Montana Headwall

MONTANA HEADWALL Volume 3.3 FALL 2011

FALL 2011

Complimentary

mtheadwall.com

Montana Headwall

Page 4 Fall 2011

16 30 40

FRESH GROUNDS The end of a storied elk camp takes a family down new roads.

CONTENTS

CUPID’S ARROW On a Montana honeymoon, she’s the caller and he’s the killer.

DREAR AND LOATHING IN ANACONDA

Cover photo by Nelson Kenter

INSIDE On Belay

Grub 38

6

Playing the gamey

Contributors

8 Head Trip 44

Head Lines 11

Red Rock Lakes

The sticky problem of rock snot Sperry Chalet avalanche hits hard An uncharted Yellowstone River oil spill

Head Out 48 Your fall recreation calendar

Head Gear 50

Head Light 24 Wearable cameras go wild

Montana-made waders top the line

The Crux 58

Head Shots 26 Our readers’ best

Getting goosed

Wild Things 36 Caribou, repast and present

EDITOR GENERAL MANAGER PHOTO EDITOR ONLINE EDITOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER PRODUCTION DIRECTOR CIRCULATION MANAGER SPECIAL PROJECTS COORDINATOR CONTRIBUTORS

STAFF

Amy Linn Lynne Foland Chad Harder Brad Tyer Aaron Teasdale Carolyn Bartlett Joe Weston Adrian Vatoussis Chris Melton

Jack Ballard, Skylar Browning, Nick Davis, Chad Harder, Justin Karnopp, Molly Laich, Ari LeVaux, Amy Linn,

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

Please recycle this magazine

Montana Headwall (ISSN 2151-1799) is a registered trademark of Independent Publishing, Inc. Copyright 2011 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.

Jessica Mayrer, Scott McMillion, Alex Sakariassen, Kathy Witkowsky COPY EDITOR ART DIRECTOR PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES

FRONT DESK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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

Chad Harder

www.mtheadwall.com

When winter casts a pall, fish for rainbows.

ON BELAY www.mtheadwall.com

hen I skied Gash Point in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness by myself in June, a weak stomach kept me from eating. Unable to imagine digesting the energy bars or the apple I’d brought along, I tried to choke down some pretzels at the top. They’d been in my pack all winter, growing stale in a plastic baggie. But hey, how bad could a pretzel taste?

I spit out the first mouthful on the snow.

By the time I got back to my car, I was out of water, close to fainting, and four pounds lighter. Yet I instantly started thinking about getting back up there.

I felt thoroughly psyched, the suffering not forgotten, but somehow irrelevant.

I can’t yet put my finger on the source of the stoke. All I know is that I’m more than willing to risk significant discomfort and even serious injury to feel it.

And I’m not a particularly tough guy.

The subject’s on my mind after reading the Nick Davis story in this issue, “Drear and Loathing,” about getting skunked while fishing near Anaconda.

Headwall trips seem prone to going sideways. We make assignments with the full expectation of delivering tales of glorious fun. It usually works out differently than we expect. The narrative arc of outdoor adventure, it turns out, commonly pivots around mishap.

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Of course, that’s not always the case.

In “Cupid’s Arrow,” Justin Karnopp tells of getting everything he ever wanted while bow-hunting elk on his honeymoon. And Kathy Witkowski successfully shares one of her favorite places with a Hungarian exchange student in “Winging It.” Then again, there’s Jack Ballard: Diverted from his traditional hunting grounds by government decree, he explores for opportunities on unfamiliar terrain. Jack didn’t get his elk last season, but he got the word. “The goal and the search meld into one,” he writes.

Nick and I are learning it, too: Our experiences, good and bad, are strung together by a thread of promise that we’re eager to follow. We hope Headwall weaves it into a fabric that calls to you, as well.

Matt Gibson Editor-in-Chief

Chad Harder

CONTRIBUTORS www.mtheadwall.com

A veteran Montana journalist, McMillion is the author of the award-winning book Mark of the Grizzly, a revised edition of which will appear in the fall. He is senior editor of The Montana Quarterly and writes for a variety of publications around the nation on topics ranging from hunting ethics to fine art. You can see more of his work at www.scottmcmillion.com.

Justin Karnopp

Scott McMillion

A former cops-and-courts reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago (motto: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out”), Witkowski moved to Missoula after falling in love with the place while on assignment for an airline magazine. She’s written for Vogue, Mother Jones, Glamour and many other publications. She’s also produced and reported numerous stories for National Public Radio, written and directed award-winning documentaries, and coauthored a guidebook to the Northern Rockies.

A television producer and freelance writer, Davis goes fly fishing and bird hunting whenever time and seasons allow, which is not as much as he would like. He and his wife and son live in Missoula, and hope one day to have the wherewithal to get the hell out of town during the winters.

Kathy Witkowsky

Montana Headwall

After dabbling in both team and individual athletics, Karnopp finally found his calling in the "primitive sports" and moved to Montana to pursue them. Now, elk-fed and brain-dead, he clings to his jobs as an outdoor television producer, freelance writer, and fly designer for the Idylwilde Fly Company.

Page 8 Fall 2011

Nick Davis

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Sam Schultz launches over the gap jump at the Missoula Pro XCT mountain bike race in July. Schultz went on to win the race in front of his hometown crowd, placing third overall in the season-long national series. Many riders, including some top pros, declined to attempt the jump and chose the slower “B-line� around it instead.

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Montana’s campaign against “rock snot” is nothing to sneeze at Anglers who have had the misfortune of stumbling across didymosphenia geminata, or didymo, usually don’t forget the experience. The invasive yellow-brown algae species goes by a more colorful— and, sadly, physically accurate—name: rock snot. To the naked eye, it looks like giant chocolate-flavored gummy worms coating the riverbed, or the aftermath of some enormous Yeti’s sneeze.

“It’s nasty stuff,” says David Kumlien, director of Trout Unlimited’s Aquatic Invasive Species Program. “It looks like wet, wadded-up toilet paper at the bottom of the river. It’s easy to see how it ruins things.”

Persistent rock snot can choke out a stretch of river, killing aquatic life. Even mild outbreaks—like those found in Montana’s Kootenai and Bitterroot rivers— can destroy a pristine trout stream by sticking to anglers’ lines, lures and wet flies.

Rock snot first hit headlines in the early 1990s, when the formerly benign

Montana Headwall

alga began acting like an invasive species and took over streams in British Columbia, Canada. To date it has spread across North America and into parts of Europe, Asia, South America, and New Zealand.

Recreationists can spread the singlecelled organism by carrying it on their

legislation banning felt boots in April, and Alaska will enact a similar law next year. Other states continue to consider legislation; a proposed felt ban during Montana’s last legislative session failed to make it out of committee.

While felt remains a problem, experts believe the recent fixation actual-

Due to customer demand, fishing retailers still sell felt-soled boots.

Simms Fishing Products initially planned to stop making them in 2012, but recently reversed course. boats, kayaks, lifejackets, waders and, in particular, felt-soled boots. The footwear has become an especially hot-button issue within the last year.

Trout Unlimited called for manufacturers to phase out felt-soled fishing boots by 2011; if not properly cleaned, the boots can transport rock snot, whirling disease and other watershed threats. Vermont and Maryland enacted

Page 12 Fall 2011

ly distracts from a larger issue. Broader education and outreach—like Montana’s “Inspect. Clean. Dry” campaign—are crucial to combating all invasive aquatic organisms.

“There are a lot of different ways to approach it, but by keeping the message simple like [Montana’s], states have a much higher likelihood of success and compliance,” says Kumlien. “If you

make it too complicated, like a chart with chemical treatments for your gear for all of these aquatic invasive species, then you’ll lose people.”

Case in point: Kumlien is charged with updating Trout Unlimited’s national educational materials about invasive organisms, including rock snot. He plans to follow Montana’s blueprint.

In the meantime, the rock snot problem isn’t going away. Montana Sen. Tom Facey, who sponsored the failed felt-ban bill, says he still believes it’s a vital issue. The proposed legislation fell victim to politics—“We found key players this session had limited resources and bigger fish to fry, pun intended,” he says—but that shouldn’t deter Montana from continuing the fight against invasive aquatic species.

“This is important,” Facey says. “We can only hope the industry continues to step up and take care of it themselves.”

Skylar Browning Fish and Game New Zealand

Montana Headwall

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CRUDE AWAKENING

Yellowstone River pipeline leak shows oil and water don’t mix Exxon Mobil’s July oil leak on the Yellowstone River continues to alarm anglers, conservationists, residents, and government officials—and promises to do so for months.

Exxon officials originally estimated that the company’s Silvertip Pipeline, which ruptured upstream of Billings on July 1, spilled as much as 44,000 gallons

of crude. That number soon grew to 50,400 gallons. Early reports put the length of the oil slick at 25 miles. Weeks later, crews with the Environmental Protection Agency reported traces of oil in flood debris up to 72 miles away.

Ken Frazer, regional fisheries manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), says evaluations about the spill’s

ecological impacts have been changing daily. The fabled trout river rose above flood stage this year, and as it dropped from its peak, response teams found oil in places they hadn’t previously been able to reach. FWP biologists had to wait until mid-July to hit the water and take tissue samples from fish, due to safety concerns.

“With the water being as high as it was, it spread oil through lots of upland country and islands and stuff,” Frazer says.

It will likely be months before environmental agencies release official assessments about the ecological damage, wildlife and fish mortalities and long-term impacts to fisheries. In the interim, FWP cautioned anglers not to eat fish from the river because of possible health risks.

Conservationists worry that the oil will contaminate a vital transitional habitat for different types of warmand cold-water fish. The ancient pallid sturgeon resides not far downstream

Alexis Bonogofsky/National Wildlife Federation

SPERRY BAD NEWS

Avalanche hits chalet, and vacationers, hard Kevin Warrington doesn’t want to count how many times he’s had to tell hopeful Sperry Chalet guests that damage from the winter’s avalanche in Glacier National Park is forcing him to cancel their room reservations.

“I don’t even want to look at it,” Warrington says. “It’s very heartbreaking.”

As Sperry Chalet’s coordinator, Warrington’s been left to break the news that an avalanche, believed to have happened in February, damaged windows, doors and fixtures in the rustic 100-yearold lodging. Visitors first spotted the slide in May, and as the snow melted in the following weeks, park staffers discovered that the toll on the iconic structure was greater then originally anticipated.

“We realized some of the rafters were crushed,” Warrington says.

Sperry opened for the season more than a week late because of the destruction. Three of 17 guest rooms were out of commission, as of July.

