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SPRING 2013

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HOMINGMaking like a goose at Freezeout Lake

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SKIING UP A STORMSpring is full of wild turns in Glacier National Park

SURVIVE AND ADVANCEThomas Elpel thrives on nothing but nature

Cover: MorganLanning nears the summit of Mount Jackson in Glacier National Park.

Photo by Chad Harder

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On Belay

Contributors

Head LinesQ&A: George Anderson makes the grade

Open season on the Clark ForkInland surfing rides a wave of popularity

How to ford a stream

Head LightHDR makes your phone smarter

Head ShotsOur readers’ best

Head TripHigh on Cedar

Grub Chewing the scenery

Wild ThingsMontana’s stealthy stinger

Head Out Spring reigns

Head GearCast from the past

The CruxLearning by heart

STAFF EXECUTIVE EDITOR Skylar BrowningGENERAL MANAGER Lynne Foland

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Brad TyerPHOTO EDITOR Chad HarderADVERTISING SALES MANAGER Carolyn BartlettPRODUCTION DIRECTOR Joe WestonCIRCULATION MANAGER Adrian Vatoussis

CONTRIBUTORS Alex Sakariassen, Jamie Rogers, Jack Ballard, Jessica Murri, Jason McMackin, Jeff Hull, Matt Holloway, Aaron Teasdale, Ari LeVaux

ART DIRECTOR Kou MouaPRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Jenn Stewart, Jonathan MarquisADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Tami Johnson, Steven Kirst, Alecia Goff,

Sasha Perrin FRONT DESK Lorie RustvoldEDITOR-IN-CHIEF Matt Gibson

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317 S. Orange St. • Missoula, MT 59801406-543-6609 • Fax 406-543-4367

www.montanaheadwall.com

Montana Headwall (ISSN 2151-1799) is a registeredtrademark of Independent Publishing, Inc. Copyright2013 by Independent Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.Reprinting in whole or in part is forbidden except by permission of Independent Publishing, Inc. Viewsexpressed herein are those of the author exclusively. And yeah, we’re having fun.

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INSIDE

Chad Harder

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f you’re anything like me (middle-aged, busy withwork, domestically committed and not especiallyfit), you probably didn’t get out as much as you

wanted during the winter. I don’t have to tell you, butit totally sucks when that happens. I didn’t get a sin-gle deep day on the slopes this winter, and I got onlyone backcountry outing. When the monster dumpscame, I ate junk food at my desk. At times during thedarkness of January, I cursed my fortune with therage of a wounded bear. I hurt.

But there’s more to the mountains than snow, andthis spring 2013 issue of Montana Headwall bears witness to the inspiring possibilities that beckon usout into the sun once the leaves unfurl from incipientbuds. It’s a hopeful season. And I’m optimistic. Howcould I not be, having just read “High on Cedar”(page 36), Chad Harder’s cheerful record of a spur-of-the-moment backpacking trip into the Madisons for arewarding weekend outing.

Then there’s Brad Tyer, who recounts a pair ofbirdwatching visits to Freezeout Lake in “Homing”(page 16). Brad misses the peak of the migration, butnot the point of going: There’s peace to be foundamong wild things. Pony’s famed survival instructor,

Thomas Elpel, gets it too, and he shares his solutionfor all of us in Aaron Teasdale’s profile, “Survive andadvance” (page 46).

But I’m most encouraged by Matt Holloway, whoendures a foul-weather backcountry ski outing inGlacier National Park with his buddies in “Skiing up astorm” (page 30). It bears repeating that despite occa-sional tough going, there’s staggering bounty in outdooradventure. And perhaps even more fundamentally, atleast from my perspective, Holloway reminds me thatski season can continue for months after the lifts stop, ifI can just get my act together long enough to push mybones up a slope.

Jeff Hull’s Crux column closes out the issue with a lyrical paean to the season (page 62). On the plainsof eastern Montana, where Hull discovers that spring has to be earned, he finds its effect sweetlyamplified. After a long, cold season, we share a needfor renewal. With any luck, this latest iteration ofMontana Headwall will focus some restorative warmth on us all.

Matt GibsonEditor-in-Chief

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Chad Harder

Emma Twyford & Loïc Gaidioz Near Taghia Village, MoroccoPhoto: Marc Daviet

Plasmic Jacket in Backcountry Green

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Montana Headwall Spring 2013

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BradTyer

MattHolloway

ChadHarder

Jeff has been a freelance maga-zine writer for over 20 years,with publications in the NewYork Times Magazine, The AtlanticMonthly, Outside, Men’s Journal,Field & Stream, Audubon, Fortune,Fast Company, and many othermagazines. He is the author ofthe novel Pale Morning Done andthe essay collection Streams ofConsciousness. He lives in theNine Mile Valley.

Matt lives with his wife, daugh-ter and son in Columbia Falls,Mont., and writes when he’s notclawing around in the wilder-ness. His work has appearedin Montana Magazine, Big SkyJournal, Montana Naturalist, ANatural History of Now: ReportsFrom the Edge of Nature antholo-gy, and more. Holloway is thefiction editor for WhitefishReview.

JeffHull

Ever since the Kaimin publishedhis full-frontal shot of a skierhucking Snowbowl’s gelandejump in 1993, Chad has wantedto be an adventure photographer.Since then he’s worked as thephoto editor at Montana Headwalland the Missoula Indepen dent,with readers voting him “BestPhotographer” 12 years running.This March, Chad and his partnerKara McMahon (aka, his “fore-ground element”) headed northto Alaska, seeking the next chap-ter of their adventure.

Former Missoula Independenteditor Brad Tyer, who wrotethis issue’s story aboutFreezeout Lake, has a thingabout cross-country migra-tions. He’s currently floatinghis boat in Austin, Texas, andtoasting the arrival of his firstbook: Opportunity, Montana:Big Copper, Bad Water, and theBurial of an AmericanLandscape (Beacon Press).

ROD RATINGS

George Anderson makes the gradeFor the past 34 years, George Anderson has owned and

managed the Yellowstone Angler fly shop in Livingston, Mont.During that time his byline has appeared in Fly Fisherman,Trout, Big Sky Journal and Saltwater Fly Fishing, and he’s beencredited on the television shows “Fly Fishing the World” and“Spanish Fly.”

In 2007, Anderson and his staff set out to do something thefly-fishing world had never seen: a quantifiable ratings-basedcomparison of the most popular 5-weight fly rods in some-thing Anderson calls a shootout. The rods were graded onweight, price and casting distance, among other attributes.Scores were tallied and the results were published on his web-site (which, unlike magazines, does not rely on advertisingfrom the companies that make the rods being rated).

Since 2007, Anderson has also done additional shootouts for8-weights, 4-weights and updated 5-weights. We caught upwith Anderson at his shop in Livingston.

Headwall: Why did you decideto do the first shootout?George Anderson: Thereare a lot of equipment arti-cles in fly-fishing maga-zines, but if you look atthem closely you’ll realizethat the person writing themnever makes any judgmentabout why this rod should bebetter than that one. All those edi-tors were spooked these big com-panies like Orvis and Sage wouldpull their advertising. So wedecided to do a shootout andpublish the results on ourwebsite.

Has there been any fallout with rod companies?GA: Oh yeah. We knew there would be some kickback frommanufacturers, but that’s okay. Some manufacturers evendecided they wouldn’t send us rods for future shootouts. Butin the long run it’s going to help those companies because nowthey know they need to do some stuff better.

What’s the difference between a good fly rod and a great fly rod?GA: Cutting right down through all the B.S., it’s performance.How does it work? How does it cast short? How does it castlong? We look at swing weight, how does it feel in your handwhen you flex it? Whether they know it or not, these arethings consumers really take into consideration when they buya fly rod. [The shootout] can really open their eyes.

Are the best rods the most expensive?GA: We’ve had $200 rods beat out $600 and $800 rods. The less-expensive rods are getting a whole lot better. Ten years ago$200 rods were total junk, but things have tightened up a lot.

You’ve been in the business for nearly four decades. How has fly fishing in Montana changed?

GA: When I first came to the Yellowstone therewas hardly anybody fishing there, not with fly

rods. Now there’s a lot more people, a lotmore fishing pressure.

Good for business, bad for fishing?GA: Sure. It’s a big conflict. You

want the business but youdon’t want the people

around. One thing thathelps is that even thoughthere are more peoplearound, most of them arefishing on a catch-and-release basis.

Hypothetical situation: Youwill die in two days. Where are

you fishing tomorrow?GA: My friends tell me I’m going to

die a violent death anytime now.[Laughing] I’d be in Florida catching100-pound tarpon with my son James.

He’s a good photographer.Interview by Jamie Rogers

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George Anderson won individual honors at the prestigious Jackson Hole One Fly fishingtournament in 1989 and 1990, becoming the first angler to garner back-to-back titles.

James Anderson

HEAD ONLINE

Only at

Let’s go to the videoHeadwall’s online Trip Reports are flush with fresh videos from skiers across the region. Besure to check out Paul Nussbaum’s “Into the Big Sky!” for footage from Lone Mountain.

Home on the rangeMonica Gokey writes about hiking Montana’s high desert and tracking wild mustangs in the Pryor Mountains. Meet Demure, pictured, and learn more about the herd in Gokey’s Trip Report.

Grooms to plumesClinton Begley admits he “don’t know fluff about powder,” but that doesn’t stop himfrom exploring backcountry trails at Lolo Pass and Blue Point. Will he find his legs onsomething other than a groomed run? See the video and story in his Trip Report.

PLUS: • Submit your own gear review or peruse contributor critiques,

including Jessica Murri’s take on the ContourROAM helmet camera.

