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What's an "adventure", do you think? A lot of people talk about "adventure travel" (including me), but most of these excursions are simply trips to out-of-the-way or unusual places, involving some inconvenience but little risk. Dictionaries define "Adventure" as a risky enterprise, something involving hazards. On a recent trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we had such an "adventure". Is this a photo-tip? I'd say it is, because it illustrates that in the pursuit of adventure and photographs you can make decisions that could have dire consequences, and so I'll pass it along.
The day started normally, with a departure from Jackson Hole to drive down the Wilson-Moose road, a local favorite for wildlife and a spot where we'd found a great horned owl nest with three owlets in residence. From there, we intended to drive north to the Oxbow Bend area of the Snake River, a moose haunt. The day was cloudy, with occasional sleet/snow, and temperatures in Jackson were in the high 30s.
We completed the Wilson-Moose run without incident, and started to drive north from Moose. Just a few miles out we passed a road marked "Antelope Flats Road", and our map showed that this road wound around into the edges of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. That seemed to be a promising prospect, a place where we might find a bear or two. So we turned our SUV back and took the road.
Antelope Flats Road first works its way among a few small ranches, and one of these had a pretty barn that we stopped to photograph. Beyond the barn, the road headed pretty much northeast toward a wooded set of slopes, the tallest of which (we found out) was Shadow Mountain. It took us perhaps fifteen minutes to navigate to the edge of the Tetons National Park, where we found a junction of three dirt roads with a Forest Service map and sign board. Since our own map didn't show three roads, I stopped and checked the map to be sure what road to take and get an idea of how it would twist and turn to the point where we rejoined the main highway. Simple step, but it proved crucial later on.
We ascended Shadow Mountain with no real incident, stopping to take some pictures (one of which is shown above) along the way. The road was a dirt trail and rutty, but we never had to even use four-wheel drive. Along the way, we passed some hikers, who waved and smiled at us. But if the people were nice, the weather was deteriorating a bit. It was chilly, and the partly cloudy conditions were now interspersed with periods of sleet.
We reached the top of Shadow Mountain about 10 AM local time, and paused only briefly (there being no particularly great view due to trees) before starting our descent. We'd gone only about a half-mile when we ran into our first patch of snow, a small scallop that covered the road for about 20 feet but was so trivial we could negotiate it in two-wheel mode. There were no vehicle tracks in the snow except the single mark of a motorcycle, and that should have tipped me off to an important reality-no four-wheeled vehicle had been here before. It didn't register.
Another quarter-mile passed, and we were now running into more drifts on the road. It wasn't like there was a lot of snow, but there was snow in a very inconvenient spot-where we were trying to drive. We managed to get through about three increasingly large patches, but had to go to four-wheel drive. The fourth patch stopped us and we spent about 45 minutes digging out with our hands, sticks, and rocks (since there was no shovel in the SUV). When we'd finally gotten moving, we had to take stock on what to do. Choice one: Back up the mountain for three-quarters of a mile through the snow patches (since there wasn't room to turn around), or continue down the mountain where (hopefully) the snow would be reduced as we got lower. I elected to do the latter, so down we went.
For about a half-mile, it looked like the gamble was paying off. There was one more bad patch to get through, and then things seemed to be getting clear. Then we reached an "s-curve" in the road, first to the left and then to the right. The center of the "S" was a 45-foot embankment down to the right of the road, extending about half-way through the curve in both directions. There was a large scallop of snow right at the center, and it was clear that this was the deepest drift we'd seen. There was only a narrow patch of clear trail on the very edge of the embankment to the right. This clearly wasn't going to be something to blaze through without a thought, so I stopped and walked forward to check it out. It looked bad. The snow on the left or inside edge of the road was probably thigh-deep, tapering down to a dusting at the (somewhat frightening) edge of the embankment. If I shaded toward the outside embankment edge I'd be in shallow snow but if anything slipped…you get the picture. Shade toward the uphill left side and I'm possibly in two feet of snow, which the cocktail-circuit SUV I had was (by past experience) probably not going to negotiate.
