Musings And Life-Lessons From the World's Most Well-Rounded Individual

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Beast In The Crosshairs-High Sierra Adventure 2

I was 18 and immortal. My buddies and I had decided a camping trip to the High Sierras was in order. We had a full week off from Trade Tech, where we were studying to be tank mechanics. There was a major shortage of them, since the "Bradley" was a whole new kind of armored vehicle and no one knew how to fix one. We saw a need and decided to fill it. But it was spring vacation, and this weekend, we would take on the wild. For the next three days, we would be campers...outdoorsmen...hunters!

We were all three of us, avid campers and each had a specialty. At least one of us, Jim, could catch fish. But not me. I couldn't catch a fish stick at Vons. Terry was the cautious one...the one with the compass and the topographic maps. Not me. I was into dead reckoning, which seemed appropriate since I was the marksman. I had the Ruger 10-22 semi-automatic carbine with the 4 power Tasco Scope, and the bears had better not venture onto our turf. (In truth, the 10-22 wasn't powerful to kill a bear...only piss it off. But maybe it was loud enough to scare one away.)

The end of March in the High Sierras was not like spring in Southern California. It was more like the dead of winter in the Ukraine. As we drove up Highway 395 towards the little town of Bridgeport, the temperature seemed to drop by the mile.

We had driven all night when we finally parked our Corvair Monza. The poor little car was wheezing like a Model T in a Betty Boop cartoon. We parked just outside the Twin Lakes campgrounds. This place was the last link to civilization before entering the Hoover Wilderness.

We couldn't leave the car at the campgrounds, since they were still closed for the winter. We picked a spot off the road between some trees a couple hundred yards before the parking area. Actually, we didn't pick the spot. Jim was driving, hit a patch of ice and skidded into a snowdrift just off the road. Our decision had been made for us. We had parked.

We gathered the gear and set off on the first leg of the hike. Since we couldn't enter the Twin Lakes campground...chain link and nasty warning signs impeding our path...we had to circle around behind it. This meant to reach the trail and the wilderness sign-in, we had to circle the smaller of the Twin Lakes. This was easier said than done.

The far side of the lake, the area we had to traverse, was a snow-covered 30 degree hill. To get to it, we had to backtrack about a quarter mile to the south end of the lake. Then we had to climb about 200 feet over about a quarter mile more. And we did this, starting at 7500 feet, at 5 A.M., in 11 degree weather and sleep-deprived. A perfect beginning for our "High Sierra Adventure."

We gasped and grunted our way up the hill and began the long and treacherous traverse along the back side of a frozen lake. The ice looked to be only inches thick. One slip and we would be teen-sicles. I was the lucky one. I had an unloaded rifle. Unloaded, it was a walking stick.

All three of us wore snow-shoes. Jim and Terry, being smaller than me, wore "Bear Paws," a kind of compact..strapped to the boots...modern day nylon grid, designed to spread the weight over a larger surface. I had an old pair of Alaskan snow shoes. They were as long as skis and clunky and difficult to walk on. But they kept me from sinking into the snow.


I was about half-way across the length of the lake, when the tip of my snowshoe snagged on a branch protruding from the snow. I fell and began to tumble down the hill toward the frozen lake. I was maybe fifty feet from certain doom when as I rolled past another branch, I slammed my rifle across it and broke my fall. I got to my feet, dusted snow off me and proceeded to catch up with my companions, who hadn't even noticed my near fatality.

We proceeded without incident to the sign-in station. There, a 6 foot long, carved wooden plaque mounted on rough-hewn logs proclaimed: "Hoover Wilderness." It was at about knee-level. In the summer, one could walk beneath it.


In the summer this trail could be travelled on horseback. In winter, sled dogs would shy away. But not three adventurous teenagers. We signed in...so that if we never emerged, they'd know who the decaying bodies were...and entered the woods.


I still remember how mysterious and dangerous the forest seemed to become the instant we passed the sign. We had gone from civilization to who-knows-where in a single step and headed confidently along what seemed to be a trail.

The trail was a bit of a sticking point on which we were kind of unsettled, since the it was covered with some seven feet of snow. But the forest canopy spread here and appeared to continue doing so for the limited distance that we could see. So we followed it, looking for Barney Lake, a favorite fishing spot of Jim's. We guessed that we could make it in about seven hours. The trail petered out at the first clearing. We had travelled all of about half a mile.

Seven hours and several map/compass consultations later, we had no idea where we were. Terry, as it turned out, was about as good at map reading as I was at fishing. So, I took point and headed for the only mountain we could see all through the hike. After about another two hours, we emerged into a snow-covered meadow. Terry immediately set about getting his (and our) bearings.

"So, are we near Barney Lake?"

"I think so."

"How far?"

"Near as I can figure, about 12 feet."

Turns out we were standing atop the lake. It was covered with snow. Standing in the middle of a frozen lake wasn't the ideal objective for this trip, so we decided to find a place to camp. Unfortunately, everything was covered in twelve feet of snow. We retreated into the woods until we found a spot where an evergreen had spread wide enough to make a clearing beneath itself. It was surrounded by a protective wall of snow. This was to be our campsite.

So far, no sign of bears. It never dawned on any of us that they might be hibernating this time of year. We hung our packs high in the tree so that if a bear did happen on our camp, it couldn't get to them. Then we scrounged up some dry wood, built a fire and settled in.

That night, I came face to face with the beast. I was awakened at about 3 a.m. to a rustling sound coming from the general direction of where we hung our packs. I had my rifle at the ready next to my sleeping bag, as well as a four cell flashlight. Carefully, I slipped the 10 shot rotary magazine into the receiver of Old Betsy. (That wasn't really what I called the gun, but I should have. It was what Davy Crockett called his long rifle. That was me that night.)