• Explore Headwall’s exclusive places database for more than 600detailed descriptions and reviews of parks, peaks, resorts and more.

• Don’t condemn your killer shots to an anonymous death in hard-drive purgatory. Share yourbest images in our Head Shots slideshow for a chance at publication in our next issue.

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PIPELINE

Inland surfing rides a wave of popularityThe scene might be confused with a

boardwalk in SoCal: Three guys in wet-suits sprint across the road carryingsurfboards. But instead of hitting asandy beach, these three hobble downrocky banks and into the cold water ofthe Clark Fork. On a normal Decemberafternoon in Missoula, the surfers join akayaker and a stand-up paddleboarderworking Brennan's Wave just down-stream of the Higgins Avenue bridge.

“My dream my whole life has basicallybeen to surf,” says Kevin Brown, co-ownerof Strongwater, a local board and kayakshop. “I have been trying to emulate itthrough snowboarding, skateboarding andkayaking. Something about surfing, likeriding on a wave, once you do it, every-body says there is just something magicalabout that feeling, that is just super cool.”

It wasn’t until 2012 that Strongwatertruly lived up to its motto as a “surfshop for the mountains,” becoming thefirst Montana retailer to stock surf-boards. Brown and co-owner LukeReiker originally focused on kayaks, andonce stand-up paddleboarding, or SUP,

entered the scene, they were the first tostock them. Now, they’ve taken the nextlogical step and entered the growinginland surfing market.

“We have seen a rise of surfboardand SUP inland,” says Ryan Guay, aMissoula native and national sales man-ager for Boardworks, in Carlsbad, Calif.“Now we are selling traditional surf-boards for river surfing to over 10 inlandstates (through online sales), and it hap-pened very suddenly.”

Inland surfing started in the 1970s atwater features like the Eisbach Wave inMunich, Germany, and the LunchCounter Wave in Jackson Hole. While the

sport took off in Europe, North Americalagged behind until 2007 when boardcompanies began pushing paddleboardsand more nonprofits and recreationalorganizations started constructing wavesnear inland cities. As stand-up paddle-boarders swarmed these new waves, thetransition to surfing became inevitable.

“I don’t know what it was about lastyear, but a real switch happened frompaddleboards to surfing,” Brown says.

Strongwater thinks that trend willcontinue. While the store sold about adozen surfboards last year (averageprice: $800), Brown expects to more than double sales in 2013.

Eric Oravsky

While most inland surfing occurs on manmade water features, Great Britain’s River Severn surges to create the world's longest wave. In 1955, Colonel “Mad” Jack Churchill surfed it for 1.5 miles.

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Eric Oravsky


ENJOY YOUR HEALTH

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Thoroughly scout the bank for the best place to cross. A few hints:

Cross at the river’s widest point; narrow spots are typically deeper and faster. Keep in mind downstream features just in case you end up going for a swim. Be willing to search up and down the banks for your ideal option—this is, after all, the most important step.

Prepare tocross by

unclipping your hipbelt, removing looseclothing and replac-ing socks and bootswith alternativefootwear.

MAKE LIKE MOSES

How to successfully ford a stream

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For deeper rivers, run aline. Anchor your rope

to a tree, rock or other solid feature, with the initial andstrongest crosser attaching iton the opposite bank. The last crosser unties andcarries the rope across.

3 Cross at a slight angle, heading downstream butfacing upstream. Lean into the current.4

If the current gets you, flip to your back, letyour pack go and point your feet downstream.

Don’t panic. When you reach calm water, swim toshore. Word to the wise: Strip quickly and wring outyour clothes before your buddies document the event.

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Illustration by Kou Moua

OPEN SEASON

Clark Fork readies for a possible reveal

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In July 2009, then-Gov. BrianSchweitzer floated down the Clark Forkpast newly dam-free Milltown with a flyrod in his hand. Schweitzer, along with afly-fishing guide, the chairman of theConfederated Salish and KootenaiTribes, and a representative of the ClarkFork Coalition, was on the first raft tofloat unimpeded past the confluence ofthe Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers inmore than 100 years.

“The Clark Fork is back,” Schweitzerannounced that summer. But if youdon’t count the raft of lesser officialsthat dogged his heels downriver thatJuly day, that first official passagethrough the confluence was also—todate—the last.

With the current Clark Fork-Blackfoot confluence closure set toexpire in July, the Montana Fish, Wildlife& Parks Commission has approved aproposal to open the confluence stretchof the Clark Fork to the public.Improved river access is a prelude to thestate’s projected 2014 opening of the 500-acre Milltown State Park, located on thewest bank of the confluence and directlyaccessible from both the Clark Fork andBlackfoot rivers. The park is anticipated,but since the removal of Milltown Damin spring 2008, the bigger question

among anglers and floaters has been:When can I hit the most talked-aboutwater in western Montana?

The answer is likely to be May 1,2013. Various FWP officials over the pastyear have voiced optimism about a 2013reopening, but those claims have alwaysbeen speculative. Now, the proposalfrom FWP’s Parks Division—submittedto the commission Feb. 6—states that clo-sure of the Clark Fork “is no longer nec-essary,” citing the completion of years of

restoration work by the agency andMontana’s Natural Resource DamageProgram. The commission approved theproposal Feb. 14, and accepted publiccomment through mid-March.

The opening would allow floaters toput in at any fishing access site upstreamof Milltown on the Clark Fork and floatright into Missoula. FWP’s proposal doescome with a few catches, however. First,the Parks Division recommends that por-tions of the riverbank remain closed toallow vegetation to continue its recoverywithout disturbance.

FWP regional river recreation man-ager Chet Crowser sounded all but cer-tain of a 2013 opening in an interviewwith the Missoula Independent last fall.But it’s unlikely the agency will simulta-neously lift the Blackfoot closureupstream of the confluence until safetyconcerns about the Interstate 90 bridgepiers can be addressed. The proposalsays the lower Blackfoot “poses numer-ous human-made hazards for riverrecreationists,” and recommends the

commission approve only bank accessalong that stretch. A continuedBlackfoot closure would extend fromthe Weigh Station fishing access site tothe river’s confluence with the ClarkFork at the site of the future MilltownState Park.

Jennifer Lawson, marketing andcommunications director for MontanaState Parks, says the state can’t give theriver community a definitive answeruntil FWP has reviewed public com-ment on its river-opening proposal.

Alex Sakariassen

Restoration on the Clark Fork required the removal of more than 3 million tons of contaminated sediment,which was hauled by train to the Anaconda Smelter Superfund site.

Chad Harder

It had been a while since I’d landed.I’d been coasting on out-of-stateplates for more years than I’lladmit, relocating every few

months, living in eight residences in fivestates in the four years since I’d last leftMissoula, following sustenance.Sustenance had led me back to Missoulaand I was hoping to settle in, but it did-n’t work out that way. I should haveknown my days were numbered when Ifinally knuckled down and got theMontana plates. Three weeks afterupdating my truck registration, my dri-ver’s license, my voter registration andmy fishing license, a job offer I couldn’trefuse arrived from Texas.

It’s exhausting, all the moving around,and every cross-country trip knocks a lit-tle more wind out of me. Before I leftagain I wanted to spend some time notmoving at all. I wanted to be still.

Freezeout Lake, southeast ofChoteau, is one of the stillest places Iknow. That sensation probably tracks tomy first experience there, an end-of-March trip with friends into a landscapefreshly buried in two feet of unexpectedsnow. The white brought out the lake’spurplish tannins to match the bruised-pewter skies. Clouds moved, windmoved, water moved, birds moved, mak-ing the landscape seem doubly frozen.

We saw lots of geese that trip, butnowhere near the clattering flocks of hun-dreds of thousands that, under the rightconditions, sometimes congregate there.

Mostly Canada geese and snow geese.There were plenty of other large birds too,like Tundra swans, but who knew whatthey all were. All we knew, and maybe allthey knew, was that they were passingthrough.

Geese belong to the genus birds-you-needn’t-be-any-kind-of-birder-to-recognize.

Anyone can identify the great waver-ing Vs, or fragmented variations thereof,in which they fly, flapping diligently. Andanyone can tell you that geese mate forlife, though nobody knows if they’re reallyany better at it than we are.

The most populous species is thelesser snow goose, Chen caerulescenscaerulescens. They come from, and annu-ally flee, far northern Canada. (An earlyname, Anser hyperborea, means “goosefrom beyond the north wind.”) There aretwo major morphs of lessers: white andblue. The blue morph is not truly blue,but a mottle of brown, black, silver andwhite that mimics slate in the right light.The white morphs have black feathers atthe ends of their wings, from concentra-tions of melanin that darken andstrengthen mission-critical wingtips.They have three-pointed orangey-pinkfeet and bills the same color with serrat-ed edges and a black patch near thehinge that makes them look like they’regrinning. They stand up to 31 inches talland weigh as much as 6 pounds. Theyhave wingspans over five feet.

They eat a shit-ton. Preparing forbiennial departure, each way, they entera metabolic phase called hyperphagia dur-ing which they pile on subcutaneous fatto fuel the flight. They feed on grain andgrain byproducts, which their middle-American flyway is full of.

When the length of the day’s lighttells them to, snow geese migrate, duringdaylight. They typically fly about 50 mphbetween 2,000 and 3,000 feet, but they’vebeen observed as high as 20,000. Theynavigate by solar, magnetic and stellarcues, and by sight. As on a human trip ofcomparable length, the geese’s progress isstuttering. Sometimes they’re held up, orpressed on, by bad weather. Sometimesthey pile en masse into landscape-scalerest stops, stretching their legs, refillingtheir bellies. Freezeout Lake is the biggestgoose way station in Montana.

