"Because it's there . . ."

If you ask a mountain climber why they climb mountains the classic answer is "because it's there." Having come as close as I'll ever come to being mentioned in the same book as a mountain climber, I can relate but at the same time say there's a whole lot more.

This season at Glacier I had the great privilege of being a part of a trail patrol along the trails leading out of Logan Pass. The trail patrol program grew out of two studies - a goat study and a sub-alpine trampling study - which ended up in a group of us who patrol and monitor activity on sensitive trails in the high mountains along the Continental Divide leading out of Logan Pass. But I'll do a complete blog on that program because I think it is so interesting and important.

First Meeting at Logan Pass - June 3rd, 2015

Mount Oberlin on June 3rd, 2015.  My goal. 

When we went to our first meeting at Logan Pass we knew that we would be patrolling the very popular Highline and Hidden Lake Trails. The Law Enforcement (LE) Ranger who runs the program told us that we could also do the Mount Oberlin trail if we felt up to it.  Up to it?  I looked for the trail on my topographic map but it didn't seem to exist. As it turns out the Mount Oberlin trail is not an official Glacier trail but a trail made by climbers who are climbing Mt. Oberlin.
Non-climbers somehow get on the unmarked trail, see the trail on which they were supposed to be hiking, and cut across the super-fragile sub-alpine vegetation to avoid going back down and around. These high sub-alpine meadows are legally closed. (Called a "closure".)  The study found that it takes these fragile meadows 50 years or more to recover from human foot steps. On the average year we will have 4-5 feet of snow on these meadows in the middle of July and the first snow of the season will be in early September. These plants have a normal growing season of about 8 weeks to survive.

It may not look fragile, but it is! 

When I found people on the closure, if I were so inclined, after getting the hikers back on the trail, I could radio down the mountain to an LE Ranger and they would be waiting for the hikers with an educational coupon (ticket) of great cost. Since most of the people I encountered were very cooperative and seemed honestly shocked to learn what their trampling could do, I never called LE.

A Mountain Goat Billy (male) 

The other reason that I was on the mountain was to run interference between visitors and wildlife. The most common encounter is with the Mountain Goats.  I'm planning an entire blog on these marvelous creatures.  Most people assume that the Big Horn Sheep are the high altitude cliff climbers, but, in reality, the Big Horn stay in the high meadows while the Mountain Goats are the ones who spend over 70% of their life on narrow ledges and inclines so steep that most things fall off. Unfortunately they look lovable and visitors want to pet them and take pictures with their children sitting on them. But, besides the fact such activities are very bad for the goats, the Mountain Goat is as tough as his/her environment and their horns are deadly weapons.

When I signed up for this work I took three wildlife management programs. Two focused on bears and one on the Mountain Goat. The bottom line of all three schools was that while we called it "wildlife management" it was really "protect the animals from the dumb humans." And calling humans dumb is about as polite as I can be.

I encountered the billy in the picture to the left on a mid-June climb. I ran into him a few hours later not too far from the visitor's center on the Hidden Lake trail posing for pictures. He's allowed to cut across the closure. He was lying down about 25-30 yards off the trail. A little boy came up to me and asked me if the Mountain Goat was a boy or a girl. I told him that it was a boy and that boy goats are called "billy". I don't know what made her do it, but the boy's mother stepped forward and asked "how do you know it's a boy?"  Had she had the birds-n-bees talk with her son?  "Well," I said, "he's larger than the female goats and, his horns are a bit more curved back." I paused. The woman was giving me a 'sure.right' look. "Besides," I continued, "I've seen him standing up."  The woman went red. Sorry, Lady, you asked for it.

So I have two important purposes for being on the side of this mountain - to protect the wildlife and the fragile sub-alpine vegetation. That's right in line with the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 which mandates us "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."  (Get off the grass and leave my goats alone! LOL.) Nevertheless, the perks of the job are that I get to enjoy the trails, wildlife and vegetation as I work.  That means that I can climb the mountain. Technically the closure goes all the way up. (grin ... smirk)  That's where "because it's there" comes in.  

But even then I can't say that I climbed up the mountain just to climb up the mountain. I kept going because what I was experiencing and seeing was so phenomenal that I had no other choice. How could I not?  The view alone kept getting better and better. I was on top of the world!