The closure has been tough on Sperry regulars, many of whom have a strong

emotional attachment to the hotel. Sperry is only accessible via a 6.5-mile trail, by foot or horseback. Nestled at 6,500 feet between Gunsight Peak and Edwards Mountain, the perch is ideal to take in a bird’s-eye view or soak in the structure’s history. (Note to would-be visitors: Park officials this summer warned against taking the Gunsight Pass Trail to the chalet due to a damaged suspension bridge;

did nearly 90 years ago, avalanche smackdown aside.

Experts blame the slide on the extraordinary amount of precipitation that’s fallen on Montana this year. The first half of 2011 was the wettest in the state’s recorded history, according to the National Weather Service.

Snowdrifts 25 feet high towered over snowplows well into summer. Camp-

Lingering high-elevation snow made it impossible for pack trains to reach Granite Park Chalet through much of summer, forcing managers to use porters to haul supplies. check the sperrychalet.com website before sallying forth on it this fall.)

Railroad tycoon and developer James J. Hill built the chalet in 1913 to accommodate the fresh wave of travelers making their way across the West on his newly constructed Great Northern Railway. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the chalet has no electricity, heat, or running water. Other than a modernized kitchen and the new composting restroom, it looks much as it

grounds like Two Medicine and Many Glacier opened weeks late. The Goingto-the-Sun Road wasn’t clear for travelers until July 13, marking only the third time in the park’s 100-year history that the winding road failed to open for the July 4 holiday. June visits to the park were down 20 percent from 2010.

“We’re definitely in some unprecedented territory here as far as this late melt,” says Glacier spokeswoman Ellen Blickhan.

from the spill’s source, near the town of Laurel.

“We can only wait and see,” says Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited.

By the end of July, some 900 people were reported working on the cleanup of the Silvertip pipeline rupture.

Recreation has already taken a hit.

Participants in August’s Yellowstone Boat Float were asked to exit the river in Columbus to avoid cleanup efforts downstream. Some local fly fishing guides have reported that clients are canceling trips.

With no precedent in Montana to draw from, Frazer says he can’t even guess what impacts the spill might have on fishing regulations in the coming years.

Says Frazer: “This is new to all of us, so it’s a learning process for everyone.”

Alex Sakariassen

As for Sperry, the chalet closed, at the end of August, rather then early September, as is typical. Warrington says the early closure will enable crews to begin making repairs before the snow starts to fly, better ensuring the chalet will be ready to run full steam when it opens to guests again—next July.

Jessica Mayrer

Renee Noffke

Montana Headwall

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he call came on a warm August evening. My mind was focused on supremely important endof-summer conundrums. What sunshiny ale to try next. How many backpack and fishing trips could I wring from the calendar before fall. Two months away, my thoughts were far away from hunting. But suddenly, the October opening of elk season seized my consciousness like an unexpected strike from a savage brown trout on a slow day of fishing.

“They closed the road,” my caller said.

It was a cousin, Doug, bearing bad tidings. The announcement left me with a profound sense of ambivalence.

For over three decades, most years have found me bumping up a rough, winding trail of ruts and rock once a year—the one my cousin was talking about. My family history with the “road” extends to the fall of 1953, when my father and two uncles made an exploratory foray up this Forest Service road into the Snowcrest Mountains. The pioneers had but two rigs: an old 3/4-ton pickup and

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a battered stock truck. Neither was fourwheel drive, but in the hearty spirit of the times they chained up and ground their way into the mountains. They at last found a campsite where the rutted trail crosses Beaver Creek.

The camp consisted of a canvas wall-tent, housing bedrolls of cotton sheets and scratchy wool blankets on a length of heavy tarp. A layer of yellow barley straw strewn under the tarp provided padding and a dubious measure of insulation. But despite the Spartan accommodations, each man felt a growing, near-mystical attraction to the landscape that sprang from the terrain as much as from the game. Dawn found the hunters waiting at the edges of open parks where flaxen grass drooped wearily with an icy coating of frost.

Riding high on barren ridgetops above timberline, where wind tossed icy shards of snow into an ageless blue sky, the vista revealed rocky slopes descending to waving oceans of evergreens, then rising up again to wild mountain continents as far as the eye could see.

When the vehicles turned back down

the road, groaning with the additional weight of fat elk, one for each hunter, the three brothers felt as if they’d discovered a misplaced sliver of paradise.

A few seasons later, they moved their elk hunting camp some six miles up the road from Beaver Creek. Not many years after the dawn of the third millennium, the second generation of my family’s elk hunters celebrated a landmark anniversary with the single remaining survivor of the first. My uncle, Tom, had hunted for 50 consecutive years from the same camp, the ridgepole elevating the canvas of the cook tent secured to the same pine tree for five decades. In celebration we bought him a fine Filson hunting vest, embroidered with an elk head and an inscription heralding his accomplishment.

“What are we going to do about elk camp?” Doug’s voice now scratched from my cell phone, squashing my nostalgic recollections with the burning issue of the present.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

Think I did, for several weeks, while members of my extended family pondered the merits of protesting the order to close the road. The route was to be gated at Beaver Creek, far below our camp, the victim of a newly implemented Forest Service travel plan intended to expand the reach of roadless country where illegal vehicle travel and erosion are persistent problems. Like mountain bikers and snowmobilers who claim to support wilderness so long as it doesn’t impinge on their favorite riding area, I couldn’t help but find the situation irksome. Who were these arrogant, bureaucrat SOBs messing with my family’s elk hunting tradition, a tradition likely older than the candy-assed individual signing the closure order?

But even as my gut desired nothing more highly than regurgitating all over those responsible for messing up my recreation, my head heralded the decision. Roadless areas need protection.

And numerous studies show that elk retreat roughly a mile from well-traveled vehicle routes. Chances were, a bull could be brought to earth in the meadow adjoining our traditional camping site. It would simply take something like a four-mile hike or horseback ride to get there. Doable, very doable, from a camp pitched near the gate that would now bar access to the upper portion of the road.

A month later I was back on the phone with Doug. Recruits for a hunt below the old camp had dwindled to

myself, my two teenage sons, and Doug and his two younger brothers, also teens.

The kids were in junior high and high school, so we couldn’t take the full span of the opening week to hunt. At best the boys could miss three days. With a full day of travel on either end it seemed too much, a 300-mile drive to pitch a camp in a familiar drainage, but far from the normal areas I hunt.

I inhaled deeply.

“I think I’m out this year, Doug.”

“That’s okay,” he replied graciously, though I knew him well enough to detect the disappointment in his voice.

My boys were far less successful at disguising dismay. “We’re not going to elk camp?” they asked incredulously when I announced the change of plans.

At two and three seasons under their belt-less hunting britches, they’d already been thoroughly captivated by the experience and its soul-stealing tradition.

“Then where are we going to hunt elk?”

“We’ll find someplace close to Red Lodge.”

The season opened, and for the first time in a long while, I discovered myself in search of fresh grounds for hunting elk.

Saturday afternoon found the boys and I idling up a Forest Service road less than an hour from home. Previous study of a topographical map revealed a swath of country about a mile wide and four miles long, a bench of aspen groves, meadows and dense stands of evergreens. To the north, barren foothills trailed away into an empty horizon. To the south, the bench ended abruptly against the canted face of the Beartooth Mountains. A little sleuthing in records from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks indicated elk in the area. We were ready to go hunting.

But maybe not. The closer we motored to my intended launching point, the more vehicles we encountered. By coincidence, all the drivers and occupants munching corn chips or puffing languidly on an afternoon cigarette were wearing orange clothes. Rifle racks adorned most of the pickups. Rounding a bend, we spied a brace of hunters, guns slung on their shoulders, dragging a whitetail doe toward the road by a front leg and one ear.

“Lotta people around here,” Micah observed from the back seat, in case I hadn’t noticed. I had, and was possessed

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Then I spied two objects that simultanesinuses. Within minutes we began of more than half a mind to make a Uously refocused my senses. The first was encountering more deer tracks, but the turn at the first pullout and sulk back to the waving white tail of a buck deer boltshuffling, oval-shaped paw marks of the town. We came to a place to pull over, ing up through the scattered timber on Homo sapiens all but vanished. The forthen waited while a trio of pickups and the opposite side of the draw, no doubt est before us appeared wild and pristine. two chubby hunters on an ATV rumbled alerted by our careless passage. The secTowering Douglas and alpine firs, and a past. I killed the ignition, thinking we ond was twin sets of prints in an expanse smattering of Engelmann spruce thrust could at least get some exercise. of snow ahead. Even at a distance, they their smooth and scaly trunks from the We crossed the road, then hiked up a appeared much too large for deer. north sides of the rippling foothills. wickedly inclined slope, skirting a barbAs I suspected, the tracks wire fence that marked the were left by a critter with larger boundary of a small tract of Who were these , feet than a whitetail. But it was private land jutting into Forest not the hoped-for elk. Other Service acreage. Patches of predators, it appeared, were snow from a previous storm bureaucrat messing with attracted to the seclusion of the clung crustily to the landscape area as well. The pugmarks in shaded areas and dimples my family’s hunting, were as wide as my mittened along the slope. Though our hand. Though somewhat indiscourse followed the most foota tradition likely older than the tinct, the patently evident patfriendly route toward the tern of clawed toes spread from ridgetop, some quarter-mile individual signing a larger pad. My assumption away, I saw but two boot that we left the hunting competracks. the closure order? tition behind on the yonder On the ridge, we encounridge was in error. At least two tered a beaten trail made by other hunters were also seeking prey in Aspens lined the draws. Though it was hunters who scrambled to this spine of the vicinity: a pair of gray wolves. early November, I could detect a faint grass and stone, then paced along its Looking up from the wolf tracks, backbone. Based on my map reading and poplar scent on the intermittent breeze. movement caught my eye on a southPausing on a hilltop, I heard the unmisknowledge of elk behavior, I expected facing slope, barren of snow, a half-mile takable music of a frolicking brook in the the big ungulates to be a mile or more from our position. A quick look through ravine below. Who cared about hunting? from this ridge. We pointed our steps the trusty Nikons around my neck Let’s go explore, I thought. east, dipping through a stand of aspens revealed the form of another whitetail We angled down the slope, arms in a depression. From nearly under my buck. We were ostensibly hunting elk. But swinging, laughing and chattering like feet a startled ruffed grouse took wing, both boys had deer tags in their pocket. the most clueless of greenhorn hunters. sending my heart pounding into my

arrogant SOBs

elk

candy-assed

We slid down the gradient toward the creek, slipping on our boots like stubby skis. I sent the boys ahead as I watched the whitetail through binoculars, allowing them another 50-foot slip when the deer dropped its head to feed. We ducked into the creek bottom, jogging along the sprightly watercourse in an attempt to intercept the browsing buck. Moments later, I saw the barrel of Micah’s rifle rise slowly above a mound of sage. His first shot flew wide of the mark, but the second connected. We stood and walked toward the motionless buck, Micah’s first whitetail. The smile on his face spread as wide as when he’d downed his first elk.