Because they mate for life, geese areconsidered romantic. And in fact theymate so successfully that in 1998 DucksUnlimited had to publish Snow Geese:Grandeur and Calamity on an ArcticLandscape, a virtual manifesto for thin-ning the birds by pretty much any meansnecessary.

Despite or because or regardless ofthe iconic magic of their name, snowgeese have adapted so successfully totheir en route landing pads of engineeredwetland and grain that they’re breedingat levels experts consider unsustainable,irrevocably destroying the limited ecosystems that sustain them. Speaking


ecologically, they’re eating themselvesout of house and home. If the populationcontinues to soar, that same population—and I think this counts as irony—is head-ed for a hard crash. They’ve got a beauti-ful name, and they’re beautiful birds, butthey are far from rare, and you couldmake an argument that they’ve becomepests on par, in certain parts of the coun-try, with deer, feral hogs and carp.

A hapless flock dunked US AirwaysFlight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009;a heedless gaggle of Canada geesedestroyed a $270 million U.S. Air Forceplane in 1995. Their honks turn to hissesif you get too close, and they hiss likethey mean it. A guy I know used to keepa tame one as a guard dog.

Still, they’re perhaps the most relat-able of wild birds. A goose is adventur-ous enough to leave, and routine enoughto return, firing both cylinders of thedomestic dilemma: nesting and flight.You can go where it’s better for now, thegeese seem to say, and you can alwayscome back.

I returned to Freezeout in lateNovember, hoping to catch the fall

migration south, for winter. NorthCanadian birds fly to California, the GulfCoast of Texas and, increasingly, the farmfields of the southern midwest to passtheir winters. They fly back to arcticCanada come spring to hatch and raisebaby birds. Along both ways, they layoveron agricultural lands. The Pacific flyway—a generally Canada-to-continental-west-coast corridor—encompasses FreezeoutLake, a Wildlife Management Area estab-lished to preserve and encourage threat-ened and unthreatened waterfowl, most ofwhich have people who like to hunt them.

Geese are apparently especially hardto hit. At the WMA campgroundentrance there are two steel goose-in-flight cutouts mounted on poles and setback from a sign showing hunters howto sight-in by size. A grayish goose on agray day is a challenge to perspective,and geese are wary birds in any weather.

I pulled in to the same angled slot inthe grass where I’d parked the springbefore, just a hedgerow removed fromthe two-lane blacktop of US 89. It’s nowilderness experience, but there’s not alot of traffic. I set up a new gray tent,and its dihedral seams spread goose-likeunder mostly goose-free skies.

The view is interruptedly spectacular.There are precious few vistas free of tele-phone lines or structure, but an

amphitheater effect is unimpeded: thinribbons of sidelong lake in shades ofcobalt, golden brush, cloud-shadowedfoothills and the Rocky Mountain Frontrisen behind them. All of it, potentially,vibrating with birds.

It was cold and I was wired and Iwent to sleep listening to long alternationsof nothing, the thrum of a passing truckand the diminishing squall of groups ofthree or four geese flying overhead, fromthe fields where they’d been feeding to theopen water where they sleep, safe fromthe clutches of foxes. When the wind final-ly dropped, the world seemed to stop.

There are few people in the worldwho would fail to recognize the

sound of a goose, but it’s impossible toconvey in print. The supposedly ono-matopoeic “honk” requires the invoca-tion of significant onomatopoeic license.“Honk” is evocative of what a goosesounds like, but it’s wholly inadequateas a description. A lot of geese together,in continuation, tend eventually to soundlike something by Philip Glass.

I wish I could say that’s the soundthat woke me up the next morning, but itwasn’t. I made coffee and watched thesky for the thin skeins of geese thatpassed over at long intervals.

The “tour route” roads were closedfor the season behind locked steel gates. Ihadn’t bothered to call the Freezeout hot-line ahead of time. If I had, I’d haveknown that few birds were still movingthrough. It was late in the season, andmost of the geese were gone. You can’treserve a seat at a mass migration.

I drove down one of the unblockeddike roads that crisscross the severalbodies of water that make up theWildlife Management Area. In themarshy outflow of one of the corrugatedculverts that connect them I watchedthree Lesser Scaups swim away. In alarger pond beyond, a bald eagle sat on astump in open water, utterly badass.Eagles will target and eat sick geese.

Farther down the road, on Pond 3, Ifound a few hundred Canada geese inter-mingled with dozens of sex-paired mal-lards and smaller birds I couldn’t identi-fy. Nearby, but keeping their distance, ahundred or so snow geese floated.

I wondered if the snows andCanadas communicate with each other,say hello or so long. I wonder if theylook each other up when they get wherethey’re going. Do geese say goodbye?

I watched them through the binocu-

lars for a long minute before they flewoff. The flying off was the best part, thatsudden trainlike flutter and hum, flash-ing like silver fish in the sky.

Later, back at the tent, the gray dissi-pated and the light if not the heat of thesun broke through. Little bands of swal-lows swarmed over camp and off acrossthe road. There was nothing to do butlook at the horizon, waiting for birds tomaterialize.

The next morning was calm and frosted.I made coffee and went walking. I saw

another big but not large flock of Canadasand snows, maybe the same flock from theday before. I drove back out onto US 89and up toward Choteau to ponds 1 and 2,looking mostly in vain for birds. That’swhen I finally called the hotline and gotthe long-prerecorded news that I’d mostlymissed the show. Birds continued to tricklethrough, stragglers, all of us late.

I felt like a skunked hunter. Freezeoutwas still. Nobody was going anywhere.

The geese that migrate throughFreezeout spend their winters inCalifornia, or farther south. But becausethe Pacific Flyway migratory routecomes close to mixing with the CentralFlyway near Freezeout, I like to thinkthat some of them will overwinter on theCentral Flyway’s terminus, the coastalplains of Texas, not far from where I’mheaded, with the egrets and caracarasand whooping cranes.

I like to think I’m following them,that locations recede, then reappear, inregular if not orderly fashion. That themigratory premise of departure all butensures return. That like a homing goose,I won’t be too long gone.

FOR THE BIRD WATCHERSThe most important thing to know about Freezeout Lake, as with much of life, is

when to show up. The larger spring migration usually passes through between earlyMarch and mid-April, typically peaking near the end of March. The fall migrationlands from September into November, depending on the weather. Waterfowl andshorebirds are plentiful in summer. An automated message at 406-467-2646 pro-vides updated information about bird numbers and whereabouts.

Freezout Lake State Wildlife Management Area(unlike Freezeout Lake, the WMA dispenses with the third“e”) covers more than 10,300 not entirely contiguousacres, more than half of it in lease or easement,encompassing Freezeout Lake, ponds numbered 1through 6, Priest Butte Lake, and agricultural pas-ture. The WMA is managed by Montana Fish,Wildlife & Parks, which hosts the most informa-tive website about the area at fwp.mt.gov.

Be aware that areas of the WMA are opento bird hunting and muskrat trapping duringapproriate seasons. Be alert and control your dog. And if you visit duringthe broad shoulder seasons, take something warm to wear, and some-thing to break the wind. You’ll regret not having a good pair of binocu-lars handy.

It’s hard not to recommend tent camping at Freezeout. Yes, theweather can turn, but birds are most active near sun-up and sundown,and you don’t go to Freezeout to sleep in. The campground off US 89 alsoaccommodates self-contained RVs, though there’s no power or water, justpicnic tables and a nearby communal vault toilet. No fires allowed.

For more comfort, the Fairfield Park Inn in Fairfield(www.fairfieldparkinn.com, 800-844-0892), just southeast of the lake, has fivefully amenitized B&B-style guestrooms renting for $70 to $95 a night. For a substan-tially more expansive and expensive option, look into The Nature Conservancy-oper-ated Pine Butte Guest Ranch, butted up against the Rocky Mountain Front an hourwest of Choteau (406-466-2158, [email protected]). In Choteau proper, the BellaVista Motel (614 Main Ave. N., 406-466-5711) and the Stage Stop Inn (1005North Main Avenue, 406-466-5900) offer budget accommodations. And if you don’tmind a little driving, the myriad motels of Great Falls are just 50 miles away. Cappinga cold couple of days of birding with a night at Great Falls’ O’Haire Motor Inn(www.ohairemotorinn.com, 406-454-2141), with its aquarium-equipped Sip ’n DipLounge, is a highly recommended Montana two-fer.

by C

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Chad Harder

There’s a new kind of picture intown, and you’ve probably seen it:surreal, super-saturated, bursting

with incredible detail in the shadows andhighlights alike. Once-blah skies pop offthe screen, while blacks lose their inkyimprecision and blown-out whites gainvivid brilliance. These images are unlikeanything ever produced on film, and theyrepresent one of the greatest technicaladvantages digital has yet provided thephotographer. The technique that pro-duces them is called High DynamicRange, or HDR, and though images creat-ed with HDR are striking enough toappear difficult, even noobs can achieveincredible results quickly and easily.

Dynamic range refers to the light acamera is capable of recording, from thebrightest highlights to the darkest shad-ows. Beyond the bounds of a digital sen-sor’s dynamic range, extremes aredevoid of detail. Bright areas “blow out”in stark white while darker areasmuddy into pure black.

Traditionally, photographers havebeen limited by a camera sensor’s limit-ed dynamic range within a single expo-sure. HDR blows that limitation away.Instead of a single image capture, HDRtakes three (sometimes more) shots, allof exactly the same frame, but with dif-ferent exposures to accommodate theextreme ends of the scene’s dynamicrange. Software then takes the best-exposed parts of the multiple exposures,combining underexposed highlightswith overexposed shadows to create asingle image. Perfect exposure (andexquisite detail) can be achieved fromedge to edge.

