[pct-l] H & B 102: "Six Inches of Fur"

[ned at pacificcrestcustombuilders.com]

[ This is the second installment in a series of first-hand accounts of acts of heroism and/or bravery experienced on a thru-hike. It is our hope that through these stories hikers will be more aware, chose to be more prepared, and have a safe time out there. Names will be changed, if requested, and wherever possible, the author's own words will be used. Enjoy. ]



"Six Inches of Fur:"


It had been a long summer and I wasn't about to let it end badly. But I must digress a bit to fill you in on some of the events that led up to this night.

I climbed the footholds of the Southern Sierra on April 14th out of the town of Weldon and into a vast sea of white snow, green pines, and purple-blue skies. On snowshoes it was a struggle, but I finally made it over Forester Pass and down into the trailhead of Cedar Grove, Kings Canyon National Park. I received a resupply box there and spent a glorious day feasting, resting, and re-packing my 55-pound frame pack. At the end of the day I finally got it packed right; I even put all my candy bars in an outside pocket where I could reach them easier. I went to bed that night as I always had of the last 40 days, under the stars and next to my pack. Happy and victorious that I had made it this far.

It seemed like it was the middle of the night, though it probably was around eleven o'clock, when a loud "thump" awakened me. You know how the back of your mind starts talking to you even though you're still asleep? Like an audible voice, I heard, "that's my pack that just fell over!" My flashlight, never far away at my bedside, I grabbed quickly and shinned a light out into the night. There within the black of forest shadow was a deeper black, a roundish shape about as tall as a garbage can with something shiny beneath it. My pack in the grip of a bear!

His eyes glowed back at me as if threatening me to leave him alone. Then I heard the ripping sound, low growling-like sounds, and lots of slobber. All I could think was that my home-away-from-home was being eaten alive, torn asunder by some opportunistic four-legged forest pirate who had no regard to who I was, how hard I had worked at getting there, or how his discovery would ruin my summer! 

I got up and started yelling at it. I banged pots together. The slobbering and ripping continued. He even had the audacity to drag my home a few feet away from me because I was bothering his meal. I suddenly got the brainstorm to use my ice axe as a threatening object. I took it in my desperate hands, up over my shoulder and advanced on the criminal. He was standing astraddle my dis-gorged pack, looked up at my noisy crashing of his dinner party, and took a few steps toward me, throwing his head side to side as if to say, "No You Don't!" I froze and he went back to his candy bar dessert.

Truthfully, there was nothing I could do. Nearly in tears, I waited for him to finish. The snorting, snuffling, slobbering, and tearing continued just beyond the edge of my weak light. When it ended he was gone-as quickly and silently as he came. My pack appeared to be the victim of a vicious disembowelment, strewn in bits and wrappers across a dirt campground. All I could do for my friend was to hide him up on the outhouse roof and assess the damage in the morning. I went to bed. I don't think I slept.

It took me two days to sew my house back together. That was April 28th. 

Between June 1st at Echo Lake to July 4th at Crater Lake I had several more unwelcome visitors to my self and home. In the Yuba River Canyon one night, in a beautiful campsite on a sandbar beneath a rickety, old "Indiana Jones" swinging bridge, raccoons ran havoc around me, over my sleeping bag, and inside my pack. Their muddy little paws tracked debris all over me and my gear. In the morning I discovered they had ripped open the same outside pocket where I used to keep my candy bars. Time to sew it back up again!

In the Trinity-Alps one morning I awoke to two eyes and a long black nose inches from my face, staring at me, blowing hot, wet steam onto my cheek. Good God, it was a deer! And there were four or five more right behind him waiting to hear what sort of wilderness intruder I was.

Just north of Copco Lake on the Oregon border at the southern end of the Oregon Skyline Trail sat an old, long-abandoned, simple rectangular log cabin. It no longer was graced with its central front door or any of its windows, but strangely enough it had a dirty, old sofa in the middle of its living room in front of the fireplace. I was tired after a long day walking flat, dusty logging roads and relished the idea of spending a night gloriously asleep on that sofa. With my pack propped up against the head-end of the sofa and my food and salty clothes tied securely within, I fell asleep at the last ray of light.

Once again, as it had been all summer and would yet continue, I don't know what woke me. The nights were cold and snow was still on the peaks and in the sheltered valleys around me, so I slept in my "mummy bag" with its hood pulled into a tight circle around my nose. If I could hear anything it was usually muffled. The first thing I realized in my groggy state of dreaming about hamburgers with cheese, milkshakes, and my girlfriend back home was that my nose itched. I rubbed it from within my bag. I started dreaming again about summer abandon back home and freely drinking out of the garden hose after long, hot days playing around the pool. My nose itched again. This time when I rubbed it-it squeaked! That did it. I was awake.

Quickly emerging from my cocoon and finding my trusty flashlight beside me, I peered about the little room. I was, to my utter astonishment, in a virtual sea of mice! They weren't on the sofa, though one did have to investigate my nose, but all around me, hundreds of them just walking around, sniffing noses, going in circles, caring less about the giant that was on the sofa. Some were in my pack, again, so I showed them out, hung it up on a nail in a rafter, and went back to sleep. In the morning, damage assessment only revealed the pack had sustained a chewed waist belt (for the salt). Not bad. Could have been worse. Sure was entertaining.