OK, what can you do? I can't back up at this point, so it's downhill or nothing. In the back of my mind was another unpleasant truth; if I got stuck here I was going to have to walk out for help, and if I had to walk out I'd like to be closer to the main highway, meaning downhill. Why not call? Because I'd left my cellphone in the hotel that day. Would it have had service there? We'll never know for sure. When we were in other areas nearby we didn’t have it, but a couple years later in the same area we had service. So anyway, onward.
I got about a third of the way through the snow scallop, shading just about two feet inside the right embankment edge of the road, when the front wheels finally hung up in packed snow and the rear started to slip to the right. I wasn't going in that direction, so I stopped (about four inches from the edge) and took stock. The SUV couldn't be rocked between drive and reverse this close to the edge (or not more than once), and we were unable to dig it out in 20 minutes of effort. I stood up, brushed off, and told my wife that we were not going to get out of this without help. My suggestion; she stay with the SUV, running the engine as needed to keep warm, and I'd walk out to the highway for help. There was no other choice, so that was that. Taking a bottle of water and our bear spray (since there was a "Danger: Bear Country" sign about every 200 yards), I set off down the mountain.
Truth is, folks, I didn't have a really warm fuzzy feeling about this. It wasn't fear of bears; I'd been on ground level with the big Alaskan browns in 2002 and I felt I knew how to deal with any bears I'd find. The problem was that I didn't know how far it was to the highway. I figured that (old-ish and out of shape as I was) I could probably hike 5 miles, maybe as much as 8, but I darn sure couldn't hike 20 miles and it might be closer to that. OK, I'd read the Forest Service map, but I hadn't bothered to read the scale of miles. Anyway, off we go.
Knowing that most bear attacks occur because the hiker surprises the bear, I hummed or chanted or sung as I walked to be sure the bears knew I was coming. Apparently it was completely effective because I didn't see a single living creature (a bad singing voice, maybe). The navigation wasn't as successful, though. I couldn't see any landmarks because of the thick growth of trees along the road, and about every half-mile or so I came to a fork or intersection. Trying to remember the map, I picked the direction that seemed to conform to my vision of how the road would wind back. Never turn uphill, never turn right. I actually chanted that for a while (hey, you've got to chant something). I do some treadmill walking, so I tried to pick a pace that seemed like the one I used on the treadmill-about 3 mph. It was about noon when I set off, and my hope was to get to the highway and help before three or so.
After about three and a half miles, and a half-dozen harrowing choices of route, I suddenly reached a clearing with another Forest Service map board, and for the first time I saw the route number of the road I was on-30340, which was the right road. I'd managed to stay to the trail I was supposed to be on. In another couple hundred yards, I broke out into the open on Antelope Flats, where suddenly there were no trees at all, only sagebrush. I could now see the Teton range and the trees that marked the Snake River valley, so I knew I was no more than three miles or so from the highway. Still, in truth, I was getting a little tired and a little dry. I'd drunk my water, and bear spray isn't a satisfactory substitute (not that I wasn't grateful for not having to use it for its intended purpose). But I was in the home stretch. Nothing could stop me from making the highway.
Well, almost nothing. As I rounded a bend, there was a single enormous male bison standing about 100 yards to the right of the dirt road I was walking. As I moved toward him, he lifted his head, contemplated the intruder (me), and started moving on an intercept course. Well, this sucked. Three and a half miles through bear country without incident to be stomped by a bison! No gun, no trees, no nothing…except bear spray. Would that work on bison? Probably some stupid Federal law prohibits its use on herbivores or something, but this was no time to get legally anal. I pulled out the can and checked the wind (never spray upwind with the stuff unless you want to incapacitate yourself to make things easier on your attacker). To get myself upwind of mister buffalo, I needed to get to the point of the road opposite him before he got to the road and turned in my direction. So I kept moving, watching our courses converge. What do you do to discourage a bison? Pushing one with a car seemed to work in Yellowstone, but I didn't have one (it was back on the mountain in the care of my worried wife). What do you do to discourage a bear? Talk to it is the answer, so I started to talk to the bison. I didn't get through my first sentence (which, unhappily, is not preserved for posterity) when he turned to his left to pass behind me. Sure I looked over my shoulder for a quarter mile to be sure he wasn't thundering down from behind, but mister bison's part of this tale was over.
