Tuesday, April 4, 2023
I recall a hike many years ago, when we were very young. Doug asked me to meet him at the U of M library. He had plotted a hike over the Absaroka Mountains in Montana. There was a short trail at the beginning of his route and a bit longer one at the end, but mostly Doug wanted to find his own way over the mountain range. If there was a hard way and an easy way of doing something, the young Doug always seemed to prefer the hard way.
Forty-five years has dulled my memory, but I recall getting lost the first day and backtracking for several hours, and a boulder field where we ran leaping from one bolder to the next, too much momentum to stop, just hoping there was another bolder within range to land on. On a later day we arrived at an almost shear wall of rock a with no way around. We managed to find some hand and foot holds, and there were a few ledges, but mostly we scaled it by on hanging onto small trees and bushes growing out of fissures in the rock. Once we committed to the climb there was no turning around, since we could not to see where to place our feet to back down. We managed to make it to the top of the cliff without falling to our deaths, but even then it was too steep to stand and we needed to creep and crawl for quite a ways further. Later on we crossed an ice field. Below the steep ledge where we carefully made our way, stamping our boots down hard into the crusty surface, was an icy blue pool awaiting anyone who slipped. We of course had no ice pick or crampons for our boots, though I remember Doug was packing a needle nose pliers and a few other tools : )
A couple of years ago, asked Doug if he remembered the hike. He smiled at me, and said, "We could have died out there". I guess that's what made it memorable and worth doing. I sure miss that crazy guy!
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