The critters left me alone for the next several weeks as I entered Washington and the month of August. One long day after climbing Mt. Adams, my partner (since high school was now out, my friends joined me here and there) and I were routinely hiking separately. The route was entirely in snow and we were sick of it, so we opted out off the established trail and dropped down to a parallel dirt road that headed north to our night's rest at Midway Guard Station. We knew it wasn't far away and so were hiking fast. My partner wanted to spend time photographing the sunset at one point, so that's why we were apart.

I arrived at the backcountry Ranger Station, hoping to find someone home, but it was too early in the season and no one was home. I set up "camp" on the back porch and waited for my friend to arrive. It was dusk and rapidly getting darker and he hadn't come in yet. I walked out to the road at one point and peered down it, thinking, briefly that I might wander back down it to see what had happened to my buddy. He was an accomplished backpacker, as much as one can be for seventeen years of life, and I wasn't worried about him. He must have pulled up short and camped down the road. I went to sleep on the white, splintery deck boards listening for sounds of him but only able to hear the frogs in the over-grown, snow-melt-swollen creek.

In the morning I awoke and he still wasn't around. I started my breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate, began packing up and wandered back to the road out front. There he was asleep in the grass in front of the Station! I shouted at him in concerned revelry, "Hey, Mark! What happened to you last night?" as I sat down on the front steps. Then the story began....

Mark was walking down the road not too far behind me, following my tracks in the failing light of twilight. The dirt road was a straight, wide one with tall, slender pines on either side. He was not thinking of much, just putting one foot in front of another. Suddenly, he was aware that something up ahead was wrong. Straining his eyes to see in the dim, there appeared to be a huge object standing up at the side of the road. He kept walking and straining to see clearer. No luck. So, out of concern and apprehension, he crossed to the other side of the road. It appeared to be a bear standing on its back legs! His head ran wild with ideas of evasive action. It wasn't moving, standing still as if it, too, was trying to see what Mark was. The bear was on the right side of the road, so Mark crept up the left. There was no place to go and he couldn't see much anyway. 

What was stranger, yet, was that the bear seemed to be standing next to a little tree or something straight and skinny was beside it. Mark stopped and waited, rubbing his eyes in the dust. The bear had not moved a bit. What else could he do, so he drew closer. Suddenly he realized what it was-Smokey the Bear, holding a shovel, and saying, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!" Happy and relieved, laughing inside, Mark was a little wrung out with anxiety. Luckily, as fate would have it, the Ranger Station was not far, so when he arrived at the front steps, he simply pulled out his bag and fell asleep, still feeling a bit foolish.

Within the next week we awoke in the mornings to find bear tracks all around us, in camp and along the trail. This was up in the Goat Rocks.
A few days later, up around Glacier Peak, while on my way to Fire Creek Pass, I found myself in dense forest on a little ridge. Huckleberry bushes filled the spaces between the trees. I thought to myself that the bears must be filling themselves on all the berries. I was on a straight section of trail and dropping onto a brief level area when there was a bear walking toward me. He had just come up from a lower section of trail and hadn't noticed me yet. There was no wind in the still, quiet forest. I kept walking toward him. I didn't think that I had anything to worry about, but I began to entertain my choices should he want me out of his way.

He saw me when we were about 30 feet apart. We both stopped and looked at each other for a moment. He slowly began to look around at the wall of bushes alongside the trail. I thought he was looking for a way out. Rather than turning around and running, he began to come at me, slowly at first, still looking, then a little faster as if anxious. He wasn't looking at me. I don't know how he saw it, but at one point about fifteen feet from me, the length of a car, he spun on a forefoot and disappeared into the woods. I was just beginning to freak out a bit. 

After arriving in Canada on September 2nd, I returned to re-hike the John Muir Trail. I wanted to see what it looked like when it wasn't covered in snow. My partner and I were camped in Tuolumne Meadows amongst way too many car-campers, vans, RVs, and other foreign machines I hadn't seen in 6 months. We cowboy-camped under many trees, putting our packs up against separate trunks and sleeping with our heads beside them. Sure got dark in the trees that night. I fell asleep thinking that I had just finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, something like 2,450 miles (then), and only had another two hundred to go before I would have to go home. My "home" for the last six months was on my back and in the wilderness. Society was loud, frantic, and scarier than bears, nasty creek crossings, and bad weather. I didn't want it to end.

I was sleeping on my back with my head up against my pack frame and with my bag's hood tight around my nose. I thought it was late in the night when I awoke sensing something strange above me and to my left. My brain started trying to wake me up, talking to me again.  I wasn't even thinking. I sensed a bear was inches above my head sniffing my pack. All I remember is thinking, "I'll be darned if another bear tries to ruin this trip!" Things happened fast. 

I opened my bag, propped myself up on my left elbow and swung my right hand wide across my chest over to where I felt the bear was. The next thing I will never forget, my hand sinking into about six inches of soft, luxurious fur. I don't even remember hitting anything hard like a bear's body. THEN I WOKE UP! I sat there realizing what had just happened. I just hit a bear with my hand! I could have been killed! He could have struck back. There I was sitting here half in my bag with my mouth hanging open. I yelled at my partner, "Hey, Larry, I just hit a bear! There's a bear in camp! Wake up!"