Not surprisingly, the most spectacu-lar HDR effects are created from DSLRimages and manipulated with softwarelike Photoshop. But if your camera is asmartphone, you can create HDRimages in seconds, and in-camera. Usersof iPhones 4, 4s and 5 can just turn theHDR setting to “On” in the built-iniPhone Camera app (look for the slider

under the “Options” tab). If yourAndroid doesn’t have HDR built in(some do), consider buying the easy andintuitive Pro HDR Camera app, $1.99 atGoogle’s Play Store.

HDR effects can be overdone—impossibly pink sunsets and absurdlydetailed cloudscapes are common exam-ples. But it can also be used subtly, toovercome the limitations of the camera’ssensor, creating images more faithful towhat we see with our eyes. No cameracan match the human eye’s ability toregister broad dynamic ranges (yet), butHDR brings it closer.

HDR has limitations. You have tohold the camera motionless while it firesthree frames. Subjects need to be station-ary. HDR’s multiple exposures eat mem-ory fast. And colors sometimes sour.Still, many iPhone users keep it on allthe time. They get options—HDR andstandard—and sort them later.

Headwall encourages you to do thesame. Then send us your best HDRimages (and please label them as such).If we receive enough submissions, we’llpublish an all-HDR Head Shots in anupcoming issue.

Blow outHDR makes your phone smarter

Blow outHDR makes your phone smarter

We know you’re out there, having epics and snapping photos. Instead of condemningthem to anonymity in hard-drive purgatory, go for the glory and send your best images tous at [email protected]. Include the location, your name, the names of all peopleshown and any information you think is useful. We’ll take it from there.

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rozen June snow covered thesteep west face of Trapper Ridgeas I zigzagged between wind-stunted Engelmann spruce andsubalpine fir, aiming for the tiny

saddle above. With each near-vertical kickof boot and ski, skins hissed up the icysnow, sounding like the rhythmic tearingof silk, and my heart thundered in mychest. Lungs raced, muscles burned, andmy forehead tingled with sweat, but Ididn’t stop. There was no time to spare.

Overhead, a dome of blue sky spilledwarm, clarion sunlight across the moun-taintops—heliotherapy after days ofincessant clouds and precipitation, butalso a curse on snow conditions.Temperatures were rising quickly, anddirect sunlight would soften the snowfast on the east face of this ridge, where Iwas about to ski.

I was particularly nervous about thisdescent because three nights ago a stormhad unloaded 18 inches of heavy, wetcement on the mountains, and since then,I had foreseen this moment—guessing,pining and worrying over what the snowconditions might be. Now the saddle wasminutes away, hanging on the beryl hori-zon, and all I could think about was theother side. Had the face slid already, andlay frozen in a jumbled mess, slowly

turning to mashed potatoes? The daybefore, I’d looked through my binocularsat a crown line half a mile wide on thenortheast face of Wolf Gun, at exactly thesame aspect and elevation as what I wasabout to ski. Maybe this face had alreadybroken, too. That would be the best-casescenario. Then I could limp down worry-free.

Otherwise, the possibility of trigger-ing a slab avalanche, or any sort of slide,turned my gut.

Unfortunately, there was no otherroute home.

PSpring skiing in Glacier has always

been a roll of the dice, with weather andsnow conditions forever changing, sometimes in a fraction of a minute. Thegeneral rule of thumb, however, is toexpect things to be wet. Rain down low, snow up high, and temperatureshovering around freezing make perhaps the most dangerous conditionsfor hypothermia.

But, as reward often outweighs risk,the bounty of spring in Glacier is soli-tude. Few folks are hardheaded enough

to slog along rain-flooded trails to skiacross blizzard-bound mountains, espe-cially when they can wait a month or twofor the sun and warmth of summer toarrive. For those of us willing to face theelements, spring skiing is the proverbialbriar patch.

Like so many trips before, this adven-ture began under the cover of darkness.At 4 a.m., I met my friends JasonRobertson and Cody Iunghuhn at theAvalanche Creek parking lot, a half-hourinside the west entrance to GlacierNational Park. This trip was billed asRobertson’s bachelor party—seven daysof ski-touring Glacier’s remote backcoun-try. (Thank the lord he didn’t pick Vegas,right?) I would have to bail on the fourthday to get home to my kids, but I consider any sliver of time in the wild a blessing.

After quick handshakes and hugs, wetraded trucks for mountain bikes andgear-stuffed baby carriers, steered aroundthe gate on Going-to-the-Sun Road, andpedaled into the waning night.

To our north, McDonald Creek rum-bled deep and sonorous, complementedby myriad cascades tumbling from thehigh, melting snowfields of StantonMountain, Mount Vaught, McPartlandMountain and Heavens Peak. To the

F

south, water relentlessly crashed frommounts Brown and Cannon. The danksmell of rainforest flew by on the wetbreeze: a rich amalgam of red cedar, hem-lock, cottonwood, pipsissewa, trillium,fairy slippers, Oregon grape, fiddleheadfern and more plants than I could everlearn. Funny how quickly the other sensescompensate when you can hardly see any-thing in the dark.

Soon enough, robin light filteredthrough the clouds as we hitched ourbicycles to the porch rails of the old barnat Packer’s Roost. We loaded skis, skiboots, crampons and ice axes onto thebackpacks and began splashing up theFlattop Mountain Trail. The first half-hour, a light rain came and went, soaking the waist-high thimbleberry and cow parsnip that pressed cold against our pants and gaiters. BeyondMineral Creek, grizzly bear tracksappeared in what looked like week-oldmud. The bear must have dropped fromthe high country, going the oppositedirection of us, leaving shallow digsalong the trail.

Above the upper waterfall we hitsnowline and traded our hiking boots forskis, lightening our packs and settlinginto a new and pleasant motion. Kickingalong, we passed through the buriedbackcountry campground and then upthe ridge toward Flattop Mountain.Robertson pushed ahead and out ofsight, and Iunghuhn and I loosely fol-lowed his tracks. Since I relish solitudein the wild, the fact that Robertson trav-els at a super-human pace never bothersme. He would be waiting up ahead, asalways, but never too far away.

Iunghuhn occupied the middle, floatingbetween Robertson and me. In this ser-pentine fashion we slinked over FlattopMountain, down across Kootenai Pass,and to the foot of Trapper Ridge. Afterstrapping the skis on our packs andswitching to ice axe and crampons, we

kicked and stabbed our way up theridge’s steep east face. Pausing at thesaddle, we switched back to skis anddropped to the tiny lakes on theContinental Divide. Here we made basecamp and crawled into our tents.

Before we fell asleep, the heavy snow began.

All the next morning we sat in acloud-choked camp, listening to ghostlyavalanches thunder around us. The rum-bling hardly stopped, it seemed, and wedared not leave the flats until late after-noon, when the slides tempered. Eventhen, we skied just a few hundred feettoward the saddle between Vulture Peakand Nahsukin Mountain to feel the snow,stretch our legs and poke around—and

then hurried back to safety. The cloudsnever lifted, and after dinner a light rainturned steady and began puddlingbetween clumps of beargrass. We retreat-ed to our tents and hunkered down to letthe weather play out, unsure of what therest of the night would bring.

At first hint of dawn we peeked out tomoderately safer conditions. The rain hadmelted the new snow and packed downthe rest, but the fog hadn’t thinned a bit.Desperate to explore, we followed ourtracks from the day before out of campand up into the gray void. I squinted andstrained my eyes, unable at times to tellup from down, one direction from anoth-er. But Robertson pushed on, navigatingfrom memory, and Iunghuhn and I fol-lowed. Having passed through this spotseveral times during the late summer, theroute seemed correct, but without know-ing exactly where we were, and with thereal possibility of avalanches, nothing feltcomfortable. We kept each other in sight,silently inching upward, searching theclouds for a glimpse of ridgeline, the faceof a mountain, a horizon—anything toorient us.

Near midday the fog lifted, as if wewere underwater and rising toward a surface. Slanting rays of sun brokethrough seams in the sky, and soon wecaught sight of Nahsukin, its angularflanks stolid and unflinching. Cheered tosee beyond our noses, and relieved to beat a safe spot between the mountains, westopped on a bare slab of rock and took abreak. We strew boots, footbeds, socks,gloves and shirts across the stone to half-ass dry in the ephemeral glimpses of sunlight.

I had to go.I couldn’t hesitate,

couldn’t wait.Every second counted.

Refueled, Robertson and Iunghuhnclimbed to a low spot on the ridge taper-ing southward from the Vulture saddleand enjoyed a few turns while I filmedfrom below. As they cruised by, I fell inline and we glided single-file back tocamp. While we peeled off our gear, theclouds finally fell away—began to trulydissolve and disappear—and within min-utes, the world opened. First emerged anearby spire, then a distant buttress, aridgetop, a dentine arête, and in no timewe were able to see false Kootenai Peak,Mount Cleveland, Wolf Gun, Geduhn,Trapper and Nahsukin.

We smiled as mountains continued tosurface from the vanishing clouds. Wefound solace in their familiarity andbeauty, and for the first time I couldremember, there was no gnawing inthe back of my mind about snow con-ditions. I let go of the cerebral andallowed myself to be overpowered bythe presence of the mountains—theachy fullness that tugs at the heartwhen one is in love.

Our excitement didn’t last long,however, as a helicopter suddenlyappeared over Gyrfalcon Lake, shatter-ing the silence. The clouds hadn’t beenclear for 10 minutes.

“He wouldn’t fly a helicopter in achurch, I bet,” I said, deadpan, butloud enough that my friends couldhear. Nobody laughed. We waited untilthe echoing clamor receded from themountains, following the machine outover Nahsukin Lake.

