galore.

Shoot questions at 549-4817.

August 4 Eat a big breakfast before the Helena Ultra Runners League holds the HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs in Montana City, including 23K, 50K and 50-mile distances. Get sick with it at vigilanterunning.org.

Take the leap out of a perfectly good airplane at the Skydive Lost Prairie 45th Annual Jumpmeet, a gathering of jumpers where the average Joe can join an instructor for a soar and a brew. Air it out at skydivelostprairie.com.

August 11 If you think the best part of running a mile uphill is running nearly two downhill—

August 31 Revel in the reeling at the annual Ennis on the Madison Fly Fishing Festival, a weekend-long fete that ties one on (and raises money for the Madison River Foundation). Find the supporting cast at ennischamber.com.

SEPTEMBER September 1 Make like an 8,000-year-old at the annual Montana Atlatl Mammoth Hunt at First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park.

You’ll see experts throw tomahawks and chuck spears with the atlatl, a traditional hunting weapon. Sharpen up at 866-2217 or russell.visitmt.com.

September 8 Bum-bum-bum, bummm, it’s time to Cycle for the Symphony, a 57-mile dirt ride near Missoula that benefits the Missoula Symphony Orchestra. Change your tune at missoulasymphony.org.

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HEAD GEAR

Headlamps that lead the way

Black Diamond Icon, $80 With two night-friendly red LEDs, two standard LEDs, and a 200-lumen “QuadPower LED,” the Icon gives you all the light you need (or don’t) in an aluminum, waterproof and nearly indestructible housing. A smart on/off switch dims down to four lumens, and it all runs on four AA batteries—although that’s why the Icon weighs 220 grams, more than the other lights combined.

Black Diamond Ion, $20 Weighing in at just 28 grams, the Ion is a light to always carry, but never use—unless you must. A single, 12-lumen LED will brighten your route when unexpectedly be-nighted, and a smart toggle prevents accidental battery drain. The tiny 6-volt battery may be short-lived and hard to find, but it allows the Ion to weigh less than a USGS topo map.

Petzl Tikka2 CORE, $85 A brilliant balance of brightness, weight and convenience has made the Tikka the go-to lamp for adventurers and flat tire changers the world over.

The 40-lumen Tikka2 retains three lighting modes and simple but strong construction, but for 2012 Petzl retooled the popular light with a rechargeable and “smart” battery (although AAAs still work, too). The $40 Petzl CORE battery, a rechargeable unit with lithium ion polymer technology, plugs into any USB port, so you can charge it with a cell phone charger—or portable solar units. At just 30 grams, the CORE weighs less than 3 alkaline AAAs and brings the total headlamp weight to only 76 grams. And it performs far better in cold temps, too. Download Petzl software to modify light function, regulate output and adjust settings that determine light intensity and battery life. The CORE will quickly pay for itself: It lasts longer than 900+ batteries.

Black Diamond Wiz, $20 With features like a smaller, alien-themed headband, a child-safe closure and a breakaway elastic safety strap—not to mention an auto shut-off at two hours—the 16-lumen Wiz (56 grams, with batteries) is specifically designed for kids. If your little campers are always leaving your lamp on, consider the Wiz—for the price of a dozen AAAs.

by Chad Harder

F

ew things with less heft than a Snickers bar will get you out of trouble like a headlamp. In fact, hands-free illumination in the direction you’re looking is the first step to getting safely back to the rig when you’re darked-upon. There’s no shortage of strap-on options out there, ranging from heavy, long-lasting light blasters to quarter-sized micros that will barely light up your pre-dawn oatmeal. How do you choose?

With the help of Matt Rogers, gear guru at The Trail Head in Missoula, Headwall compiled a few of this year’s best and brightest, for every member of the family.

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Arc’teryx Naos backpack, $700 It’s a strong statement, but true: The Arc’Teryx Naos 70 backpack is the single best piece of gear I’ve ever owned. Hands down.