Just as the tired sun dropped from the western horizon, leaving the earth cloaked in shadow, we boned the buck and stashed the meat in the folds of its already cool hide.

We returned in the morning with backpacks. Micah elected to build a small fire and hang out by the meat pile.

Dominic and I departed on a looping hike farther east, penetrating what I hoped would be more productive elk country. We encountered piles of old elk sign, then dis-

Montana Headwall

year’s elk and take a look around.

Ten minutes into my binocular reconnaissance, I spotted the large dark bodies of not one, but five bull moose in a not-so-far-away copse of aspens.

As I savored the sighting, Dom lounged on the ground beside me.

“Know what, Dad? Next year we should bring our backpacks and just camp out here.”

Whatever regrets he had about missing the traditional elk camp seemed to be gone.

wo weeks later, the week before Thanksgiving, my search for new elk hunting grounds and a potential place to pitch an elk camp closer to home continued. The kids were in school, so my sweetheart and I tromped another drainage issuing from the stern, imposing flank of the northern Beartooths. With six inches of fresh snow on the ground, I looked hungrily for elk tracks. But another deer encounter got in the way. Ahead, in a dense stand of limbless lodgepoles, we glimpsed a whitetail buck weaving through the overgrown matchsticks in our direction.

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covered a matched set of shed deer antlers, their bone bleached to a hue similar to the faded grass surrounding the tines on each horn. Ahead was a boulderstrewn knob protruding from the edge of the flat bench like the aftermath of a forehead whacked by a baseball; it was a good place to gnaw on some jerky from last

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Continued on page 54

by Chad Harder

HEAD LIGHT

Shoot with your head ou’ve labored for hours and finally arrived at your wilderness paradise. Tired but ecstatic, you’ve got all the fishing gear you need to complete your adventure and send the line. You also have that expensive camera gear, and the sunset has illuminated the entire glorious scene in a surreal glow. But there’s not enough time to make the most of both.

Will you satisfy your passion to land a lunker, your favorite thing in life? Or will you sacrifice in the name of artistry, and capture the beauty and energy on camera?

This is easily the worst part of being an adventure photographer: forsaking total immersion in the moment to create a visual feast for later consumption. Fortunately, with the advent of wearable, high-end micro-cams, the days of having to choose are over. Skiers, climbers and adventurers worldwide are recording their exploits in HD, without ever having to take eyes—or heart—off the line. There are about a half-dozen wearable cameras on the market, each with its own benefits and pitfalls. None are as popular as the GoPro HD Helmet Hero ($300), which comes with about everything you’d want—full 1920 x1080 HD (high-definition) video, a shock-proof and waterproof case, and the fisheye lens required to score a “you-are-here” perspective.

The Hero also shoots up to 60 video frames per second, just the rate you need if you want to slo-mo your gap-hucking buddy.

If you prefer still images, the Hero accommodates that, too. Just set it to capture a 5-megapixel frame every 2/5/10/30/60 seconds—from a perch on your helmet, bike,

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vehicle, surfboard, wrist, and so on. You can get up to 2.5 hours of shooting, all without needing to touch or adjust the camera.

A camera the size of a cell phone that weighs 94 grams (twice that with the housing) is not without shortcomings.

Battery life can be limiting, and batteries are expensive. The Hero has only two buttons, but there are many settings, and figuring out the menu isn’t always intuitive. Since there’s no viewfinder or viewing screen, you have to experiment with camera angles and essentially roll the dice your first few times out. (An $80 LCD screen accessory lets you see what you’re recording, but it drastically increases the camera’s size and weight, and it’s not a necessity.)

In the meantime, GoPro is continuously improving its cameras through user feedback and firmware updates, and the company doesn’t nickel-and-dime users on things like electrical cords or helmet mounts—mine came with six.

So if you continually find yourself in photoworthy places, but rarely have the time or extra hand to pull out your camera, don’t leave it at home. Just strap on the helmet cam and go.

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.

Montana Headwall

Page 25 Fall 2011

HEAD SHOTS www.mtheadwall.com A mountain goat stretches at the Goat Lick in Glacier National Park.

Lawrence Stolte

Vanessa Gaudette

A post-thunderstorm sunset near York, Mont.

HEAD SHOTS www.mtheadwall.com A bald eagle takes a break along the Bitterroot River west of Corvallis.

Sandy Waits

Olga Hutchinson

Sunrise on the limestone "Rims" northwest of Billings.

by Justin Karnopp he last time we heard the bull he was long gone; his faint bugle was barely audible as he neared the top of the ridge and the safety of high ground. The perpetually swirling winds on the spine of that ridge betray the approach of any predator. The old bull knew this, and so did I. Once again, I’d missed a chance to bag one of the biggest bull elk in the canyon.

My wife, Lauren, and I caught our breath and weighed our options.

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Jeremy Lurgio

Just then, two individual bull elk let rip with their respective mating calls, a couple hundred yards above us. I crept uphill in the direction of the bugles to get above Lauren, my caller, and once I was in position, Lauren challenged the elk with a bugle of her own. The bulls immediately responded and headed our way, one to the left, one to the right. I clenched my fingers on the string on my recurve, held my diaphragm call in my teeth, and scanned the timber, listening intently. Then I felt the breeze hit the back of my neck, and knew the jig was up. The bulls continued to bugle defiantly, having now smelled the humans trying to dupe them, and exe-

having a smashed peanut butter-andjelly sandwich washed down with fresh mountain water collected from the spring high up on the mountain, then lying down for an afternoon nap in the bear grass and letting the gentle breezes lull her to sleep. How does a guy argue with that? We continued on, and I wondered how the hell I got lucky enough to marry a girl like her.

Lauren and I had swapped our vows a month before at our family ranch high in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. My dad acted as minister, there were as many dogs as people in attendance, and a Missoula-based band set stage on the porch of the cowboy

Justin Karnopp

cuted a fast uphill departure from the scene.

At that point the frustration took over. I’d worked my tail off in this drainage for three years trying to arrow an elk with my recurve, and though I’d admittedly made numerous mistakes, my nemesis was the damned ever-shifting wind—a good enough reason to throw in the towel and head back to camp, maybe even back to town.

Had I been with my hunting buddies they probably would have agreed with my decision to bag it. But I wasn’t hunting with one of my buddies—I was hunting with my eternally optimistic new wife, who took this moment to remind me about my own mantra, “You won’t fill your tag sitting in camp.” Then she reminded me of how much she loves Montana Headwall

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bunkhouse. Now, my wife and I were on our honeymoon, having foregone the typical beachside bungalow for a twoman tent deep in my favorite archery elk grounds on the border of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Even before getting my recurve, the place was a favorite. In all I’d spent five years discovering the nuances of this particular spot and its elk, the first couple of those devoted to trying to get a buddy his first bull with a bow. As anyone who bow hunts for elk knows, the best chance is often the first chance, and we had some pretty ridiculous archery hunting our first year in the huge basin. I don’t think the animals had been exposed much to calling. Elk can become very call-shy and quiet when pressured, but the bulls in this country were extremely vocal, often

bugling all day long during the peak of the rut. That’s what I love most about archery hunting; the serenade of a bull elk’s mating call. It’s music to my ears, my favorite sound in nature, thus my favorite sound in the world. Those first couple of years my hunting partners and I both nearly shot big bull elk, the kind with antlers that adorn the mantles of fireplaces in fancy cabins across the West. But elk aren’t stupid, and they’d figured out our system and become much more difficult to call within bow range, especially with the 20-yard maximum range of the traditional recurve bow I’d been hunting with for three seasons.

Jeremy Lurgio

Jeremy Lurgio

Jeremy Lurgio

On my fourth season in the basin, this time hunting with Lauren, the elk seemed to have adapted to the hunting pressure by heading for the high grounds shortly after first light. The bulls still bugled a bunch, but by leaving their preferred feeding and breeding grounds at daybreak they stayed well ahead of us. We had to hike hard for an hour from the locked gate on the old spur road along game trails just to follow them to the mouth of the drainage. From there, it was straight uphill, and anyone who’s tried to keep pace with the huge lungs and four massive legs of an elk going upcountry can attest to the hopelessness of that situation. Advantage, elk.

New tactics were obviously in order.

So the next year, rather than set up my fancy camp full of all the creature comMontana Headwall

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Justin Karnopp

forts an elk hunter could want, I decided Lauren and I should camp up high, near the creek, with just the bare necessities.

That way, we could be at the same elevation as the elk at first light, and instead of playing catch-up, we’d blend in with our quarry. Advantage, hunter.

auren’s first archery hunt with me in this drainage took place late in the season—mid-October—and I still hadn’t killed an elk. I presumed the rut was over and wasn’t expecting much action. I was wrong.

We were able to creep amidst a bugling bull and his harem of cows. I

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she took it in stride. After hanging the meat in camp we headed back out for an evening hunt. We spotted a group of cows a mile away, and made our stalk (since our general elk tag for the unit was valid for both sexes). Lauren was right behind me when I killed a huge lead cow, and we packed our second elk out of those mountains, much of it in the dark. If there was any question about her toughness, it was squashed right then and there.

So it came as no surprise to me when my wife–after I floated the idea of backpacking into the middle of the drainage and sleeping in a two-man tent in an area where I had personally seen four

mule deer and two elk with those “wheelie” bows, but the allure of traditional archery became irresistible after I read a book about it, Longbows in the Far North. I bought a used recurve (so-called for its curved tips), and set my sights on killing an elk with it.

Broadly, “traditional” archery refers to a recurve or longbow, ancient weapons with few working parts. While some longbow enthusiasts who build their own wooden arrows would probably scoff at the term “traditional” to describe my recurve and carbon arrow shafts, I use the word because of the way the bow is aimed and shot. In traditional archery, there are no sights on the bow,

honeymoon, having foregone the typical beachside bungalow for a two-man tent deep in my favorite archery elk grounds.

My wife and I were on our

blew softly on a cow call and, like something out of Jurassic Park, elk stood up all around us. I looked back at Lauren, who exhibited both fear and wonder as she crouched within spitting distance of several cows that had not yet detected our presence. When they did, all hell broke loose. I didn’t get my bull, but Lauren had a new appreciation for what the whole hunting thing was all about.

At Thanksgiving we tried again, this time in the Gravelly Mountains, to fill my tag with a rifle. On the first morning of the hunt my buddy John shot an antler-less elk and gave Lauren her first experience with a kill. Of course, she felt bad for the dead soul—we all do—but

grizzly bears—willingly agreed to join me. She had been practicing her calling for a year and was privy to my preferred strategy of luring elk within range of my primitive weapon, staying undetected on the approach, getting close and then calling aggressively. This leaves a bull with a quick decision to make, and it’s the best way I’ve found to get an elk to make an adrenaline-fueled error. That is, of course, if the ever-present wind doesn’t betray me.

ike many elk hunters, I started out with a rifle and picked up a compound bow later in life. I shot a few

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Jeremy Lurgio

and the arrow isn’t aimed so much as it is pointed in the right direction.