My spirit dimmed by the intrusion, Ireminded myself that if this high-pressuresystem lasted, tonight’s temperatureswould plummet and everything wouldfreeze hard as an igloo. That also meantsunshine and afternoon avalanches. Myonly chance at getting over Trapper Ridgewas to go early.

During dinner, I asked Robertson if heand Iunghuhn might want to ski with medown the ridge.

“Maybe,” he said, being polite. If the day proved sunny, I knew they

had to push for Vulture. It might be theironly window of good weather to shoot forits summit. It wasn’t their fault I couldn’tstay out seven days, like they planned to

do. I had to get home to my kids. I wantedto be home safe with my family. And if itsnowed more, I would be stuck here again,possibly for even longer.

“That’s why I’ve never come out here inthe winter,” said Robertson. “If it dumps,then you’re stuck. Getting back overTrapper Ridge at the saddle is the only wayout. I went around the north nose of theridge once, above Nahsukin, and it getssteep as hell. Total slide territory with freshsnow. The saddle is your only option.”

I knew this was true because I onceventured around the nose of the ridgeduring summer and it was riddled withcliffs.

Continued on page 58

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The email from my manager, sternbut instructive, arrived Wednesday after-noon. I had too many vacation days, andI had to use ’em or lose ’em. Did I under-stand? Yes, quite, and I would not be los-ing them. I set to planning.

Three hours later, my lover andadventure partner Kara McMahonflipped open the gazetteer and asked,“Where should we go? And what shouldwe do?”

The answer was: anywhere,and whatever we wanted. Wecould go north. Or south oreast or west. We felt free andready.

Our first requirements:explorable terrain, above thetree line and unknown to us.Alpine exploration has longfed our souls, and too muchtime in the valley causes ourrelationship to suffer until weget our next fix. The secondrequirement was water—aclean remote lake for skinny-dipping. Lastly, we wanted tosee elk in a season other thanautumn. We regularly chasethem on fall days, trying to getone in the freezer. But outsideof hunting season, our adven-tures tend toward summitsand ridges, where elk are onlyoccasional. We hoped toobserve these social creatureswithout a rifle in hand, with-out killing in mind.

To satisfy the “new to us”component, we decided on thehigh ranges of south-centralMontana—the Madison,Gallatin and Beartooth ranges.The hunting season prior I hadtromped through a drainage in theMadisons, finding lots of elk and grizzlysign and thoroughly enjoying the raw,rugged country. We had shooting oppor-tunities every day, and two in our partyharvested fine animals deep in the range,but well below their soaring summits.

These mountains are high by westernMontana standards (over 10,000 feet)and met all our requirements. We hadour destination.

Kara has a past in the area as well.In 1855, her great-great-grandfatherGeorge Thexton moved to the statesfrom England. He settled near Ennis,working as a blacksmith and goldminer and raising horses and cattle ona ranch that’s now on the National

Register of Historic Places. His namecan still be seen where he etched itonto a wooden sign at the Star Liveryin Virginia City. The ranch occupiedbroad, dry flats on the valley’s westside, above the Madison River a fewmiles south of Ennis.

Across the valley and east ofThexton’s old homestead lies CedarMountain. This towering mass appearsfrom the valley as a jumble of peaksseparating Fan Mountain from TheSphinx, an unmistakable summit.Viewed from the valley, Cedar is hardly dramatic, but the map revealed a consistent three-mile ridgeline horseshoeing around Cedar Lake. The summit tops out at 10,768 feet,

and the lowest saddle lies less than 400 feet below. Itappeared to be a perfect desti-nation for an alpine stroll.We’d just have to get there. Anearby trail led to a small tarnknown as Lake Cameron(8,947 feet), just four or somiles from the North ForkBear Creek Trailhead. Thismeant we’d be able to log trailmiles for the first part of thetrip, then go off-trail for thealpine segment. In otherwords: ideal. Early the nextmorning we threw packs inthe rig, coffeed-up at Bernice’sBakery, and before we knew itwe were pulling into thedusty trailhead. After a quickrepacking of bags, we headedup the trail.

The trail’s first half-milefollows Bear Creek's swift-flowing north fork east intothe Madisons. Then it turnsnorth, climbing 2,400 verticalfeet up a sun-baked, south-fac-ing slope, through wildflowermeadows and towering old-

growth conifers. After four miles the traildrops into the lake basin, nestled amongforested ridgetops, magazine-qualitycampsites and incredible wildlife habitat.

We took our time on the ascent, fre-quently stalling to watch the late-after-noon light dance across the far-as-you-

Alpine strollin’ in the Madison Range

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can-see landscape. Cresting the last steepsection, my eye caught the unmistakablebrown of animal. I froze mid-stride, Karabumping into me. Two elk calvesbounced about a meadow 30 yardsaway, stopping when they saw us.Deeper in the woods more brownmoved, slowly grazing across the trail.The 20-animal herd was composed ofcows and calves, but only the twocalves could see us. We didn’t thinkthey knew what we were.

I slowly pulled a small camera outof my pocket and began taking pic-tures. My movement seemed to spookthe calves, which ran down the trailright at us before veering off and stop-ping 15 yards out. The calves werenow quite far from their herd, and wecould hear the cows mewing andchirping. We remained frozen, watch-ing and enthralled. The two young-sters slowly began walking toward usagain, stopping just five feet from me.I could nearly touch the smaller one,and it looked so relaxed I wondered ifwe were the first people it had everseen. The four of us stood motionless,staring into each others’ eyes for three

minutes that felt like 30. Then the cowscharged in, stopping 20 yards out. Weaverted our eyes but the herd bolted,

calves and all, crashing off through thewoods.

Invigorated, we resumed our walkand quickly arrived at LakeCameron, with just enough daylightleft to pitch the tent and snap abunch of hot-burning branches offbeetle-killed pines for a fire. Wepoured some G&Ts as the sun setover the lake, crawled into our bags,and dreamed of elk.

The next morning dawned clear,and we tried to find a route via oursole guide: a Beaverhead-DeerlodgeForest travel map. It’s meant to be aroad map, with no elevation con-tours and a scale of 1-inch per mile.With perfect weather, some Frenchpress coffee and Kara’s pumpkinmuffins under our belt, we hung our gear in a tree and headedstraight uphill with light packs. Weplanned to summit by noon, returnto camp mid-afternoon, and roll outin time to catch dinner in Ennis. The route was trail-less, but the traveling was straightforward, weaving through open parks andaround funky rock towers. Within

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an hour we were above the tree line in aworld of seemingly endless boulder fieldsand talus ridges.

As we crested Point 10,412 we sawour first crux: a tall, apparently impas-sible cliff separating 10,412 from therest of the Cedar summit. I went left,looking for routes, while Kara wentright. Before long I spotted her a quar-ter-mile away, already ascending thenext section and yelling somethingabout the cliff in front of me. I back-tracked, found Kara’s delicate sneakerroute, and joined her 20 minutes lateron the summit, where she wassprawled out smiling in the sun. Weslipped on warm clothes and gorged ourselves on elk jerky, cheese and crackers while basking in tremendous360-degree views.

Some maps mark this point as CedarMountain West; eyeballing it, we couldn'ttell if it was higher or lower than CedarMountain East. To the northeast, the skiruns of Yellowstone Club and Big Skystood out from the surrounding wilder-ness, broad, elk-filled meadows spreadout beneath them. Towering to the northbeyond Lone Peak stood the Spanish

Peaks. To the south, we were surprised tosee how far below us Sphinx Mountainand its smaller sibling The Helmet

appeared, while unidentifiable snowcapssparkled in the sun beyond. Even lowerin the greened-up Madison Valley to the west we spotted Kara’s old familyhomestead.

The views were just a bonus. What we cared about most was the ridge, snaking a mile northward and two miles eastward from our spot nearthe center of the horseshoe. After a sum-

mit catnap we descended the narrow,windswept arête toward Cedar East.Though it was mostly a stroll, a thin, rot-

ten section of steep white rock near theridge’s low point gave us a solid butsurmountable challenge.

Soon we summited Cedar East andwere surprised to find no summit cairn.Were we the first? It’s unlikely, but we'dseen no sign of people since leaving thelake, and we were glad regardless to beatop such a pristine peak. A cold andpersistent wind kept our daydreamingin check, so we tucked behind someboulders to finish off the last of lunchand discuss descent options.

The fastest retreat would be to back-track. If we wanted to make it to the car(and dinner), we should go that way.Instead, adventure called, so we chose alower line that would loop back to LakeCameron—sort of. From the summit itlooked to be the route of least resistance,with long ribbons of dirty spring snowperfect for glissading. The sun wasfalling, so we quickly boot-skied 2,000vertical feet of mountain, keeping an earout for running water gathering beneath ever-thinning snow. Every so often the

Suddenly a tremendousracket shattered the

meadow’s silence: The

elk herd had returned to

splash in the lake.


subsurface creeks were loud enough toscare us off the speedy corn, and we wererelieved when we finally stepped off thelast of it without punching through.

We spent the next few hours side-hilling progressively more challengingterrain, and eventually hit the well-usedtrail, just a couple hundred feet below ourlakeside campsite. (This sidehill traverseis not recommended.)

With the sun almost set, westripped and charged into the lake toswim and bathe. The cold waterrecharged us and washed us squeakyclean. Near-exhaustion returned as wedried off with T-shirts, accompaniedby a deep-belly clamor for calories.But we’d run out of those three hoursearlier, and ever since I’d been mum-bling about burgers and beers atEnnis’ famed Long Branch Saloon.Would one be enough?