The summit was in sight. The snow-ice field that stopped me.

Grandson, Kieran, with me on patrol. 

Most of my trips up Mt. Oberlin were alone. I had two times that I almost made it to the summit. On my first climb there was still lots of snow.  I made it past most of the large snow and ice fields because if I fell I'd just slide down the snow. It would hurt - my pride more than my body - but I would survive. Just before the saddle that is less than 200 feet below the summit I encountered a snow and ice field that was very wide and literally led to a 2-300 foot drop. I don't have the equipment or the skills for that. Besides, I was alone. The second time I came close to the summit was when Pamela, Kieran and I climbed the mountain on July 21st. 

The 7/21 climb was going to be our last "harrah" of the season. Pamela's knees are bone-on-bone from arthritis and she could hardly walk nevertheless climb a mountain, but climb she did. She wasn't going to be denied.  If Pamela had been alive a hundred years ago, she'd be one of the tough-as-nails mountain women we read about today who lived in these mountains. 

Pamela just before the saddle. 

The Reynolds Creek Fire from 7500 ft.

 It was our day-off, but I always take the park radio with me when I'm in the back country. We were about 1/2 mile up the mountain when we heard a radio report that a woman had fallen on Mt. Oberlin about a mile up and rangers were on their way. I told dispatch that I was already 1/2 mile up the mountain and would look for the woman and stay with her until the evac team arrived.  To make a long story short . . .  just before the radio report a group of women had passed us heading down.  I had climbed to well of 7,000 ft and Pamela and Kieran were actually above me, and we had talked to some climbers coming off the mountain. No one had seen the woman. She had evidently walked out, right past us and two other rangers, without telling us. As I was discussing this on the radio with the rangers below me I turned toward the panoramic view. But there was something wrong. There was smoke rising from the forest at the bottom of Reynolds Mountain near  primitive campground on Reynolds Creek. "Do you see that smoke?"  I asked the ranger below me. There was a long pause because he was almost 1,000 ft below me and couldn't see as well. Suddenly he said "Oh, my God!"  We called it in to dispatch. I was evidently one of the first, if not the first, to see the fire. I watched in horror as it went from a line of smoke rising to billowing plumes of smoke with flames rising high into the sky.

As we listened to fire crews springing into action, we continued our climb.  Pamela and I left Kieran just below the saddle as we made our final ascent. I knew that Kieran would be safe there and his Mother (my daughter) would be extremely annoyed with me if I had allowed him to go with us and he had been hurt. He was actually never out of our sight. Pamela started up a narrow passage way of scree - lose rock where you take two steps forward and slide back one. I decided that I wanted no part of that because, at the bottom of the scree, was a very big drop - several hundred feet straight down. I started picking my way up the rock face and Pamela soon joined me.  The snow-ice field that had stopped me was no longer there and so we were at the edge of the saddle less than 200 feet below the summit.

That's when we had to make an agonizing decision. If we turned back right then we'd barely have time to catch the last shuttle from Logan Pass to get home.  If we climbed the last 200 feet to the summit, there was no way we would be able to get back in time. We thought about all of the ways we might get down off the pass if we missed the shuttle, but in the end we decided that the mountain would probably be there again another day. We sat for a few minutes admiring the beauty around and below us and started our descent. We had gone far beyond what we thought were our limits. Pamela had displayed unbelievable endurance and determination.

Stromatolites at 7,160 ft. 

The climb down was harder on Pamela than the climb up. Arthritic, bone-on-bone knees are at their worst going down hills, stairs, etc.  She tried to hide the pain, but I could sense it as well as see it. At 7,160 feet Pamela squealed with glee. "Look!" she shouted pointing to a long ridge along which we were climbing.  There was a band of stromatolites that was 6-8 feet thick and 10-15 yards long.  What a marvelous reward for her efforts. After that all I had to do was say "7160" and she would grin.

As we climbed down the mountain we heard about a car that had turned over on the west side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The road was closed. There was no way off Logan Pass for almost 4 hours. Had we known this we could have finished our ascent to the summit of Mt Oberlin and returned in time to catch a shuttle, but we unfortunately didn't know.

This is why you do it. 

As we made our way off the mountain we looked out over the marvelous mountains, meadows and lakes below us. This, we concluded, is why you climb a mountain.