Built like a dry bag, the pack is a large compartment of polyurethanecoated nylon with a roll-top closure and pouch lid. All seams are taped and the main body is 100 percent waterproof. A soggy and dripping June in Glacier Park is no worry, and I’ve even forded swollen rivers in the Bob with the pack floating behind. Never has a drop of water sneaked inside.

A rock-solid swivel hip-belt relieves any ilium rub and moves seamlessly with all motions—walking, bending, leaning and climbing. I can load it full and not have one sore spot on the hips. Two ice ax loops, two outer pockets and six straps make stowing gear streamlined and easy on this handmade Canadian gem.

Matt Holloway

Black Diamond Traverse ski poles, $70 Hey, wise guy: No, I did not forget my skis. I just prefer using ski poles when exploring the alpine. Yes, even in summer. Laugh all you want, but now I have better balance and share the load with my upper body, preventing knee strain and sprained ankles, to boot.

Multiple manufacturers make poles with varying features—adjustment range, packed length, basket size, handgrip angle, newfangled materials and the like—but I prefer my Black Diamond Traverses. They’re lightweight yet strong and simple, and employ BD’s fail-proof FlickLock mechanism that tenaciously locks ’em to length. A rubber grip extension allows an immediate choke-up when traversing or climbing steeply. And when steep summer snow or ice impedes, swap out the pole’s top half for a Whippet, BD’s gadget that acts like an ice-ax and converts your pole to a handy self-arrest tool.

Hesitant to add a half-pound to each hand? Not me. Instead I’m resting easy when they double as tent poles—the ones I didn’t have to lug. Who’s laughing now?

Chad Harder

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SteriPEN, $50 If a pan of water is left out in the sunshine, the UV light will supposedly sterilize the liquid. This gadget makes me feel as if I have my own portable, non-scorching sun at the ready.

The SteriPEN water filtration system fits into a water bottle and stirs away viruses, bacteria and protozoa. Always on the prowl for ways to shed weight from my pack, I found the 4-ounce device makes a perfect substitute for bulkier water filters. To use it, simply stir it in a liter of water and, 90 seconds later, by using UV light, 99.9 percent of the germs you pray you never get are eliminated. Quick, easy, effective—but admittedly kind of weird. I’m willing to take a chance, though. My sci-fi toy has found a permanent place on my pack.

Noël Phillips

GSI Outdoors Pinnacle Dualist Ultralight Cookset, $65 There’s a special feeling of elation only a backpacker can understand when gear fits together so strategically and perfectly that it resembles little Russian nesting dolls. That’s exactly how I felt when I laid my hands on the GSI Dualist cook system two summers ago while perusing REI and wondering how to spend my dividend. Complete with two insulated mugs with lids, two bowls, and a hard-anodized 1.8-liter pot with strainer lid, it is the ultimate in lightweight cookware organization. My wife and I even cut out the set of bowls, use our mugs for both, and are able to fit a fuel canister, lighter, and bottle of Campsuds in with this tight little bundle of goodness.

You definitely can’t go wrong with this system, unless you like bulky and heavy, but then you have some other issues that need to be tended to.

Noah Couser

Coleman 425 camp stove, $80 My Coleman 425 white gas camp stove isn’t the newest, the most innovative, or the sexiest piece of equipment I own. In fact, the basic design is almost 100 years old and the dirty green box always looks like it came out of an ancient crawl space at a church camp. But it works.

Quite well, actually. It’s a robust, elegantly simple design that inspires me with confidence in the field. Yes, rookies will need a mulligan when lighting it for the first time. On the other hand, it’s hard to break, and if it ever does malfunction (mine hasn’t in 20 years), it’s thoroughly user-serviceable. You can come by fuel and spare parts at most hardware stores. When I head out, I like knowing that it’s going to be harder to find the ripe huckleberries for pancake batter than it will be to heat the griddle.

Matt Gibson

Montana Headwall Page 57 Summer 2012

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Packraft CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21 “I’m gonna try this little hole over here,” Doug said, pointing at what I thought was an unimpressive pool.