But as we dressed and the starscame out, a four-mile slog to the carbecame less and less likely, even ifthat meant a night out without muchdinner. I found the food bag andlowered it from the tree. It felt flimsyand thin, almost empty. Dumpingthe contents on the ground, I tookinventory: a small bag of gorp, a fewbroken crackers, enough coffeegrounds for a single press, and threenips of gin. I can survive on caffeineand alcohol, but Kara doesn’t work thatway. She needs “real” food. I figured we'dhave to walk out by headlamp, and since

it was already almost 10 p.m., we’d stilllikely miss dinner in Ennis.

After weighing our options, we bothagreed the evening was so perfect weshould stay one more night. I got a firegoing while Kara pitched the tent. As thedry wood blazed we shared the lasthandfuls of our heavily mined andpeanut-rich trail mix. It wasn’t burgers

and beers, but it quieted the rumbling.The fire dimmed, we nodded off, andcrawled into the tent to crash.

I woke in the predawn, thinking ofbacon. With Kara still snoozing, I boiled thethin coffee remains extra-long, trying todarken it up. The aroma combined with hotmorning sun finally rousted Kara from herbag. I treated her to “breakfast”—our lastthree crackers, slathered in GU energy gel.Kara called it “alpine biscuits and gravy.”Suddenly a tremendous racket shattered

the meadow's silence: The elk herd hadreturned to splash in the lake, 100yards away. Calves chased each otherin and out of the water while cowstook long drinks from the shore. Theynever saw us, but seemed to knowsomething was amiss, and after aboutfive minutes they spooked and quicklydisappeared from view. We felt blessedto share their breakfast nook.

Now entirely satisfied, we tookanother dip in the lake before pack-ing up and heading out, followingfresh grizzly tracks down the trail.The prints—clear depressions in thetinder-dry and dusty trail—hadn’tbeen there 36 hours earlier. Theywere as long as my size-12 shoe. We made plenty of noise descendingand never saw the bear. Soonenough we arrived at the truck—the one we didn’t yet know had adead battery. But a few hours later, bellying up to the Long Branch bar and downing bacon

cheeseburgers, we'd forgotten all aboutit. Long Branch makes their burgers big.I still ate two.

“Salmon respond well to the occasional jerk of the pole.” So said my neighbor, a lifetime slayer of lake fish I’ll call

Buck. His observation was followed by the requisite exchange oflewd references to the jerking of poles. Then he got philosophical.“Fishing is just a jerk at one end of a pole waiting for a jerk at theother end.”

This fishing trip, our first together, had begun like many aMontana friendship: an invitation tossed casually over a fence,sincere but not hopeful. The offer is accepted, not in a “yeah,that sounds fun” sort of way, but in a “when?” sort of way.And “for what?”

For kokanee salmon, a delectable species of small, oily,landlocked sockeye that live in mountain lakes and migrate uprivers to spawn.

Next thing I knew it was 5 a.m. and I was in the backseat of apickup bouncing toward Polson, listening to unfamiliar talkradio. My neighbor’s son, whom I’ll call Bull, rode shotgun. Itwas on that ride that I learned my neighbor not only knows howto cuss, but when he’s going fishing, swear words are apparentlythe only words he knows. I learned a few new ones myself. Buckhad hardly started. He was just warming up his vocal cords aftera long week at the office.

I first became acquainted with Buck through complementaryinterests. He catches fish at a rate that far exceeds what he canconsume—or, at least, what his wife will let him cook. So he start-ed giving me fish. I, in turn, gave him a place to take those fish,which gave him an excuse to keep the fish he caught. Lake fishare in no danger of being overfished. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

Thanks to Buck, I’ve had the opportunity to become a skilledsmoker of fish, testing my skills on whitefish, mackinaw troutand kokanees. (Buck withholds only walleye.)

We were off to a lake in northern Montana that was supposedto be something of a secret stash. Perhaps on some days it still is,but on this day, which happened to be the summer solstice, itwas neither secret nor stash.

We arrived soon after the day’s first rays of sunshine hitthe blue lake, which sparkled peacefully. Mist hung from thenearby peaks and a few cotton-ball clouds hung in the valleyabove the lake. As we gazed upon the beautiful scene, thecursing began for real.

It started when Buck saw all the pickups in the boat-launchparking area. Milliseconds later, observing that the boats thosetrucks had towed were clustered awkwardly close to shore,Buck may have invented cusses even he hadn’t heardbefore.

He had “slaughtered them” on multiple occa-sions in that very spot, he informed us. The rest ofwhat he said isn’t fit to print, but suffice to say thatevery one of those fishermen in every one of thoseboats was an absolute son of a buck.

On the water, Buck’s mood lightenedlike sunrise on the plains. He was final-ly fishing—which, if you believe hisbumper stickers, is the only thingworth doing. The cursing took on a ban-

tering, recreational tone. Sport cursing. For the first time, Bulljoined in, muttering about Oregon assholes. At first I thoughthe was talking about the hippies in the neighboring dinghy.Turns out he was referring to the tangles of line that sponta-neously appeared in my reel after nearly every cast.

“Sheeeeiiiit,” said Buck. “There’s a lot more assholes thanjerks here today.”

The frequency of assholes may have had something to dowith the weather. Wind had begun gusting across the water,which shivered into whitecaps. Dark clouds brought rain, frozenrain and snow. It was as if the solstice had taken a look aroundand gone back into its den. Neighboring boats began the comical-ly quick trip to the ramp and left.

Profanity took on a new function, as if swearing mightkeep us warm. We swore like the sailors we were, with feeling.We swore at the sky, the cold, the water, and most of all thewind, evilest of elements.

Buck shook his head. “I was murdering them here last week.”Buck had indeed murdered them there, and given me a sack

of foot-long silver fish to prove it. I gutted them, split themlengthwise—“butterflied” them—and brined them overnight insugar, dill and soy sauce. The next day I cold-smoked them withalder chips. I’d had the foresight to bring some on this trip. I’dalso brought crackers.

As I prepared hors d’oeuvres in the gathering storm, Bull laidlow in the boat, cap over his face, trying to escape the drenchingwind. “I smell fish,” he said.

I handed around smoked fish on crackers and we transferredthe snacks to our mouths with numb, clumsy fingers. The profan-ity turned positive as the smoked kokanee began reminding uswith every bite what we love about this place. There was grizzlybear drool in that fish, and wolverine bones, pine needles, elkblood, hail and whatever else the springs and the forest and thenorth wind deliver. The gathered news of earth, water and sky.

These are the inputs that inform some of the finest flavors thenorthern Rockies have to offer, from deer to huckleberries tomorels to the smoky kokanees that brought our spirits back to lifeon that storm-tossed little boat. Sometimes, when jerking the poleisn't working, and swearing doesn’t help, you need a bite ofMontana to remind you why you live here.

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Aphoto of the creature gracesthe State of Montana’s onlineField Guide. The page con-

tains its common and scientific name,paruroctonus boreus. But curious readersmining for nuggets of natural historyregarding the featured creature will haveto look elsewhere. “We do not yet havedescriptive information on this species,”it reads. “Please try the buttons above tosearch for information from othersources.”

As the only species of its kind foundin the Treasure State, northern scorpionsare known to only a precious few.Nonetheless, they are common in manyareas of eastern Montana, though due totheir nocturnal nature and diminutivebodies, few people ever encounter them.As scorpions go, northerners are on themodest end, size-wise. Adults range inlength from around 1.5 to 2 inches, muchlarger than the tiny typhlochactas mitchelli,a cave-dwelling scorpion of Mexicomeasuring a mere 0.35 inches, butexceedingly smaller than the imposinghadogenes troglodytes, a monster scorpionof southern Africa that can grow to near-ly 8 inches in length.

If a pair of Billings researchers havetheir way, the world will one day knowmuch more about northern scorpions. JimBarron, a professor at Montana StateUniversity-Billings, and Amy Weidlich, aformer student, have been studying thisreclusive arachnid for the past few years.

Along the way they’ve learned how tomost efficiently locate scorps in the fieldand keep them healthy in the laboratory.

On a warm, windy August night Iaccompany the pair and a studentresearcher on a midnight hunt west ofBillings. The search hinges on one of thenorthern scorpion’s biological peculiari-ties: their body’s phosphorescent. Barronand his team tread slowly along a ledgeabove a sandstone precipice, shiningflashlights that emit a particular spectrumof ultraviolet light. When the beam strikesa scorpion, its body glows in eerie green-ish hues. Two hours later, we’ve capturednearly 30 scorpions, the researchers’record for a night of hunting.

While we’re hunting specimens, thescorpions are hunting prey. Little isknown about the species’ diet in the wildon a habitat-wide scale. But in southeast-ern Montana, Weidlich has observednorthern scorpions on the hunt. “They eata lot of moths and small, stingless waspsand flies,” she says. “They really like littlecaterpillars.”

Back at the lab, Weidlich drops a crick-et (the equivalent of dog chow) into ascorpion’s container. The agile arachnidquickly corners the cricket, grasping it inthe crab-like claw on its front leg. From apoised position over its back, its stingerpierces the cricket, immobilizing it withvenom. The laboratory drama follows the

same sequence used by hunting scorpionsin the wild. It’s an infrequent spectacle.Scorpions can ingest a massive meal in asingle sitting, allowing them to eat onlyonce every two to three weeks.

Searching for northern scorpions indaylight hours is tough, but the Billingsresearchers have discovered one of thespecies’ favorite resting places in range-land. How does the underside of a cowpie strike you as a summer home? Flip adried cow plop in early August and asharp-eyed observer might discover afemale northern scorpion with tiny youngclinging to her back. Scorpions are bornalive and ride around on mom for about aweek before venturing off to live on theirown. Female scorpions in the lab birth anaverage of 23 babies per litter.