When I'd gone about another mile, I came to yet another fork in the road. The left branch headed to the highway, which I could now catch glimpses of about a mile away. The right headed to a cluster of buildings a mile in the opposite direction. Were they inhabited? It would cost me a two-mile walk if they weren't, so I decided to bet on the sure thing and turned left. I'd gone about half the distance to the highway when I heard a vehicle behind me, and up came a nice yuppy Range Rover with an attractive young woman in a Columbia University baseball cap at the wheel. I flagged her down and when she stopped (don't try that in the East, folks) I told her I needed help. She offered her cell and called 911, and the operators connected us to the National Park Service. Home free? Not yet. NPS told me that Shadow Mountain wasn't in the Grand Teton NP (though I was in it at this point), but rather in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, which was a county matter. They switched me to the county rescue dispatch. "Does your wife have a heart condition or any other life-threatening illness?" they asked. When I admitted that she'd been alive and generally healthy when I left, they politely told me that this was a matter for a private towing service. They transferred me to the Triple-A-affiliated service (twenty miles away, as it happened). The towing company asked me for my AAA membership number (which, fortunately, I had) and then asked where I was. When I told them I was about six miles up Shadow Mountain stuck on a dirt road in snow, they informed me they didn't do off-road towing. Did I have premium membership? No? Sorry.
Miss Columbia came to the rescue again. She'd been working at the Lost Creek Guest Ranch (the place I'd seen to the right at that last fork) and she was sure that they'd be able to help. She offered to take me back there, which sounded a heck of a lot better than walking, and off we went.
At the ranch, the office quickly rounded up their maintenance man and he set out with me and a passenger (who just wanted to ride along to watch) to find my SUV.
Meanwhile, back at the SUV, my wife was practically in the crossroads of the West. I'd been gone about two-and-a-half hours when she heard a truck come up behind, and two Texans got out. The one sauntered up to our SUV, mired in snowdrifts on the edge of a cliff, and said "Stuck?" How she managed not to say "Yup" I'll never know. Anyway, she politely told them she was. They offered a cellphone to call 911 with, and when she did she found out that I'd made it down and had been put into contact with the towing company. That the towing company wasn't going to help was a detail mercifully omitted. The Texans, having no need to rescue my wife now, focused on their own trip. Realizing they could not get through the drift either, they elected to back up the mountain. Did they make it? Eventually, probably, but they now join the bison in the "disappeared from this story" list.
I reached my wife perhaps a half-hour later, in the company of our (hopefully) rescuer. What I'd hoped to find was a pickup with a bumper winch, which could have pulled me out in a minute. We didn't have that, so we had to run chain to the SUV and pull it with the truck. That took a bit to set up, and we then dug out a little around the left front wheel area to get some control. I got in the SUV and Linda (not wanting to ride over the cliff with me if something went wrong) got into the truck. I put the SUV in 4-wheel low and eased onto the gas while the truck took up the tension in the chain. In a minute, I was out of the drift and safely in a mere 9 inches of snow. Unfortunately, the truck's front wheels spun against the weight of the SUV and he side-slipped to his left, the downhill embankment side. Before the driver could stop, his left front wheel went over, and the truck was precariously balanced on a wedge of dirt driven off the edge. My wife had picked the wrong vehicle, apparently. She and the two rescuers quickly exited, and we moved the tow chain from my SUV to a tree to keep the truck from going over. So much for rescue; we now had two vehicles and four people stranded.