I’d walked only a little farther upstream when I heard him shout, “Damn! I just missed the biggest fish of the trip.”

The cutthroats in the White had more muted colors than their South Fork relatives.

We pulled eight out of the water before heading back to camp.

At this point it was tempting to take an extra day to hike a few miles up the White River toward the Chinese Wall and float back down. But our friends and relatives would probably call search-and-rescue if we didn’t return on schedule, so we reluctantly headed downriver the next morning.

The scenery changed. It was still beautiful here, but we had more company.

We paddled past outfitter camps and some enormous rafts with guides who chauffeured clients to fishing holes by day and deluxe camps with catered dinners by night. One guide told me his guests spent $40,000 for the week.

Another paddler couldn’t believe we’d spent nothing on boat hauling. “You mean to tell me I paid $1,000 to have my kayak packed in and you guys just hiked your boats in here in one day?” he said.

“I gotta get me one of those!”

We camped our last night across the river from the Black Bear Ranger Station; the next day we’d reach the take-out at Mid Creek, with a few potential trouble spots along the way.

The river map showed a big wave train at mile 63—we could portage around it, if need be. And there’d be one last “big squeeze” just past a section where Mid Creek enters the South Fork,

less than a mile from the take-out. I remembered the ranger at Spotted Bear mentioning this feature, but I couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said.

Early the next morning, we easily navigated the wave train by taking a side channel. The only remaining question was the big squeeze.

first rock and paddle through the back current. I’ll go first,” she said.

Thrilled to see the transformation in my wife’s confidence over a few days, I dug in hard after her, and we sailed through without a hitch.

We caught up to Doug five minutes later: He’d managed to drag his boat and

Soon enough we got the answer. The walls of the bank shot up in rocky cliffs 35 feet high, creating a 20-foot gap of rolling water. There was no easy way to portage.

But we were confident. We had 64 miles of successful travel under our belts.

“Doug, you want to go first, or me?” I asked. The three of us sized up the situation from an upstream eddy.

“Doesn’t matter, I don’t think it’ll be too bad,” Doug said, and casually paddled into the waves. A moment later all I could see was his blue boat bouncing upside down in the tumbling water. Megan held my boat and I grabbed the throw rope and scrambled up the cliff, only to see Doug helplessly chasing his paddle downstream, one hand still clutching his Alpacka.

When I returned to Megan I expected to see the same face she’d had at the top of the limestone gorge on Youngs Creek.

“I think we can avoid that big wave that tossed him if we slide around this

most of his stuff to shore, but he’d lost a fly rod, sleeping pad, and paddle.

“It gives me an excuse to buy myself a new rod,” he told us. “That was a helluva ride!”

I towed Doug the last three-quarters of a mile to the take-out. We deflated the boats and hiked the three miles back to our car, something that felt like a stroll.

We’d caught dozens of cutties, watched an osprey feed its young in a nest above the river, and found fresh bear tracks at one of our fishing holes.

We’d taken a swim in a trout-filled eddy and awakened one morning to find wolf tracks running through camp.

So many incredible details made the trip extraordinary.

“We should do this again sometime,” Megan told me when we reached the parking lot. I was way ahead of her.

“You should see the plans I’ve got drawn up for next summer, babe.”

Montana Headwall Page 58 Summer 2012

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The Crux CONTINUED FROM PAGE 62 Years later, I lived for a spell in Ronan. I have to confess that the Mission Mountains bothered me.

Had I not changed at all?

I’d ventured away from Montana, to graduate school, to the other side of the world to learn Chinese, only to return again to small-town life, gazing off at potential destinations instead of embracing them.

In fact, it was simpler than that. They were just too close. My feng shui was all fouled up. Those mountains formed a big stone wall blocking my view. I felt faintly challenged, but mostly hemmed in. They were in my face.