The northern scorpion’s range is thelargest of any scorpion’s in North America(from Mexico to Alberta), yet they’re theleast-studied species. How do they survivethe winter? How long do they live in thewild? How might climate change affecttheir numbers? These are questions Barronand Weidlich hope to answer. I’m justwondering how to steal one of those coolblacklights from the lab.

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A mamma northernscorpion carries herlitter.

Jack Ballard


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When you pull up to Thomas Elpel’s hillside homeabove the tiny mountain burg of Pony, Mont., youcan’t help but notice the deer legs scattered in the

driveway. Then you see the solar panels, the roaming chickens, andyou notice that the house is made of timber and the same stones thatare scattered across the nearby foothills. Stepping inside, you duckpast a living-room clothesline draped with drying hides and walkacross a tile floor inlaid with animal tracks. As he shows you the ele-vated greenhouse that pumps his home full of passive solar heat,Elpel, who abhors the very notion of waste, tells you that besides awood cookstove, his home requires zero energy inputs, and that hebuilt it himself using “abundant resources that nobody else wants.”

When Elpel talks about bringing more back from the landfillthan he dumps, or feeding his family with the pigeons that rooston his roof and road-killed animals (letting deer rot is “nuts”), hemakes no attempt at humor, though many jokes could be made.Elpel is utterly sincere in what he does. In fact, he believes his prac-tices can change the world.

As a primitive-skills expert, author, entrepreneur and eco-philosopher, Elpel marches to the beat of his own buckskin hand-drum. Though his survival skills equal or exceed those of the morefamous survivalists on TV, and though the philosophy behind his

practice gives him a depth Bear Grylls and his ilk can only dreamof, Elpel flies well below the mainstream radar. He’s the Montanaoutdoorsman’s version of those groundbreaking rock bands thatinspire countless others but are too far ahead of the curve to sellmany records themselves.

A deeply thoughtful man, Elpel does what he believes isright—no matter what anyone else thinks. From climate destabi-lization to mass resource depletion to desertification, he believesthe world is heading for trouble. Which is why he has a plan: quitour jobs, abandon Wall Street, and start sending kids into thewoods without food, water or shelter. Spend a little time with himand you realize he just might be onto something.

Even as a child Elpel was different. Inspired by the books oftracker and outdoorsman Tom Brown, he spent most of his timepracticing wilderness survival skills. He also took frequent walkswith his grandmother, Josie Jewett, a descendant of Gallatin Valleyhomesteaders, who taught him about edible plants and the joys ofsimple living. At 16, Elpel went on a 26-day, 250-mile primitive-skills walkabout with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, start-ing fires with sticks and sleeping on beds of buried coals.

Thomas Elpel thrives on nothing but nature

“I never really was a teenager myself,” hesays, admitting that he had no interest in alcohol,smoking, or the other experiments that temptmost adolescents. “My expectations were different. My teacher talked about how we needed to get good grades to get into college so we could get a good job. I wrote him a noteasking why he painted such a dismal picture of the future.”

The only experimenting Elpel wanted todo was in the outdoors. After graduating fromhigh school in Bozeman in 1986, he says, hehad one marketable skill: “starting a fire with abow drill.” That was good enough to land himwork in wilderness therapy programs—stillthe only “job” he’s ever had, all 11 intermittentmonths of it.

“I’ve never been willing to trade my life for apaycheck,” he says.

He married his high-school girlfriend, Renee,in 1989, and with money from his job and thetanned hides he occasionally sold, bought aninexpensive five-acre property with 60-mileviews in Pony, a short walk from his belovedgrandmother’s house.

After two years of living in a canvas-walledtent and eating rice and lentils, he built his ener-gy-neutral 2,300-square-foot home from rocksgathered up the road, timber from nearby forests,and plenty of recycled materials. It cost him$23,000. At 25, he had a super-efficient residencewith no utility bills or mortgage payments.That’s when he started writing books.

In 1991 he produced his first work—A FieldGuide to Money Management—on his home print-er. Lamenting the destructive power of an econo-my built on jobs that devour resources withoutproducing anything of lasting value, heexplained one of the pillars of his burgeoning lifephilosophy: “The greatest job security, is notneeding a job at all.”

Around the same time, in his perpetual spiritof “doing things,” he started a primitive-skillsschool and named it Hollowtop OutdoorPrimitive School after the highest peak in theTobacco Root Mountains behind his home. Healso started writing for The Montana Pioneer, athen-weekly newspaper published in nearbyLivingston. These articles formed the foundationfor his next book, A Field Guide to Primitive LivingSkills (now titled Participating in Nature.)

“There were plenty of people saying weneeded to live with the earth,” he says, “but fewwere saying how.”

A Field Guide to Primitive Living Skills aimedto do just that. The key, according to Elpel, is togive up “outdoor” technologies that put barriersbetween us and the natural world and to utilizematerials from nature to meet our needs. In hisbook, and in the informal classes he offers in thefield, Elpel demonstrates how to build simplebackpacks from willow frames and cattailcordage; how to make fishhooks from bones andanimal traps from sticks and rocks; and how tocreate rainproof sleeping shelters from logs, barkand grass.

On his more luxurious trips into thewoods, Elpel carries one of his homemadepacks with a wool blanket and some flourand oatmeal. Frequently, though, hehikes with no pack at all.

“One of the greatest thrills inwilderness survival,” he says, “is togo camping without a backpack, car-rying just what you can fit in yourpockets.”

That means sleeping on coal-heatedbeds, crafting cookware from wood, andmaking darn sure you can catch fish, smallmammals, or lots and lots of bugs (more onthat in a bit).

Besides being able to build a debrishut, a quality coal bed is the key to stay-ing warm at night, Elpel says. Makingone is as simple as digging a wide, shallowtrench, starting a fire (which in Elpel’s casemeans using a hand drill or the like), andburying the embers after a couple of hoursunder a layer of sand or soil. You now have aheated bed that will last well into the nextday. If we learn to live intimately with thenatural world, Elpel says, it will meet all ofour needs.

This simple message underlies all of Elpel’swork, and is further expanded upon in his thirdbook, Botany in a Day. Filled with innovative tipsfor identifying and preparing edible plants, itquickly became his most successful work, and by1999, he says, book sales were generating around$10,000 per year. When your living expenses areas low as Elpel’s, $10,000 goes a long way. Moreimportant, says the no-job advocate, “Now I hadan actual writing career.”

Meanwhile, his quest to create a more sus-tainable world was expanding to the Internet.His homemade website—which he launched in1997 after spending a day studying HTMLcode—was growing into a virtual warren of sub-sites and articles. Though he’s an advocate ofsimple living and primitive skills, Elpel is notanti-technology. “Technologies are neither goodnor bad,” he explains pragmatically. “It’s how weuse them that makes them that way.”

In that spirit, he began producing an instruc-tional video series titled The Art of Nothing thatshowcases wilderness skills and shows Elpel andhis companions—often one of his three adoptedchildren—heading into the woods for days at atime with nothing but the clothes on their back.The production values aren’t high, and his ten-dency to over-enunciate takes some get-ting used to—one YouTube com-menter asked why he speaks likeEnglish isn’t his native language—but the instructional value and authen-ticity are undeniable.

Elpel still designs his books and web-sites. It suits his homegrown DIY style, andwhy hire someone to do something you cando yourself? But the results, while usually


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Not that Elpel is worried about how other people do things. Bycurrent outdoor standards he does everything wrong when heheads into the backcountry. Wearing non-wicking fabrics, hackingaway at nature for food, and scrounging for materials to build hats,packs, cookware and ovens all fly in the face of modern outdoorinstruction. And don’t get Elpel started about Leave No Trace.

“What we’ve done is said, ‘you’re not supposed to touchnature,’ like it’s a museum,” he says, leaning forward in his chair.“Nature exists as little more than wallpaper in most people’s lives.Kids grow up without ever venturing from the lawn grass. We learnthat we negatively impact the world from the moment we get up inthe morning until the time we go to bed at night. But there is some-thing wrong with an ideology that tells us we are part of nature—the bad part! From that perspective, the best we can ever hope toachieve is to be less bad.

“We think we can draw lines on the map and separate ‘wilder-ness’ from ‘non-wilderness,’ but there is only one wilderness, oneecosystem, and we are part of it,” he continues. “Like the deer eat-ing grass, or the robin bringing materials back to build a nest, we allmust use the resources of the earth for survival. But now we havepeople going to Yellowstone Park and asking, ‘Where do you putthe animals at night?’ How can we successfully manage our naturalresources if people have no concept of the natural world, or, really,physical reality?”

He suggests the typical modern camping experience is morelike being “a tourist in the wilds.” Instead of tiptoeing throughnature, Elpel suggests we make our impact a positive one. Considerglacier lilies. Elpel used to carefully replace the soil when harvest-ing them. But then he watched grizzly bears dig them up and“rototill” the soil in the process, improving the ecosystem for futurelilies. Now Elpel does the same. He’s also fond of removing cansand nails from backcountry fire rings and using them as knives andtools for cleaning fish and other camp tasks on his “bring nothing”adventures.

Like many Montanans, he’s a hunter and a fisherman. Unlikemost, he eschews guns and tackle, instead creating tools and trapsin the field. Primitive techniques require that you learn more aboutyour prey, Elpel says, but there’s a more important point: “Withoutthe aid of modern technology, fishing and hunting is not only aneducational experience but often a very humbling one.” Which is, ofcourse, part of his point.

No matter how much he takes with him on his walkabouts,Elpel intentionally never takes enough food. That would take awayall the fun. Instead, he gathers cattail roots, rose hips, mushrooms,wild onions, berries, whitebark pine nuts, insects and other edibles.He often hikes with a rock in his hand and, to the dismay of nearbygrouse and squirrels, demonstrates deft aim. He’ll cook grouse orsquirrel stew with whatever herbs he’s gathered. Grasshoppers,ants and any other insects he can gather in significant quantitiesmake it into his backcountry meals, whether fried or in his flavor-of-the-day stews.