With caution borne of trying not to alert the bear, I turned on the flashlight and held it against the underside of Old Betsy so that it pointed where I pointed the gun. I began to scan the general area of the tree. Nothing. I surmised that perhaps the bear had climbed the tree, so I shone the beam up into it. Still nothing. But there was that rustling sound. Something was at our packs. Jim had mostly fishing gear and a few cameras in his pack. Terry had the cook stove and more camera gear in his pack. I was carrying the freeze-dried food and the cook kit in mine. Mine was the obvious target.

There was the rustling again. Something was definitely at my pack. But what? A bear cub? I heard scampering away from the pack. Seemed too big for a bear cub. Then it moved back toward the pack. Whatever was up there was fast. I could hear the clatter of the mess kit moving about. The pack swayed some, dangling from the branch as it was. I shone the light on the top of the pack. Suddenly, the culprit showed itself. It was the most gigantic and vicious squirrel I have ever seen. It sent a shudder of fear down my back to see it poke it's head from the top of the pack. It climbed from within and sat arrogantly atop the pack staring back at me.

Alright, in the interest of accuracy, it wasn't all that big. And it was actually frozen with fear in the beam of my flashlight...a deer in the headlights of an approaching car. But the little bugger was eating my freeze-dried food! It sat there, atop my pack, chomping on whatever it had gotten from the packets inside. What was I going to eat now?

I had only one course of action. I carefully drew a bead on the little scavenger. I lined that beast up in the cross-hairs of my scope, intent on blowing him back to whichever tree in hell he came from. I squeezed the trigger. Blam! One shot found its mark.

That mark was about a foot below the squirrel. I put a hole through the middle of my backpack. My companions awakened suddenly at the sound and for a moment, general panic ensued. When I explained what had happened, we pulled my pack down out of the tree. My bullet had passed though all three nested pans of the cook kit and through the only package of freeze-dried food the squirrel hadn't gotten into. Worst of all, marksmanship took a drubbing. Resigned to solving our food dilemma in the morning, we all laid back down to sleep, but I was troubled. How could I have missed so badly? In the distance, I was sure I could hear squirrel laughter.

By morning, Jim had a solution to our food problem. He was going to fish. I asked how he planned to do that in a lake covered with 12 feet of snow. His idea was to take a branch., strip it and sharpen it, and plunge it into the snow to the lake surface. The he'd build a fire, heat the tip, poke it through the ice, drop a line and catch fish. I was amazed. It was at once, brilliantly simple and the stupidest plan I'd ever heard. But, having none better, I shrugged my accord and he set about looking for a straight and stout limb.

Meanwhile I examined my rifle. At first glance, nothing looked wrong. But on closer inspection, I saw that the scope had been knocked seriously out of alignment. I did a couple of test shots, and it was consistently shooting about a foot below where I was aiming.

Only three days earlier, I had aligned those sights so that I could put ten shots practically through the same hole in a fifty foot target. Then it came to me. The day before, that gun had saved my life! I must have knocked the sights out alignment when I broke my fall down the hill by Twin Lakes. Idiot!

What a trip. No food. A navigator who couldn't find his way out of a sleeping bag. A lunatic trying to catch fish that were probably down there laughing at him, and me...Daniel Bonehead, frontiersdweeb. Thank God there were no barns in the vicinity to test my marksmanship further. I wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of one.

A few hours later. Jim returned with his catch. It was the branch. So there we were. No food. No fish. And facing another night with lots of neither. We decided that the smart thing to do was head back down the mountain and get to our car before nightfall. We had just about enough time to to do that. We could drive down to Bridgeport, get a meal and a motel room and head for home the next day. At least it was a plan. We packed up and headed out.

Terry, who had spent the morning pouring over his maps was certain he had the best route and foolishly, Jim and I let him take point. I mean, neither one of us had done anything particularly brilliant in the last couple days. The downhill journey should be easier too...and faster.

Seven hours later, we were lost. Not real lost, but Terry's route had taken us over a fall of snow that we had to dig ourselves out from, across a stream we had never crossed, and into a part of the valley we had never seen. Worse, a storm was coming in and it was getting dark fast. We decided to set up camp and stay another night in this God-forsaken wilderness. Oh. And we were hungry.

Again, we found a small clearing under a tree and again we scrounged up wood to build a fire. Night fell like the blade of a guillotine. We sang campfire songs, told ghost stories and toasted marshmallows...Yeah, right. In sheer exhaustion, we all fell into a deep sleep. And the storm came in. Overnight it dropped to three below zero. And when we awakened in the morning, our little clearing under the tree was surrounded with a four foot high ring of snow.

Terry left his boots out of his sleeping bag and they were frozen solid. We had to roast them over the morning fire to thaw them out. We melted some snow into water, imagined ourselves drinking hot coffee, packed up and set out.

Things looked familiar right away. That hill! That's the one that was on the right when we headed up the draw. In the morning light, we soon figured out exactly where we were. It helped that we hadn't gone fifty yards before we found the cabins of the Twin Lakes campground. Slapping ourselves mentally, we hiked another couple hundred yards to the Corvair. At least we thought it was the Corvair. It was actually a five foot mound of snow. We dug it out, loaded it up, and had our first good luck in 50 hours. It started.

We headed into Bridgeport for breakfast. Jim wanted trout, understandably. Terry opted for pancakes. I ordered squirrel. I had to settle for bacon and eggs.

I carry many memories of that trip...mostly painful ones. But the one I have kept close to my heart these many years...and I still cling to it today as strongly as I did then, is the knowledge that that damned squirrel was eating freeze dried cottage cheese. I can almost hear the kaboom as he drank his first sip of water and exploded into a million little squirrel pieces. That's my fondest memory of our High Sierra Adventure.

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