Hunting - The Space Blanket

HUNTING - The Space Blanket

Resident submission by David Tanner

This must have been around 1969. We often hunted up Hobble Creek Canyon back then. There is a side canyon up the right fork called Day’s Canyon, with a nice campground about halfway up. Day’s Canyon was really good for hunting on horseback and was great for finding the big bucks.

This particular year, we made a plan to outsmart the horsemen, though. Our strategy was to drive to the campground and then hike straight up the face of the mountain on the evening before the hunt, and camp overnight at the top. That way, we would be in place the next morning to receive all the big bucks that would be pushed upward by the hunters on horseback, leading them straight to us. It was brilliant. Foolproof, even. We were excited to bring home 3 trophies this year - Dad, Bob, and I.

Part of the hangup, however, was the fact that the face of that mountain was a steep son of a gun – one heck of a climb with a few small cliffs along the way. So packing light, in addition to carrying our rifles, was mandatory.

Well, this was about the same year that the new, high-tech, lightweight, survival “space blankets'' came out on the market. These suckers were supposed to keep all your body heat in while weighing less than paper and twice as thin it seemed. Dad bought one for each of us and boy did we think we had it made!

We drove to the campground base and hiked all the way up to the top at dusk. We tucked ourselves into a large pile of leaves we made and prepared for a warm sleep despite being on the top of the mountain at the end of October. Clearly we would be impervious to it all. The minutes grew into hours and the temperature dropped lower and lower, and we all waited for the space blankets to kick in. Waiting turned to shivering, which felt more like regret on ice. By 1:00 am, we were all wide awake and nearly frozen to death, and those special space blankets were all we had!

Dad said, “we're not gonna last much longer; we've gotta get off the mountain!” So half-frozen, in the pitch black of night, we had to hike all the way back down the face of that steep mountain and navigate the short cliffs with limbs as stiff as icicles! After a very long hour of hurrying our frozen buns off and panicking over the threat of hypothermia, we finally crawled into the back of our truck, exhausted.

Even though we awoke alive and thawed, we barely had the energy to go all the way back up, so we settled for a few puny spikes we found just a little ways out. Our brilliant plan was foiled by the space blanket (pun intended)!