Accuracy is attained through practice, repetitiveness and consistency.

Hitting a target requires cohesiveness between the body and mind as you draw and loose the arrow. It’s a Zen-like thing that I don’t always achieve, but when I do get in the zone, I feel the way I imagine a pitcher does in a no-hitter.

Archery elk hunting with a recurve, however, is a different ball game than hunting with a compound, something you learn the first time you see an elk 40 yards away—out of range, for a recurve—and think to yourself “If only I had my compound!”

Compound bows use a complex pulley system that generates more arrow speed with less resistance.

The hunter draws and looses the arrow in nearly one fluid motion, producing arrow speeds of up to 330 feet per second. A recurve doesn’t even come close to that kind of velocity. With my recurve shooting abilities, I have no confidence I can get an arrow through an elk’s dinner-plate sized lungs unless it’s within 20 yards.

s Lauren and I hunted uphill toward the napping grounds, a potent waft of elk stench stopped both of us in our tracks. The smell of elk musk is a common thing in elk rutting country, but a hunter’s nose, perhaps even on a subconscious level, can discern between old sign and fresh. We both scanned the timber, and Lauren let loose with a bugle. Instantly, a previously unseen bull elk jumped to his feet and looked at us in surprise and horror. He turned around and wheeled off before I had a chance to raise my bow. Suddenly we were enveloped by elk.

I concentrated on a cow bee-lining it for me and followed her when she veered off into a patch of timber. Unfortunately, a tree shielded the vital area behind the cow’s shoulder. Then a bugle erupted to my right and I turned to see the head and antlers of a bull, his head tilted back finishing what I hoped would be his swan song. He took a step forward, revealing his front shoulder from behind an old-

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Justin Karnopp

Lauren did, with over 100 pounds of elk meat on her back, twice, and nary a complaint.

When we reached camp, I pulled two gold cans from the icy stream and my wife and I raised them to the hard work, and to the bull that would feed us for the rest of the year. I’ve drained a few cold ones in my day, but none better than those banquet beers chilled in the headwaters of the drainage that had just bestowed us a righteous gift.

We rinsed the elk’s thighs, shoulders and backstraps in the creek, and laid them out on the cold, shady gravel where the ambient temperature was just right for cooling meat after dragging it off a mountain in 80-degree heat.

We hung all the fresh meat high in the fir trees outside of Justin Karnopp camp, along with our bloodstained clothing. There’s company up here that growth fir. He was still mostly concealed you don’t want to keep, and when behind a stand of small trees, but I found you’re bivouacked on a game trail miles a softball-sized opening where his lungs from the nearest road on your honeyshould be and my mind went into cruise moon, you take every precaution to control. I don’t remember drawing the ensure that the two of you don’t end up bow or releasing the arrow, but when the on the front page as the latest casualties bull turned, the feather fletchings on the who rolled the dice in grizzly bear end of my arrow shaft were buried deep country. Then we downed two plates of in his side, and a rivulet of blood stained pre-made elk curry and crawled into his flank. I knew he was finished. My the tent, two exhausted newlyweds. quest to shoot an elk with a primitive The day on the mountain was the bow was complete. crowning achievement in my blessed Aside from a couple of crick-boating, 20-year elk hunting career, but it was backcountry-ski-loonies (who I just hapalso just the beginning of many advenpen to share wall tents with on many fall tures in the woods, and through life, weekends), I don’t know anyone who with a perfect partner for both. could have completed the pack-out that

Jeremy Lurgio

WILD THINGS

by Skylar Browning

Mark Bradley

he first time I saw a caribou it was served on a plate. During a homemade breakfast in Arctic Village, Alaska, my host presented a heap of scrambled eggs, thick toast, strong coffee and a lean hunk of meat that she described as “Rudolph.” Nearly 20 years after that meal I still remember my excitement at the prospect of returning to the Lower 48 and torturing my vegetarian sister with the news that I ate a reindeer.

It was delicious, I told her.

She cringed.

Christmas was never the same.

Technically, I didn’t eat a reindeer. The game on my plate was tundra caribou, abundant in Alaska. Although part of the same species, Rangifer tarandus, reindeer are a domesticated variety of caribou used for pulling sleds, mostly in Scandinavia and Siberia. The iconic Christmas characters are typically smaller and have shorter legs than their wild relatives. They do have some similarities: Both males and females grow antlers, and the males’ fall out in winter, meaning popular illustrations of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and the gang are inaccurate.

Another thing reindeer and tundra caribou

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have in common is they both maintain moderately healthy herd numbers.

Other caribou aren’t so lucky, particularly the woodland variety that have been known to wander into northwestern Montana. According to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the last caribou sighting occurred about five years ago in the Yaak Valley. Two years ago, FWP also confirmed caribou tracks—distinct from other ungulates because it’s a wider, almost circular print—along the North Fork of the Flathead, near the west side of Glacier National Park. Other organizations, like Canada’s Wildsight, one of the lead members of the International Mountain Caribou Project, receive additional reports of caribou moving through the Yaak, but the animals are considered transients, most of them lone stragglers from British Columbia or the Selkirk Mountains of Washington, northern Idaho and Canada. In any case, Montana sightings are rare.

“You hear about it, but I’ve never actually seen one in Montana,” says Nick DeCesare, a doctorate student at the University of Montana who’s spent four years studying woodland caribou in the

Canadian Rockies. “And the way things are going, it’ll take an incredible effort for them to return.”

Things weren’t always so bleak. FWP says that, in addition to regular migrations, a herd may have existed in the Yaak until the late 1950s. But by 1960, the animals essentially disappeared. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer says the caribou is officially considered extirpated from the state, making it “the only historical native species missing from Montana’s vast array of wildlife.”

The reasons why caribou no longer migrate through or live in Montana—and why herds in southern Canada are also threatened—include logging, forest fires, oil and other natural resource extraction, predators and climate change. In short, the old-growth forests that provide caribou with their primary winter food source, ground lichen, no longer exist in the region.

It could take 100 years for the forest to regrow enough to lure a herd back to the state, and that’s not likely to happen, biologists say.

The reality, unlike Santa, doesn’t bring good cheer. Much more than Christmas will never be the same.

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Montana Headwall

Page 37 Fall 2011

GRUB

by Ari LeVaux he gamiest animal I’ve ever eaten was a female fawn that I’d unfortunately shot in the belly. She crawled a couple hundred yards before I found her. When I cut open her body cavity to clean her, a foul mix of gut juices and feces spattered all over me. Every time I tried to eat from that deer I smelled that ugly afternoon, and it tasted awful.

But when I prepared the same meat for other people, they thought it tasted great. They hadn’t experienced the trauma of the gut shot, and they weren’t held hostage to the now barely detectable gamey aroma that brought me back to the scene of the crime. Psychology, physiology, memory and emotion can all combine to influence flavor.

Gaminess, meanwhile, is like pornography: difficult to define, but you know it when you see it (or taste it, in this case).

For every wild-game eater there’s a different opinion about what it is, where it comes from, and even whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

For some people, gaminess is simply the smell of the individual animal, a reflection of its species, stage of life, sex and diet.

They savor the flavors as a carnivorous version of terroir, the taste of the earth as experienced through meat. Others find the flavor repugnant. Many a proposed venison dinner has received the spousal veto on those grounds.

What’s a hunter-chef to do?

First, it’s important to understand the distinction between flavors that are intrinsic to the animal, and flavors that result from a poor shot—as in the case of my gamey fawn. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call the former type of gaminess “natural,” and the latter “induced.”

Natural gamey flavors tend to be milder and less potentially off-putting than the induced variety. They can come down to the difference between a mule deer and a whitetail deer, or between a deer that eats highland scrub and one that feeds on an alfalfa field in the valley. Variations in natural flavors also result from the time of year an animal was taken, as well as its age or sex.

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Induced flavors due to operator error can be as subtle as a pissed-off dog behind a fence.

If an animal doesn’t drop instantly and runs a lot before it dies, it will have lactic acid in its muscles and adrenaline and metabolic waste in its blood. Both things can speed up bacterial growth in the meat, resulting in flavors that only a maggot could love.

To maximize taste (and, it goes without saying, act humanely), you want the animal to die quickly. Make sure not to puncture the guts when you’re cleaning the animal. Don’t let any hairs fall on the flesh. Cut off the scent glands at the inner sides of the knee joints on the hind legs.

If you’re hunting in warm weather, keep ice in your truck to pack into the animal’s body cavity, and sew it in. Otherwise the thick parts of the meat, insulated by the hide, will stay warm for hours and potentially breed bacteria.

Bottom line: the longer it takes for the animal to die and get down below 45 degrees, and the less care that goes into cleaning it, the stronger the flavor. If you’ve killed and cleaned an animal the right way—but think the meat still tastes gamey—a few cooking tricks can conceal it.

One technique, which I learned from a curry goat recipe, is to marinate the meat in lime juice for at least half an hour. Then rinse the juice off. For a more radical fix, leave the meat overnight in a potent marinade or add a sauce to the finished product.

But I’m not a huge fan of concealing flavor. If you’ve hunted correctly, the animal’s natural gaminess should be savored like a piece of fine Camembert cheese.

If the meat is afflicted by a bad case of induced gaminess, on the other hand, you might want to forget about eating it. Sure, you can overpower the funky taste with marinade or a slurry of catsup. But given that the flavor you’re covering up could be a stage of rot, do you really want to?

You might be able to clean and cool your animal enough to minimize the traces of adrenaline, fear and bile. You might even be able to fool your guests, the way I did with my fawn. But I couldn’t fool myself.

RICH WA

MATT CO

ASHLEY

RYAN

CA

NC

RHONDA AZ

ANDREW TX

KNOW YOUR LOCAL RANGER

Your Ranger has a first name. And it’s not Simcoe, Cascade or Chinook (but those are in there). It could be Joel if you’re in Missouri, or Jeannie in California, or even Bubba in Wisconsin. They are the Beer Rangers across our territories dedicated to getting Ranger IPA into your hands for the continual enjoyment of hops. Scan the code or go to newbelgium.com/local to follow their journey as they protect, pour and partake.

HEAD TRIP

by Nick Davis

Photos by Chad Harder

he 47th of Marchuary broke like most days belonging to that godforsaken two-month pustule on the ass-end of winter: cold, wet and aggressively gray. The barometer in my head had been stuck in a low-pressure pattern for the better part of a month by then, so the bleak scene outside the window matched my mental landscape perfectly. It could have been the winter blues, it could have been work-related stress; hell, it could have been disgruntled biorhythms. Whatever its source, this black funk possessed serious juju, persevering on a day in which no funk should ever find purchase. For this was to be the first fishing day of the year.