Plan B. The maintenance man called the ranch for help, and shortly a crew in another truck arrived. They organized a program to use a hand winch to stabilize the truck, dug out some snow, pushed some logs into place, hooked up the "old" truck to the new one, and pulled the truck away from the edge. It was a near thing, even with all of this, but by about 4 PM both vehicles were unstuck and I could follow them down the mountain.
During the rescue deliberations, another vehicle came down from the summit of Shadow Mountain, with a father-and-son team driving a jeep with big oversized tires. The son/driver seemed fascinated by the work, but the father took time to come over to me and tell me that I had no business being there. Darn straight, I wanted to say! He was perhaps a bit undiplomatic, but right nevertheless. My rescuer wasn't having any of it, though. He took me aside. "Don't let him bother you. He just wanted to be the first over Shadow Mountain this season." That was the first I'd heard of it, but apparently the trip we'd taken was a big bragging-rights macho thing locally. Anyway, the new people decided to navigate our route behind us, and the dad got out to direct the son. "Keep to your left, away from the edge," dad yelled out. The son happily nodded, gave his jeep the gas, and spun to the very edge of the very cliff we'd been stuck at-and got stuck. His dad saw how close he was to the edge, and yelled "Whatever you do, don't back up!" The son happily nodded and put the jeep in reverse, skirting the edge so close that dirt flew off, but somehow got out and sailed into the deep drift, with his dad and my rescuer diving for cover as he sailed past, front and rear swinging wildly. They followed us down, but at the bottom turned left to go around again.
What was wonderful about this process (let's face it, about the only thing) was the quality of the people. We had seven or eight people helping us get that SUV out. One nearly lost his own truck. All of them worked hard, really hard, and they never lost their smiles and good humor. The grouchy father was right; I had no business being up there. My only defense is that there was no sign or warning, and I really looked to try to verify that the road was open and safe. Still, I made some bad decisions, most notably not turning around at the first sign of snow. A local would have known that the ascent was on the south-facing slope and likely clear of snow, and the descent on the north slope where snow could remain. I didn't know, but should have guessed. What would have happened if our friendly ranch hands had not shown up? Yet they would take nothing for their work. We dropped a couple cases of beer off the next day, but it was a small return on their help. If you're ever in the Jackson area, check out the Lost Creek Guest Ranch. If good people make a good experience, there won't be any better in the state of Wyoming.
We made our dinner reservation that night, but I was sore for days and we had to get the vehicle washed to clear off the mud thrown up by all the wheel-spinning. Are adventures supposed to hurt? If so, we had one.
As a postscript, we returned to Shadow Mountain in the fall of 2005, on a sunny fall day with no snow. But as we crested the top, and reached the places we'd first started to see snow during the spring trip, we saw mud instead. I turned around and went back down the way I'd come up, which is what I should have done that first time!
Shadow Mountain: Things We Did Right
It’s tempting to say that anything with a good outcome was “right” but this isn’t the case, so let’s look at the smart moves:
First, I stopped at the foot of the mountain and checked the Forest Service board. OK, they should have had the closure posted there, but whether they did or not doesn’t alter the fact that you always check any bulletin boards on any trails or dirt roads every time you see one! The move let me navigate correctly down the mountain, no easy feat since there were connecting roads, because I remembered the structure.
Second, we had water with us. It’s surprising how fast you can get thirsty when you have to hike a long distance, and you will need to hydrate. Always carry at least a couple quarts of water in the vehicle in a form that lets you break it down to carry. We had a twelve-pack of pints of bottled water.
Third, we had bear spray. All the way up and down we were faced with warning signs about bears. Again, happily, neither of us saw one at any point, but we could have, and while bear spray isn’t a perfect solution it’s at least a step in the right direction. I also knew to make plenty of noise when waking to avoid surprising bears.