When I moved to the lower Rattlesnake in Missoula I thought Mount Jumbo would drive me crazy. I still think that on the endless gray days, but

Chad Harder

usually a little mind trick helps me stay in place. I simply move the Continental Divide 150 miles west and pretend that it runs down Jumbo’s back. I am a small mammalian something or other, maybe a mouse, tucked in next to this sleepy circus animal. On the other side there’s a waiting expanse of wind, cold sun, and

mile-long shadows.

I didn’t climb higher than the “L” for the first 15 years of my Rattlesnake residency. Bears roam up there, that’s a fact. But mainly I just didn’t want to achieve the peak and see more mountains. Then one spring day I continued on to the top. The serviceberry bushes were in full

flower and everyone in town was at work or in school.

Why not?

It was mildly arduous.

There were switchbacks. I hadn’t brought any water.

The whole hike, from front door to back porch, only took two hours, but I was impressed with myself. I felt a mini-epiphany, having to do with my current career path, which was inspired by children now, my own. I’d suspended ambition for a while. I’d put the question of destiny on hold. At the grassy crest, I saw more mountains. But there also was a “Sound of Music” moment. I actually did sing, I forget what. I sang for joy and to ward off bears. Predators and possibility. Just the ongoing drama of life, I thought, as I descended through backyards to dinner.

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Climbing past

I

by Megan McNamer

THE CRUX

A rocky start in the mountains leads to a happy ending

The next morning found me throwing ness, we wore enormous boots. But ’ve hiked from Goat Haunt Ranger after two days of hiking, we were up under a tree back in Canada, while Station at Waterton Lakes up to the under-nourished. Our freeze-dried food my sister hobbled down a nature trail Highline Trail and down a 20-mile stayed that way because we couldn’t giving her spiel about wildflowers to section of the Rocky Mountain spine, the day’s first gaggle of tourists. the Crown of the Continent, to arrive at coax a flame from our nifty stove gadget. Our so-called blow-up air mattresses We weren’t experienced trekkers Logan Pass sun-stricken, nauseous, blew. We had lemon drops to stave off because the mountains of our childdehydrated and delirious. But—until hood had been kept at a dismuch later—I didn’t feel I’d tance. From Cut Bank you really climbed a mountain, not could see the Sweetgrass Hills like anything you’d want to Those mountains across flat prairie to the east, sing about. the Rocky Mountain front That early ’70s Highline hike felt inconclusive, in terms a big stone blocking across flat prairie to the west, Chief Mountain jutting up of conquest. My sister had a north, a little separate from the summer job as a Glacier my rest. They stayed there on the National Park naturalist, but horizon, part earth, part sky, she was as new to backpacktouchstones and Telstars, puncing as I, both of us plains thirst, but it would have been better if tuating the valley floor. They added dwellers during all our tender years. interest to the backdrop of the everyWe were impressed with ourselves, but we’d had water. We wore no sunscreen day and served as symbols of aspiraalso scared. Park grizzlies had fatally or hats. (We’d only skimmed those tion. Our Dad rode his horse to the mauled two young women in recent books.) We tried to beg food at Granite Sweetgrass Hills as a boy, but his stohistory. Every distant boulder on the Park Chalet and all they gave us was ries highlighted the going; the saddling treeless path looked like a predator. an Almond Joy. That didn’t mix well up and heading out, the faster ride We hoped we looked intimidating, with the red wine we later drank to burdened as we were with 50-pound toast our twilight descent to Hugh home. The drama of life could encomBlack’s bar and restaurant in St. Mary, pass lower elevations: Climbing sumpacks. What did we have in there? courtesy of a hitchhiked ride from the mits wasn’t key to life’s thrill.

We’d researched backpacking, we’d last car of the day topping Logan Pass. read books. Testament to our seriousContinued on page 60

formed wall

view.

Chad Harder

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What beer do we drink when we’re done making beer?

The one you’re about to enjoy in Shift. Canning this Nelson Sauvin hopped pale lager means everyone gets to reward their work. Or play. Or, if you’re like us, combine the two and surround yourself with drinking buddies. Clock out and crack one open.

shift pale lager is brewed by new belgium brewing fort collins co