Missoula attracts and nurtures a freakishly diverse set of outdoor enthusiasts. For a significant subset of that group, winter is a destination unto itself, a snow-covered playground of intense adrenaline rushes and/or serene beauty. I do not count myself among them. As a hunter and fisherman I loathe the time from the December lockdown until the rivers open up in earnest in April. That loathing reaches fever pitch during the months of February (so short in length, so long in feel) and

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March (the cruel, false promise of official “spring”)—a seemingly endless series of days flattened by the boot heel of inversion.

headwater of a trout river is as sacred as it gets, but as I looked at the water flowing around my waders, none of it looked holy.

The

The never-ending winter of 20102011 being particularly interminable, the prospect of a fishing trip should have been a bracing tonic for the soul. The particulars of location should have fueled optimism and confidence: The water in question carries the reputation

Page 40 Fall 2011

of breaking out of winter’s cocoon sooner than most, and the last and only time I had fished it I landed a slew of trout, punctuated by the stark heft of a 24inch, football-shaped rainbow. In short, I should have had sunshine beaming out of my ass as I grabbed my gear and headed out.

But it was with the aforementioned funk in tow that I headed east, a late start under my belt, riding the wake of a storm that left a full inch of frozen snot pasted to the north side of every standing structure in sight. In the early, ugly twilight I drove straight past the river access and into town. The fish would be there in the morning, and I needed a warm burger and a cold beer.

In addition to being one of the longest small towns conceivable, Anaconda may well be populated by aliens. As I began drifting along the long one-way straightaways that bisect the town, the otherworldly sight of the Club Moderne sucked me in as if with a tractor beam. A 75-year-old legacy of Bozeman architect Fred F. Willson, the curvy, bulgy Streamline Moderne-style

building houses a fine bar and friendly folks. But when asked for a burger recommendation, neither the affable young lady behind the bar nor the kindly gentleman on the stool next to mine could name one.

That’s the first time it occurred to me these people might be the front wave of a Martian invasion. Most legit Montana towns have numerous “best burger” joints and all have at least one— Potomac, for example, is barely even a town and it spawned the Ugly Burger. It’s exactly the sort of detail extraterrestrials would miss as they stealthily replaced townsfolk in their scheme of total domination. And the people—they were all so strangely nice.

Things got no less weird at the Classic Café, where my burger quest ended. A 50s-style diner with two tables up front modeled after Herbie and Millie of “Love Bug” fame—engine blocks and leaf springs serving as the tables’ foundation—the Classic was staffed that evening

by Evelyn, the bartender, and Connie, the cook. Despite her occupation, Evelyn confessed to finding tap beer too messy for her taste and pronounced Corona as

“Cor-ee-na.” She hooked me up with a one-dollar Rainier and Connie served up a damn good burger, though due to incomplete data I cannot say if it was the best in town.

When I mentioned I was in the area to fish in the morning Evelyn assumed I meant ice fishing on Georgetown Lake, and when I told her my intention was to fish a local creek she said, “Oh, that kind of fishing,” pantomiming a fly rod cast, and it was unnecessary to expand further.

Over the course of the evening Evy—we soon reached nickname terms—relented to repeated requests and playfully let the hair she had corralled behind her head down to her waist, the great mass swing-

ing behind her as she grabbed another Rainier.

I learned that Connie owned four hounds, two Saint Bernards and one cow dog, and that she had recently been diagnosed with MS. A former registered nurse, she described her reaction to hearing the words “multiple sclerotic lesions” spill from her doctor’s mouth: “The first thing I thought was ‘It’s the goddamn arsenic,’” she said matter-offactly, referring to the town’s namesake smelter stack. As we sat contemplating that bomb a sugary PR spot appeared on the TV at the end of the bar, sponsored by “Your Neighbors at Golden Sunlight Mine” in nearby Whitehall, one of the largest open-pit, cyanide-leaching mines in the world.

With the perspective gained from the sweet, lovely ladies at the Classic, my funk shifted off its foundation a bit and I checked into the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort. I ordered a double Jameson-andginger at the hotel bar and while I waited for my drink a tipsy young lady rattled loud requests to a one-man-band (he

didn’t know “Me and Bobby McGee”— further supporting the alien invasion theory—but nodded vigorously when she landed on “Mr. Bojangles”).

In the hot mineral-water pool I settled in a couple of shadows away from a loud group that included a buzz-cut brute of a young man repeatedly vowing to fight anyone who bad-mouthed Butte or Missoula. I eased back into the 104-

degree water and gazed up at the moon.

It was a “supermoon,” in fact, the name given to the coinciding events of a full moon and its closest orbital proximity to Earth. With only 14 such supermoons occurring over the past 110 years, I was expecting some sort of lunar extravaganza. But it just hung there in the sky like any other full moon; I wouldn’t have been able to pick it out of a lineup.

I arrived at the creek just as dawn was breaking, the cloudless sky affording a bona fide solar appearance. But even at full bore the sunlight was flat and weak, no match for the heavy, dirty grays and browns dominating the landscape. A viciously cold wind blew my fingers numb as I struggled to tie a black wooly bugger on the end of my fly line, further hindered by my beer and whiskey encounter from the night before. I stepped into the very run where years before I had landed a half-dozen fish in less than an hour, the trout averaging a good 18 inches and peaking with the lunker rainbow that bent my rod double for a good 10 minutes. I worked that piece of water hard with the bugger and came away without a single take.

Another angler, who had arrived a short time after I did and visibly slumped his shoulders when he saw me in the honey hole, moved into the run below me at an uncomfortably close distance. Though I’m not confrontational by nature, my initial impulse was to address this breach of etiquette in direct fashion. But fighting over water should be left to those who believe they can own and sell it, and besides, it’s not like there was anything to defend. I headed back to town for a pork chop sandwich and a thawing soak in the hot pool.

I returned to the creek in the early afternoon as revitalized as my condition would allow, determined to stick and land a fish by whatever means necessary.

My interpretation of necessary in this case was to run tiny nymphs through the deep runs in the creek, the same method that had rewarded me so richly on my earlier trip. Nymphing is my least favorite form of fly fishing but I will do it when desperate, and brother, I was desperate.

I fished and moved aggressively up and down a mile or so of prime water, trying to talk myself into believing that the few telltale pauses of the strike indicator were actual fish and not the flies bouncing off the creek bottom. At one point, buried deep in the futility of my activities, I looked up to see an upstream confluence of the creek I had been fishing and another of the same size, and came to the realization that I was standing in the exact origin of the Clark Fork. In my book the headwater of a trout river is as sacred as it gets, but as I looked at the water in each feeder branch and then at the water flowing around my waders, none of it looked holy. It looked winter-black and cold.

I hiked back up to the top of the stretch, intent on trying one more combination of flies in the honey hole. But as I stood there looking at the deep rock shelf under which I knew swam monstrous trout, the wind kicked into another gear entirely and blew my fly line into a nearby bush, which promptly ate the entire leader. Chilled to the bone, defeated, and in need of expunging the aftermath of an

Anaconda weekend, I walked back to the parking area.

It was a typical fishing-access outhouse, a vented structure covering a block of concrete and a tall toilet. When I

sat down to do my business a bitter wind howled through the bottom of the repository and flash-froze my ass. I did the best I could under the circumstances, seriously concerned that the wads of toilet paper I forcibly chucked down the hole would fly back out and hit me in the face.

The drive back to Missoula was an odd one, as I processed the events of the preceding 24-plus hours. What I had

hoped would be a liberation from the tyranny of winter turned out to be a brutish reaffirmation that seasons end only when they’re good and ready to. I began the trip with a black cloud in my head, and ended it with a frozen sphincter.

Would it be a cop-out to suggest there is some inherent valiance to the attempt, no matter how ill-considered and unlucky it might be? Probably.

I sure couldn’t find anything redeeming about the beatdown I received at the creek.

But as the miles piled up my mind drifted back to Evy and Connie at the bar, to the odd scenes at the hot springs, and to the strangely endearing town of Anaconda. It occurred to me that even though the dark clouds in my head were making the return trip with me, they were at least beginning to show some movement. Maybe the accompanying wind didn’t quite smell like spring but it did carry a sniff of change—and in certain circumstances even a little bit of change is worth the trip. Missoula was still clamped in the grip of gray inversion, but I couldn’t help a small smile as I saw the lights of the place I call home.

Winging it

by Kathy Witkowsky

HEAD TRIP

A Hungarian teen meets the flockers at Red Rock Lakes I love that poem so much that I’ve ate October, and my Hungarian committed it to memory. If only Reka’s exchange student, Reka, and I are English were better, I’d recite it to her heading east on the interstate, the here in the car. Because it’s too easy even larch winking gold past the car winfor those of us who aren’t trapped by dows, my border collie Liza whining our circumstances to limit ourselves to anxiously from her crate in the back. what’s familiar.

We are, in fact, all anxious—though Take Reka, a green-eyed, ravenfor different reasons. haired beauty from Budapest who, left We’re on our way to Red Rock Lakes to her own devices, would happily National Wildlife Refuge, one of my remain in Missoula for the weekend, favorite places in Montana, remote and wild yet within an easy half-day’s drive of coveting the slinky fashions on the Victoria’s Secret website and chatting Missoula. I’m excited that Reka will get to witness the fall migration, when tens of thousands of waterfowl— including the elegant paper-white I wanted her to trumpeter swans whose precipitous decline prompted Franklin listen to the raucous, Roosevelt to sign an executive order founding the refuge back in 1935— and that congregate on the refuge’s lakes and marshlands. The event is so magical and inspiring that I once of possibility there was a drove there to tape-record the resulting cacophony for a family could connect to beyond friend who was immobilized with Lou Gehrig’s disease, her body . her withering while her mind remained intact. She had been a professional dancer, and I wanted her to close her eyes, with her many Facebook friends. Reka is generally game to try anything, an excellisten to the raucous, untamed sounds, lent trait in any 17-year-old, and espeand remember that there was a world of cially in an exchange student. But she possibility she could connect to beyond clearly has her own anxieties about this her bedroom. Isn’t that the gift that birds trip, her first time camping. She sits give us? A sense that we can take flight, slumped against the passenger door of gain a different perspective, make a home my Nissan Sentra, looking disheartened. anywhere we land?

“I just don’t want to freezing,” she The poet Mary Oliver put it best, I says, in her Eastern European-laced think, in these lines from “Wild Geese”: accent, when I remark that she doesn’t whoever you are, no matter how lonely, seem happy. the world offers itself to your imagination, To be fair, this is a legitimate concern, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and especially for a city girl. Today it’s so exciting— sunny and warm that I’ve actually over and over announcing your place turned on the AC, but Red Rock Lakes in the family of things.