Fourth, I didn’t panic, even when I encountered the bison. People die in the wild because they make mistakes, and panic is a really great way to create a few of your own. It may have been helpful to have the bear spray. While after the event, everyone told me it wouldn’t have worked, I later found out that biologists who study bison use it all the time and that it works very effectively. Bison are dangerous and you don't want to get cocky just because you have pepper spray, but if you are anywhere where wild stuff can be a problem, get and carry a can with you. Remember, you can spray only downwind so be sure of your position if you have to use it.
Fifth, I knew that I could do the hike before I started it. You don’t just hike off into the wild hoping for a good outcome, particularly when there’s a chance that somebody will come by if you stay put (like the Texans in my story did). Was it smart to hike out? In the balance, I’d have to say it was smart only because I knew I could make it, because again I had a notion of the scale of the distance from the Forest Service map I’d looked at. Sure, somebody came along a couple of hours later, but that was lucky. There was no reason to bet on luck here, and in fact the worst mistake you can make is to make a decision with nothing more than your hope of a good outcome. You have to take steps that will maximize that chance..
Finally, we had plenty of gas and warm clothing, and we could have stayed the night in the vehicle if necessary. If you are off the main drag, you need to be sure you can survive overnight if you break down or get stuck or something.
Shadow Mountain: Things We Did Wrong
Dumb thing number one was not having the cellphone with us. As I said, we’ll never know whether it would have worked, but had the phone been available and working it's possible I could have stayed put until somebody came up, eliminating all of the really awful risks that were involved. The problem is that my experience with the rescue people turned out to be a total wash-out. Who would I have called? Without Miss Columbia, I'd have never known about the ranch or gotten their crew to help. But I might have called my hotel (who said they'd have known what to do), and the consequences of a bear encounter or the bison’s charging were definitely in the “awful” category. The "phone for help" option might not have worked out, but I sure wish I'd had the choice.
The second dumb thing was having neither compass or map. If you are going to do this kind of driving today, you need to get yourself a GPS (I have one now!) But even with a GPS, you need to have a map and compass with you at all times just in case your batteries die or you drop and break the unit, or simply lose it. I saw one pulled out of a guy’s pocket during a hike because the lanyard caught on a branch. The person behind called out and the unit was retrieved, but you get the point. Even with a good memory and the good luck of having checked the Forest Service board, it was touch and go whether I'd stay on track on the way down.
The third dumb thing was not stopping and turning around at the first sign of snow. If I’d used my head at that point I’d have realized that we’d ascended on the south face of the mountain and thus on the sunward side, and that the north face would likely still have some snow. Finding some should have been a big red flag. Turn around no matter how many cutbacks it takes, and retreat! If you are hiking or driving and you see the signs of a major deterioration in conditions, you don’t hope for the best, you retreat to the familiar. We knew we could get back the way we came, and we should have taken that choice when we could have. That same thing was true at the second snow bank, where we were finally stuck. I was being foolishly optimistic to even attempt to cross it, not because of the bank on the right but because if I got stuck there was then no way out.
The Moral of This Tale
I listed more smart things than dumb things, but that’s not how the story balances out. This was an absolutely idiotic thing to have done, something so dumb that its stupidity might have killed me despite a lot of luck and some (but only some) smart precautions. I get chills looking at TV shows with Bison and people in proximity even to this day. Thus, we have to draw a negative lesson here. Even in the fall, when there was no snow, Shadow Mountain’s dirt road was a risk for a 4WD vehicle without high clearance and mud tires. In the spring it was just stupid. Before you make these ad hoc detours, you should stop and think about the risk factors, and put together a logical plan. I can safely say that the Shadow Mountain incident was the stupidist mistake of my adventure travel life. I will NEVER make one like it again. That doesn't mean I'm worried or nervous when I travel; I'm not. But I'm more careful.
Any off-road travel, hiking or driving, should be undertaken only if you have plenty of food and water, emergency communications, first aid supplies, map/compass and GPS, etc. You should also think seriously about telling people exactly where you are going and when to expect you back, so somebody will know to look for you.
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