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sits at 6,600 feet, in an open valley that presses up against the Centennial Mountains along the Idaho border, just 50 miles west of Yellowstone National Park, and I’ve warned Reka that the forecast calls for temperatures there to drop below freezing tonight. It’s the reason we’ve scheduled our trip for this weekend—because the weather, which has been unseasonably warm, has recently shifted, tripping the birds’ instincts to migrate south, along with Reka’s instincts to remain indoors. I assure her we’ll be fine: After all, I’ve packed several layers of fleece and two sleeping bags for each of us, and Jeff Warren, a longtime biologist at the refuge, has generously offered us the use of his wall tent, complete with woodstove. I also have brought plenty of provisions, including the makings for s’mores, which Reka has never tried, and which I’m figuring will somewhat ease her pain.

Unfortunately, the food is in the back, so I’m stuck trying to sweeten the situation with words alone. This is no easy task, even for a writer.

“Don’t you want to see the swans?”

Her response is uncharacteristically curt. “We have lots and lots of swan in Hungary,” she says.

But what they don’t have in Hungary are bald eagles. So as we pull within sight of Upper Red Rock Lake, our bellies still full from the enchiladas we devoured at—take note, fellow travelers—La Fiesta Mexicana, a converted school bus with the best food in Dillon, Reka perks up when she spies one atop a snag. I stop the car, and we scramble out to get a closer look and snap some

close her eyes, untamed remember sounds, world she bedroom

Photos by David Nolt

photos. The eagle obliges by granting us a profile shot of his magnificent head, which is spotlighted by the late afternoon sun. Behind the eagle, the lake shimmers, a remarkable shade of ice blue that, I’m pleased to discover, elicits Reka’s admiration.

As we’re making our way back to the road, a man driving a black pickup with Wisconsin plates, a trailer with ATV in tow, comes to a halt behind my car. The passenger, a big burly guy in his thirties, waves a road atlas at me.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Do you know where we are?”

I’m not surprised the Wisconsinites are a little disoriented. I experience that same “what-planetam-I-on?” feeling every time I come here from Missoula via I-15, turning off at Exit 0 and steering past the abandoned town of Monida. From Monida, it’s another 24 miles on a partially graveled road through the arid, isolated Centennial Valley, past a few cattle ranches and then the marshes of Lower Red Rock Lake, until you reach the tiny settlement of Lakeview, home to refuge headquarters and a smattering of homes and outbuildings.

The guys say they’re trying to find a friend’s hunting cabin. They look relieved when I inform them that we’re just east of Lakeview, which I point out on the map. Then Reka and I wave goodbye and continue on to the small and nearly deserted campground at the upper lake. (The lower lake has camping as well, but it’s completely exposed, a poor choice for tonight given the chilly forecast.) Reka and I let Liza out of her crate and walk down to the water’s edge, the dog bounding giddily

in front of us, her plumed tail held high.

At first, it doesn’t appear that many birds are here at all, which is a disappointment, not to mention a bit of a concern: After all, Reka and I could have made s’mores at home and eaten them in front of the computer.

But when we gaze through our binoculars, we can see that there are in fact hundreds of birds scattered on the lake, intermittently dipping their heads and rushing each other to defend their territories. Instead of the insistent noisy riot I’d been greeted with on my previous trips here, it’s more like the low buzz of conversation you hear across a restaurant, full of meaning you can’t quite discern.

According to the literature I’ve picked up at refuge headquarters, a whopping 232 species of birds have been recorded here, the majority of them migratory. I wouldn’t necessarily recognize them all, but I love reading the names: grebes and loons, mallards and mergansers, widgeons and goldeneye, coots and teals, snipes and curlews, sandpipers and white-faced ibis. And swans, of course, both the trumpeters, some of whom remain in the region year-round, and their smaller cousins, the tundra. Along with swans, some of the refuge’s biggest draws are sandhill cranes.

Tall and long-legged, with a distinctive red head and an unmistakable clacking call, they’re easy for even the most amateur bird-watcher to identify. If you’re lucky and are here at the right time of year—May is good, assuming it’s not snowing— you can catch their exuberant mating dance.

The refuge is also home to the occasional grizzly and wolf, and more than 100 moose; once, at sunset, I was mesmerized by the silhouette of a massive bull strolling peacefully along the shoreline, not 50 feet from my campsite. He probably wasn’t in my line of vision for more than five minutes, but I’ve replayed the memory many times in my head, and each time it leaves me awed and grateful.

But this time of year, the sandhills have already left the refuge in search of warmer climes, and there’s no sign of moose, either. Or swans, for that matter.

That leaves us with a lot of birds that are too far away to identify, even with our binoculars and a guidebook. Still, there’s something reassuring about the

fact that they’re here, again, as generations have been before them, blissfully unaware of the external pressures that dictate our lives these days: the recession, or Facebook, or even—especially, if you’re a 17-year-old from Hungary—Victoria’s Secret. What they know is that they’re where they need to be, that for the moment, this is home.

Jeff Warren, the biologist, shows up shortly after our arrival to help set up his wall tent, which seems to be the size of my bedroom, and which provides numerous laughs since it’s just Reka, me and the dog, and just for one night at that. Before leaving, the affable Warren even splits some wood for the stove.

By now the daylight is fading, and soon the full moon is beginning to rise in the east, glowing faintly. In Missoula, when the full moon rises, you feel that you could practically touch it if you just hiked up Mount Sentinel. It’s totally different here: The valley is immense, the moon a beacon from a faraway galaxy.

After more than a few failed attempts, Reka and I finally manage to light fires in both the woodstove and the fire pit. We pull on the fleece, gloves, hats and parkas I’ve brought, and heat up our dinner: pre-packaged Indian food served with rice I’ve cooked at home and topped with yogurt and homemade peach chutney.

Even at home, it would qualify as a decent meal. Here, with the spectacular view of the lake and the valley and the Montana Headwall

distant mountains, it feels like a feast.

“Fun, right?” I ask Reka. But she’s not so easily persuaded “Yeah,” she says, although her tone says, “Not really.”

Note to self, I think: Next time you go bird-watching, bring the dog and leave the teenager at home. But then comes the

moment she’s been waiting for: dessert.

As I suspected she would, Reka takes to toasting marshmallows like a champ, and I’m relieved to see a smile light up her face as she assembles and tastes her first s’more. And then her second. And then

Page 46 Fall 2011

her third. For the first time since we left home, she really does look like she’s having fun.

As predicted, the night is cold.

Dutifully, I manage to crawl out of my sleeping bag to feed the stove a few times; overhead, I hear the high-pitched cries of a flock of something. They sound like geese that have inhaled helium, and I’m guessing that they’re swans, in which case I could use an oldfashioned term and call them a “wedge” or a “ballet” of swans. (If they were spread out they’d be known as a “lamentation.”) But eventually, my need for sleep wins over, and by morning the fire is dead. I’m up before Reka, getting breakfast together when she emerges, groggy and disheveled, from the tent. “It’s so cold!” she says, by way of a greeting. Um, hello? Whatever happened to “Good morning?”

I swallow my frustration and offer her some milk and granola, which she consumes without comment. Before we leave the tent, I walk back down to the lake’s shore. For whatever reason, the birds suddenly turn up the volume, filling the air with whistles and honks. A low shelf of clouds hangs over the eastern edge of the lake, and the water’s surface reflects streaks of red and orange sky. For me, these few minutes are more than enough to justify the trip. Still, I’m worried that it’s not dramatic enough to impress Reka. And I really want this place to make an impression on her.

nice day, one of the last we’ll have this fall: windless, with wisps of clouds slow dancing in the sky.

Warren takes us past the bull rush islands, shows us the muskrat lodges that are mounded there; in May, swans nest on top of the lodges. By September, though, the cygnets have fledged, so at this point the two pairs of trumpeters that we see are on the water.

Once thought to be on the brink of extinction, the trumpeters are considered one of the great conservation success stories, with some 35,000 now in North America. But the swans’ comeback has not been without controversy, and even today there are some grumblings about how long it’s taken them to recover from a population downturn in and around the refuge in 1992, when a winter feeding program was abruptly discontinued. Warren doesn’t share that view: He says it’s hard to argue with what is now a steadily increasing population.

Map by Joe Weston

Please God, I find myself thinking, as Reka and I pack up: Please let us see birds this morning that she’s never seen in Hungary. Let us see swans with necks so lithe and graceful that they put those longlimbed Victoria’s Secret models to shame. Let us see something so magical that it imprints on her soul.

At about 9 a.m., we meet up with Warren at the lower lake. A bearded, blue-eyed nature lover, Warren enjoys watching birds. As a hunter, he also enjoys shooting them.

That’s what he’s been doing since dawn, and he’s just pulling in his flat-bottomed boat and his morning take: a widgeon, a gadwall, and a lesser scaup. Though she’ll happily eat meat, Reka is appalled at the idea of hunting, and averts her eyes, but Warren says it connects him more deeply to the environment he works to protect. “Plus,” he adds, noting that he likes to cook, “I’d rather get my food here than from Safeway.” I promise to give him the remainder of my peach chutney, which

tastes great with duck. It seems the least I can do, given his efforts on our behalf.

We help push Warren’s flat-bottomed boat through the shallow marshes and into the lake, and over the next couple of hours, he rows us around with steady strokes, talking about the 50,000-acre refuge and pointing out the various types of birds we see on the lake: pintails, widgeon, eared grebes and blue-winged teals, gadwalls and buffleheads, and of course, the regal trumpeter swans. It’s another

Continued on page 55

www.mtheadwall.com

HEAD OUT

SEPTEMBER September 1 Draw your guns for the opening day of hunting for all upland game birds (excluding pheasants). Fly on over to fwp.mt.gov.

September 2–3 A river runs through the 9th Annual Ennis on the Madison Fly Fishing Festival, where the Madison River Foundation celebrates fish and boats alike. Reel in the facts at madisonriverfoundation.org.

September 2-4 Boogie to hot music or chill out while you wait for winter at Big Sky Resort’s Spruce Moose Festival, which features The Clintons, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, The John Butler Trio and more. Scope the lineup at bigskyresort.com.

September 3 Earn your badge in archery all over again when bow season opens for antelope, black bear, moun-

Chad Harder

tain lion, deer and elk. Follow the arrows to fwp.mt.gov.

rifle in a simulated buffalo hunt. Talk to Mark at 775-6705.

Swim, cycle and sweat your way to the Garden City Triathlon in Frenchtown. The race includes a 1.5K paddle in Frenchtown Pond, a 40K pedal along I90 and a 10K run. Find terms of endure-ment at mtcompact.org/gct.htm.

September 11 Channel your inner bruin at the Two Bear Marathon, a race through gorgeous terrain in Whitefish during peak season for colorful fall foliage. Get the bear necessities at twobearmountain.org.

September 5 Big horn sheep open season kicks off today. Ram it into gear at fwp.mt.gov.

September 15 Hail the open season for bighorn sheep, black bear, deer and elk, moose and mountain goats.

Learn what’s fair game at fwp.mt.gov.

September 10 Get your gourd on at this year’s Harvest Fest in Billings, packed with crafts and family-friendly activities like a baking contest, games and more. Roll your pumpkin over to harvestfun.com.

September 10–11 Test your metal at the Medicine Rocks Buffalo Shoot, an annual contest near Ekalaka. Participants shoot at steel animal silhouettes with a .22

September 18 Let your cup runneth over at the Montana Governor’s Cup Marathon in Billings, featuring a relay, half marathon, 10K and kids’ events. Run, don’t walk, to montanagovernorscupmarathon.org.

September 24 Partake of a primo park and its picture-postcard panoramas during the West Yellowstone Old

Faithful Cycle Tour. The 60mile trip is limited to the first 350 riders, so get rolling to cycleyellowstone.com.

NOVEMBER November 15 Get that big animal’s head on your mantle where it belongs on the opening day of bison hunting. Learn more at fwp.mt.gov.

September 30 The sun has set on all the fall lodging at Glacier National Park with the final closing of Lake McDonald Lodge. To plan a visit to the Crown of the Continent next year, hoof it to glacierparkinc.com.

November 7 Time to get off the pavement: today marks the annual road closing in Yellowstone National Park (with the exception of the route from Gardiner to Cooke City, which remains open year-round). Catch the drift on winter activities at nps.gov/yell/index.htm.

OCTOBER October 1 Talents are on the line at the Mid-Yellowstone Smallmouth Bash, a catfish and bass fishing derby on the Lower Yellowstone River. Angle for info at montanaoutdoor.com.

October 8 Suds up at Seeley Lake’s Tamarack Festival and Brewfest, a two-day celebration of beer, arts and crafts, and golden-needled trees. The beer shots join the firearm variety at the festival’s Seeley Lake Challenge Summer Biathlon, complete with running, biking, and target shooting. Load up on details at seeleylakechamber.com.

Girls rule at the Diva for a Day 5K race at Fort Missoula, an annual femme-fete sponsored

by Run Wild Missoula. Get the party started at runwildmissoula.org.

Time to settle old grudges with the animal kingdom, because hunting is open for antelope and pheasant. Visit fwp.mt.gov.

Chad Harder

Grind it out for the Goat Grind at Elkhorn Endurance Retreat in Clancy, just outside of Helena.

The 4-mile trek is known for its steep hills, creek crossing and some technical singletrack. Work toward the pancake breakfast at the end and learn more at runmt.com.

October 22 The good news is that most of the time you’re on wheels for the Rolling Thunder Cyclocross race.

You only have to carry your bicycle for 10 percent of the terrain! All racing levels are invited to Missoula’s American Legion Sports Complex for the event. ’Cross your heart at montanacyclocross.com

October 11 Don’t resist the lure of the Snappy’s Whitefish Fall Classic fishing event on the Flathead River. Hook up at montanaoutdoor.com.

Hunting season is here for deer and elk and mountain lions, so get on the right track at fwp.mt.gov.

October 15 Celebrate autumn and large orange objects (including pumpkin-clad participants) at the Pumpkin Run 5K, held near the Canyon River Golf Course in East Missoula. Get spooky at runwildmissoula.org.

October 29 Teams from the biggest seven towns in the state compete for the “traveling” trophy at the Montana Cup, a cross-country meet hosted this year in Great Falls. Drink in the details at montanacup.com.

November 13 It’s closing day of the general season for antelope and they are free to play with the deer once more. Gear up for next year and let your fingers roam to fwp.mt.gov.

November 24 Polish off the turkey and dust off your poles: Thanksgiving marks the opening day of ski season at Big Sky Resort. Carve over to bigskyresort.com.

Make like a flightless bird and trot to the Turkey Day 8K, a race along Missoula’s riverfront trail. (You’ll get thanks if you bring a non-perishable food to donate to the Missoula Food Bank). For helpings, go to runwildmissoula.org.

November 22-26 Celebrate all things Nordic and give praise to the pow during the annual Yellowstone Ski Festival in West Yellowstone, which features races, clinics, gear expos and lots of other alpine action. Catch the drift at yellowstoneskifestival.com.

November 27 We had a good run, but today marks the end of the general season for bighorn sheep, deer and elk, black bear, moose and mountain goat hunting. Plan to get them the next time around at fwp.mt.gov.

Montana Headwall

Page 49 Fall 2011

HEAD GEAR

by Scott McMillion

hese aren’t your grandpa’s fishing boots. Not by a longshot. For decades, the technology of keeping your legs dry didn’t change much. Waders were heavy and cumbersome, plus they smelled like the inside of a radial tire and got worse after a long day.

The folks at Simms have changed all that, leading the industry from a factory in Bozeman, Montana, the only place in America that still makes waders.

Comparing Simms’ newest waders to grandpa’s rubber pants is like comparing a scuba tank to diving with a garden hose in your mouth: They both carry air, but the scuba tank opens up a lot more possibilities.

Crawl into a pair of Simms’ top-ofthe-line waders and you can kick up your heels. You could probably dance.

Big pockets mean you don’t need to wear a vest. There’s a retractable cord to hold your forceps, the suspenders can’t twist and you’ll even find a brace of lined pockets where you can warm your chilly fingers. With five layers of breathable Gore-Tex you’ll stay dry even if you have to scramble through the brambles (though you still should avoid the prickly pear). And since they have a waterproof zipper, a man can even answer nature’s call without removing half his clothing, no small improvement if you’re fishing in ugly weather. “The best part is you don’t have to get undressed any more to take a leak,” noted a reviewer from the online fishing forum troutpredator.com.

Then, in the video, he turned his back and showed how it’s done.

T

Photos by Yogesh Simpson

Still, even with all those improvements, the price tag can be daunting: up to $700. Add a pair of top-shelf wading boots and the damages to your debit card will approach $1,000.

But some serious anglers and guides say it’s money well spent.

“You get your money’s worth in one outing,” Oregon guide Brian Marz said of Simms waders.

Andrew Puls, a guide at Sweetwater Fly Shop in Livingston, has owned a pair—the $500 model—for two and a half years. He said he’s sold on them.

“I have yet to patch a leak in them,” Puls said. “They’re pretty much bulletproof. They keep you dry, take heavy abuse and are very comfortable.”

Puls spends about 100 days a year in his waders and doesn’t baby them.

“I’m hell on my gear,” he said. “I buy it to use.”

Simms leads the industry, especially with the top-end gear designed for use in all sorts of conditions. One corporate goal is to expand the fishing season, to make it possible to stay comfortable and dry when somebody in lesser gear has called it a day.

Waders alone won’t accomplish that, so the company also offers a long list of gear, from Gore-Tex hats to layer-able fleece garments. If you’re aiming for bonefish instead of trout, Simms will clad you in shirts, pants and even

arm protectors (imagine sleeves without a shirt) treated to provide a sun protection factor of up to 50.

None of it comes cheaply: A hat can run up to $50 and a raincoat can set you back nearly $500. But that coat is designed to stand up to 22 inches of rain an hour. If you’re making your living in that kind of weather, good gear counts.

“That’s why you see so many guides using Simms,” Puls said.

The company spreads the word by giving steep discounts to selected outfitters, turning guides into walking billboards. So far, it’s paying off.

“We make the uniform for the professional fishing guide,” said Chris Hohne, Simms’ marketing director. “It’s like Carhartts for the guy sitting on a tractor.”

••• imms sprouted from a simple idea. In 1977, John Simms, a Jackson, Wyoming, fishing guide and ski patroller, wanted a way to keep his sunglasses on his head in high wind or rough water. So with a pair of scissors and some used neoprene, he fashioned the first pair of Croakies, those now nearly ubiquitous straps that can keep your specs where they belong instead of at the bottom of a rapid or lost in deep powder. That brainstorm led to the formation of a company called Life-Link.

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Montana Headwall

Page 51 Fall 2011

By 1980, Simms began making fishing products from neoprene. He started with a wrist lock for fly casting, a device that didn’t go over so well, but his other ideas caught on. One of the earliest was a gravel guard, to keep the pebbles out of your wading shoes. Neoprene waders came next and presented a big improvement over rubber waders. Sales started to grow, and a separate division, Simms Fishing Products, was born.

Simms eventually sold his interest in the company and the new owners moved the production facilities to Bozeman. In 1993, a passionate angler named J.C. Walsh bought the Simms division and began making breathable waders, working closely with Gore-Tex. Since then, Simms has reported double-digit compounded growth and had its best sales year ever in 2010, despite the sputtering economy.

Today, more than 100 people work in the four-building campus on Bozeman’s north side, about half of them producing waders in two shifts. It’s a complicated process.

“Twenty-two people touch every wader,” said Diane Bristol, director of marketing and brand management.

The job starts with a sheet of Gore-Tex fabric bigger than a king-sized bed. A designer uses computer-assisted drafting technology to lay out patterns and get the most from every bolt of fabric, which costs as much as $45 a yard. Then a spry man hops on the cutting table and makes precise incisions, a job that looks like a high-speed yoga session. When he’s done, a mere handful of scrap remains. Other crewmembers stitch the parts together and tape the seams, which isn’t simple, either. Tapers get three months of training.

“I needed every minute of that three months,” one taper said, adding that his machine uses 400-degree air to seal the seam tape.

Other men and women apply straps and buckles, add reinforcements at stress points like knees and hips, attach feet to legs, and perform other chores. The plant is clean, well lit, and busy: Part of the paycheck is based on both production and quality. A quality control system means that, if a customer returns a product, the problem can be traced to an individual worker.

For anglers, meanwhile, the days of adapting oneself to small, medium or large waders are long gone. Simms offers 19 sizes for men and 13 sizes for women. If that’s not enough, you can customize your order.

“If you’re 6-foot-7-inches tall and have size-6 feet, we can make waders to fit,” said Matt Crawford, a public relations manager for Simms.

Simms remains closely allied with Gore-Tex, which insists on verifying that the manufacturing process meets company standards. Otherwise, Gore-Tex risks seeing its fabric blamed for shoddy workmanship in somebody else’s factory.

Simms, too, takes its reputation seriously. Every pair of waders is leak-tested before it leaves the plant and comes with a lifetime guarantee for materials and workmanship. But the real test comes on the water, field and stream bank, where hazards abound, ranging from fish hooks to barbed wire and aviation fuel from the bush planes, all of which can undo a wader and ruin a fishing trip.

Simms waders are designed to stand up to all of that, plus the weather.

To help spread the word, Simms runs what it calls its pro program.

In essence, it tries to outfit top fishing guides in as many Simms labels

as possible. It offers guides 45 percent discounts, although not indiscriminately. Peter Vandergrift, a veteran Yellowstone River outfitter, now works for Simms, carefully selecting guides who have the reputation and experience to qualify.

Only the top-end waders are made in Bozeman (other products are made overseas). A high-tech embroidery machine in Bozeman also sews logos or other designs onto Simms caps or shirts for lodges or fishing shops that want to create some human billboards of their own.

But waders remain the core of the company’s business. If you’re using something else, Simms argues, you’re all wet.

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Page 53 Fall 2011

Season CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22 “Interested in a deer, or are you holding out for an elk?”

Lisa had tags for both species snuggled happily in the inside pocket of her hunting vest. She’d yet to down either species.

“Let’s try for this deer,” she replied with an excited smile. If eyes had feet, hers were leaping ecstatically around like a bird dog freshly freed from a kennel.

The buck veered away, yielding no opportunity for a shot. Paralleling its course we encountered it again, with scant minutes of legal shooting light remaining. A single shot, and I had another buck to bone and backpack from the forest. I still didn’t have my elk or a campsite for future seasons. But there remained Thanksgiving weekend, one of my favorite times to hunt.

A blizzard raged from Monday to the day when Americans pause in grateful celebration for the bounty of the land in which we live. The next day dawned cold, with a fresh blanket of nearly kneedeep snow. Conditions were perfect for elk hunting.

But the rest of the household had other plans. It was opening day of a different sort, the first day of the ski season at Red Lodge Mountain. Lisa and the kids were ready to carve some turns. I stifled my longing to be an egocentric, anti-social male of the most stereotypical stripe, and I pulled on my ski clothes instead of my wool pants and hunting boots. Riding up the Miami Beach lift with my daughter, not two hundred yards from the lift station, I spotted a dozen places where elk had pawed through the snow to reach the grass below.

t was too cold to ski or hunt for the following two days. On Sunday, the last day of elk season, I still had an unfilled tag.

The following morning, with the kids back in school, I found myself riding the first chairlift of the day at the ski area. It was easily as frigid as the previous days, but Lisa had somehow reasoned it was now warm enough to take some morning turns on the slopes. I suspected the eight inches of fresh powder had something to do with it.

Midway up the lift, Lisa spotted an indistinct object at the edge of Lower

I

Royals. It was a cow elk, digging at the snow. The rifle, I thought, might still be in the backseat of the Tahoe. How much trouble would I encounter if I shot an elk, the day after the season closed, from a chairlift, then filched a toboggan from the ski patrol to retrieve the carcass?

The fantasy was lovely, but so was reality, I realized. Although the elk season hadn’t turned out exactly like I’d hoped, and though we hadn’t replaced a mystical mountain haven with another, neither the boys nor I missed the old elk camp as much as I’d expected. Find enough pleas-

ure in your quest for paradise, and the goal and search meld into one.

The road was still closed. But it didn’t matter. For whether it happened on familiar slopes or unknown forests, the magic of elk hunting transcended the bounds of tradition and place.

By the time we reached the lift station, the only evidence of the cow’s passing was her wandering trail across the mountain. Next season we’ll again look for the prints of her kind. But for now I’m happy to make my own tracks, on skis, in the powder.

Red Rocks CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47 In fact, despite global warming and its blue herons strutting on one of the islands. I’ve always loved the way herons impact on water levels, the refuge boasts unfold to take flight, and my heart quicka pretty healthy ecosystem, Warren says.

But here’s the thing: When you deal with migratory birds, one healthy ecosystem isn’t enough. “It makes you think outside your signs,” as he puts it. In other words, it’s a cooperative effort. Red Rock Lakes refuge may feel remote, but its sustainability is dependent on so many other places, so many other people.

It’s one more reminder that we’re all in this together, Warren says.

Then something catches Kathy Witlowsky his eye. “Look!” he exclaims.

Reka, who’s been leaning ens as their wings pound the still air, and back in the bow, eyes closed, soaking up the sun, sits up as he points out 14 tundra they circle and lift off. swans flying in formation in front of the Madison range to the east. I recognize By spring, the trumpeter swans will their shrill calls as the same ones I heard have survived another frigid and snowy the night before. Not long after, as we’re winter, thanks to the thermal waters in heading toward shore, we see four great

and around Yellowstone. But many of the other birds will have been on an epic journey: first south, perhaps to California or Mexico, Louisiana or Texas, then north as far as the Arctic Circle, before coming back to Montana. Who can say what they will encounter on their way, or remember of their flights when they land?

What I know is this: by the time you read this, Reka, too, will have completed an epic journey, returning to Budapest with a new perspective, a mastery of English, and a lot of lasting memories. What will they be?

I have no idea. Sometimes the mind of a teenager is as mysterious and incomprehensible to me as that of a bird. But I hope that, wherever she lands, those herons and trumpeters and whistling swans continue to call to Reka, reminding her of life’s infinite connections and boundless possibilities, unfolding like her dreams.

Montana Headwall

Page 55 Fall 2011

The Crux CONTINUED FROM PAGE 58 Since stores don’t sell plastic kiddy pools in winter, I used plastic sleds for his water. My daughter and I broke the ice out of them in the morning and refreshed them often. The goose greeted me with happy honks, nibbled at my feet and knees, and exhibited friendliness that verged on the alarming. One day he climbed on one of my daughter’s 11-year-old friends and sat on her head.

A Google search revealed that Goosey was probably a Graylag, the bird used by Konrad Lorenz for imprinting studies. He spent the days nestled in the yard under the dining room window, where I could see him while I worked. I loved him, but knew I couldn’t keep him.

My first newspaper ad— “Found: Gray goose, friendly, a pet?”—got no responses. The next ad did, for the wrong rea-

Montana Headwall

sons. “To Give Away: Pet goose, to good home only,” provoked a flurry of calls from Grizzly Adams types who seemed to want the goose cooked.

After consults with Davis, I decided on a different course: As soon as spring arrived I would fulfill my Born Free fantasies and return the goose to the wild, or at least to the duck pond. Davis offered to help.

On Goosey’s big day, Davis calmly walked up to him, snatched him by the neck and hugged him to her chest, beakforward. He hardly struggled except to nibble her hair. She climbed in the front of my Subaru with the goose in her lap, the bird looking straight ahead like a dignitary. We had officially become a Disney movie.

We deposited the goose on golden stubs of grass by the water. I told myself not to look

Page 56 Fall 2011

back at him as we trudged to the car, but of course I did. The goose was following us like an abandoned kid.

Davis never complained when I told her I couldn’t leave him after all. She grabbed him and hugged him again, and as we drove back to my house, I felt a wave of fondness for life.

••• I placed the last ad a few weeks later: “To give away: beautiful, friendly, pet gray goose, to good home with pond/river.” Joyce’s gentle voice was instantly the one I wanted to hear. She lived on a farm by a creek in Frenchtown and had a white female goose that was depressed because her mate had died. Was my goose a male, she wondered?

I found Joyce’s farm off a dirt road along a shaded stream.

She was as kind as her voice. I unloaded the goose, and

watched him explore for a while. He did not follow me back to the car.

When I visited a month later, he was a new bird, with a pretty new goose wife. When I walked toward him he hissed ferociously. He didn’t seem to recognize me, or if he did, he was too happy to care.

Was it coincidence that the bird found me? I wondered later. Why did strays wind up on certain doorsteps, and why was rescuing them so gratifying? For reasons I’ll never know, the goose chose me. He showed me that forces in the world are still magic, that invisible threads tie us to wild things that in turn tie us to wonderment. If I was patient, the goose seemed to say, something might waddle up to my doorstep in the middle of winter. The world would bring good things. Gray, and beautiful.

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Page 57 Fall 2011

Good for the Gander

by Amy Linn

THE CRUX

A stray bird may come to your door. Open it. he winter I was saved by a goose, the formaldehyde skies swept in like a bad houseguest. The temperature hit 20-below after Thanksgiving and refused to leave, and I spent my days wearing two pairs of socks and snow boots, inside the house.

My fiancé, Don, tried to cheer me up by lighting a roaring blaze in the fireplace one night. I forgot to open the flue, the result being such excessive amounts of billowing that the smoke alarms went off, the dog peed in terror, we had to open all the doors and windows to air out the house, and I thought I’d never be warm again.

And so it was that I drove to the Missoula YMCA to jog and cycle myself into oblivion. I pulled into the parking lot and saw a large lump of something—a bag?—on the pavement.

It was gray, barely visible. As my headlights illuminated the mass, I saw an orange beak.

It was a goose.

I parked and ran to the animal, wanting to move it so it wouldn’t get run over. But the goose—a male, I’d find out—just stared at me, immobile.

“There’s a goose in the parking lot,” I told the two coed receptionists, after running inside for help.

“I called animal control,” the young

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Amy Linn

woman lamented. “They told me they don’t really do geese.”

The guy, a lanky teen, offered to help me herd the bird to the lawn, and we went warily into the cold. Geese, we knew, could bite hard.

The goose rose from his squat and hissed until we backed off and tried again. After repeating this dance one too many times, the teen swatted at the bird with his cap, nearly touching its neck, and the reluctant animal pigeon-toed to the grass.

I stayed alone with the goose for a while. Then I went to the reception desk and called the police and animal control, and tried to reach the only bird expert I could think of, Kate Davis, the founder of Raptors of the Rockies. No luck.

I checked on the bird’s hunched form in the grass before leaving.

“Goodbye, goose,” I told him. He hissed at me, and I drove away.

••• Early Sunday morning a week later, as I lay in bed wanting to stay there, Don came to roust me.

"Your goose is here," Don called out.

It was a rotten attempt at humor. He knew I was worried about the bird, who'd disappeared and probably died after the night at the Y. I looked outside, aggravated.

And there was the goose waddling up the front walk. I lived more than a mile from the Y, and somehow the bird had found me, walked to my house, and nearly made it to the front door.

There was blood on his beak from a scrape he’d been in. He stood on one leg, eyes lidded. I ran to the kitchen to drum up something to help him, but he refused my offer of bread. Then I grabbed my biggest cooking pots, filled them with water, and laid them around him.

He drank, and drank, and clanged happily at the metal.

Bird expert Erick Greene, a University of Montana biology professor, arrived after I got his phone number from a friend. Maybe the goose was a pet that someone abandoned at the Bancroft Street duck pond, Greene theorized.

Kate Davis arrived with similar speed. She sized up the bird—he was still as a stump. He could die in 24 hours, Davis said.

Goosey, as we began to call him, had other plans. He nested in my garage on a raggedy blanket I gave him, covered it with goose turds, and wagged his tail when I brought him food. He seemed incapable of flying, so after a week I moved him to the fenced backyard.

Continued on page 56

Goosey in his new home.