As a general rule, Elpel tries to use resources other people over-look or don’t want. When it comes to fishing, that means focusingon suckers and carp. Both are relatively easy to catch with yourhands, which fits perfectly with Elpel’s less-stuff philosophy. Notthat he minds eating trout, but when you can reach into a moun-tain lake or creek and grab a suckerfish, well, that’s what he’sgoing to do. The same rule of catching what others overlookapplies to carp, which Elpel enjoys hunting with bowand arrow. He’s quick to point out that Europeansconsider carp a top sport fish, and often serve it forholiday dinners.

“Americans typically disdain carp as unfit for human consump-tion, much like eating rats or mice,” he writes on his website. “Buthey, we eat those, too, so it wasn't difficult to transition into eatingcarp, and by comparison, I would take a carp over a mouse or a ratany day!”

Whether he’s grabbing fish bare-handed, gathering edibleplants or starting a fire without a lighter, Elpel believes the mostvaluable aspect of primitive skills—getting your hands on natureand working with it to meet your basic needs—is how it connectspeople with the natural world.

“Primitive living reminds us that no matter what technologieswe have, we are still an integral component of the ecosystem,” hewrites in Participating in Nature, the updated version of his originalprimitive-skills book. “It’s a model way of life that reveals the basicfoundations, the very laws of nature, upon which all of our solu-tions must be built.”

No solutions will be built, however, if people don’t get out andenjoy extended experiences in natural places. It’s only then thatthey’ll understand where the animals go at night. That is why in2004, after watching the riverbanks get increasingly developed andfenced off by landowners, Elpel established the Jefferson RiverCanoe Trail. In an effort to protect the historically wild experienceof paddling this 83-mile tributary of the Missouri as it curls aroundthe Tobacco Roots, Elpel created maps for paddlers and a guide forlandowners that encourages conservation easements and develop-ment setbacks. Now he’s working to create a series of campsites.

“Historically Montana was a very open place,” Elpel explains.“When I grew up running all over around here, including theMadison and Jefferson rivers, there weren’t ‘No Trespassing’ signs.Now people come here from other places and bring their culture;they think the river is theirs when they buy land along it. But whenwe put up those ‘No Trespassing’ signs we’re los-ing something that’s important to the nextgeneration.”

Elpel thinks a lot about future generations. Heknows that if they don’t have a connection to the worldoutdoors, our future is grim. Every year he takes kids from localschools out for overnight primitive-skills camps. “I try to teachthem skills they can use,” he says, explaining that the kids learn tostart fires without matches, build shelters from found materials, andcook foods they harvest. “It’s a powerful experience for the kids.”

The first overnight trip he took with students, however, wasalmost too powerful. It was spring 2002, he had a dozen seventh-graders with him, and it rained 1.3 inches during the 24 hours theywere out. They had no tents or tarps. “I wondered if our first campout would be our last,” Elpel admits. But they spent the afternoon making wickiups, or debris huts, out of branches, logsand cottonwood bark. Not only did the kids stay dry, but he saysthey couldn’t wait to come back the next year, when they foundtheir wickiups still standing.

In a report on the experience one student wrote afterward, “Iwant to go outdoors way more than I did before we went to thecampout. I love the outdoors. The food was all very good. I hopewe get to stay longer next year.”

The student trips have grown progressively longer over the yearsas kids and teachers have learned to trust Elpel and his methods.This year the school board gave Elpel permission to keep the kids outfor three nights. With his newly christened Outdoor WildernessLiving School, or OWLS, he’s working to extend his reach and hostpublic-school students from across the region, as well as put on sum-mer camps and adventure programs for high-schoolers. For adults,he’s developing Green University, a fledgling program focusing onsustainable living and green business development, which he hopeswill “provide a new model for higher education.”

“He’s been amazing at helping me make my dreams cometrue,” says Katie Russell, 29, who is helping with Green University

and who recently launched a business selling buckskinbras and “Wilderbabe” calendars featuring women wearing

her line of clothing. “One person can’t change the world, but theycan help people make their dreams come true—which might beTom’s greatest strength.”

Kris Reed, 25, applied for Elpel’s informal internship programin 2006 and never left. He’s an integral part of OWLS and says hewants to help people follow their passions and “achieve theirdreams without getting a job.”

Elpel has no problem promoting a jobless lifestyle, but Reedseems aware it could be misconstrued. “It’s not an anti-moneything,” he clarifies. “It’s just about freedom.”

“A lot of people that come here don’t like the way our culturetreats other people and the planet,” he says. “But they need to eatand make a living, so they get a job and feel trapped. I’d like to helpthem see they don’t have to.”

Meanwhile Elpel, the mountain-man philosopher, has becomesomething of an elder statesman in the sustainability movement. Hegives keynote speeches at environmental conferences on “TheComing Age of Self-Sufficiency.” People are using his books tobuild their homes and reshape their careers. Others are postingvideos on YouTube about how “my whole perspective on lifechanged” after reading his work.

The curve seems to be catching up with Elpel. He says hiswriting and publishing business brought in over $100,000 lastyear. Not that he really needed the money, though it did allowhim to purchase 21 acres of riverfront land for OWLS and his out-door-education work.

But his lifestyle hasn’t changed, and no amount of moneywill change it. As he’s quick to point out, “The only problemwith money is that people get caught up in the illusion that it isreal wealth.”


120 Hickory St., Suite BMissoula, MT 59801(406) 549-0755fvlt.org


APRIL

APRIL 1Take it from someone who hasdone it, Cycle Only Days in

Yellowstone National Park is a darnedtoot. From now ’til April 20, the parkallows only non-motorized traffic insideits boundary. This is usually the time ofyear critters galore emerge from a longwinter, so carry bear spray. Check out“Spring Riding” at cycleyellowstone.comfor more info.

APRIL 6If you’ve spent all winter hiber-nating, now’s a good

time to snap out of it andenter the Grizzly PeakAdventure Race at Red LodgeMountain. Competitors skidownhill for two miles, pedalsix more miles and then runthe last two miles to Sam’sTap Room for a rousing finish.Roll solo or team up withsome other crazies. Visit montanacyclingraceseries.com.

Look! Up in the sky!It’s a ... hot dog wear-ing roller skates? A

dog with a floppy hat? No!It’s a giant cheese pizza witha smile! Either you’re onsomething illicit or you’re atShowdown Mountain’sMannequin Jump. The eventis exactly what the nameimplies, so come spy the fly-ing dummies or build yourown. Call 800-433-0022.

Wrap up the ski sea-son and ring in springwith some style and aplomb at

the Whitefish Mountain Resort PondSkim. This contest gives skiers andboarders alike the opportunity to skimacross an 80-foot pond in the costume of their choice. Limited to 60 partici-pants who are 21 and older. Visit skiwhitefish.com.

APRIL 14Bear hunters take note: Todayis the deadline to put in for the

spring black bear drawing. Visitfwp.mt.gov.

Today marks the final day ofMontana’s winter mountainlion season.

APRIL 18Get your paddle wet at the UMOutdoor Program’s

Fundamentals of WhitewaterKayaking course. This six-week coursestarts with the basics in the Grizzly Pooland works its way up to a couple ofnice little floats on the Clark Fork andBlackfoot rivers. Call 406-243-5172.

APRIL 20Run, don’t drive, back fromBridger Bowl ski area during

the 33rd annual Back from Bridger funrun. The event includes five distancesranging from 3 to 17.5 miles, with the

longest ending in Bozeman. For moreinfo visit winddrinkers.org.

Blast your way to victory atthe Hellgate Civilian Shooters’Shooting Black Powder

Cartridge Silhouette event. The shoottakes place at the Deep Creek ShootingRange up Deep Creek Road just out-side of Missoula. For more info visit hellgatecsa.org.

Tired of feeling left out as riverrats talk and talk about theirtime on the river? No more!

Join Missoula’s Zoo Town Surfers for aBeginners Whitewater Rafting Clinic.The two-day course teaches river

awareness, reading water, scoutingtechniques, safety, rigging, river lan-guage, boat control and more that willimpress those river rats. Register atzootownsurfers.com.

APRIL 26Hop in the way-back machineand visit the early 1800s at the

David Thompson Black PowderShoot & Rendezvous, which boastsprimitive competitions like muzzleloading, rifle and pistol shooting, andknife and tomahawk throwing. Thethree-day event near Eureka invites all to attend, especially those still

wearing buckskins. Call 406-882-4691or 406-889-3845.

APRIL 27Cycling roadies are summonedto the fair burg of Frenchtown

for a day of brutal racing at the RockyMountain Roubaix, a race tailor-madefor rough riders who have a pocket fullof luck and just enough guts to chargehard on loose gravel. More info at montanacycling.net.

APRIL 28There’s more to Great Fallsthan mermaids. Check out the

long-running Ice Breaker Road Race,which offers competition at distances of

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5 miles, 3 miles and 1 mile. Theevent, which Runner’s Worldmagazine listed as one of the 100 best road races in the coun-try, was established in 1980 andis still going strong. Register aticebreakergf.com.

MAY

MAY 1Hey there, big-gamehunters: Today is the

deadline to put in for the fol-lowing permit drawings:bighorn sheep, bison, mooseand mountain goat. Visitfwp.mt.gov.

MAY 11You may not be able tokeep the hordes from

passing through the gates of fireat Thermopylae, but you can goto war at the Montana SpartanSprint in Bigfork. The race fea-tures 15 obstacles throughout amuddy 3-mile run. Check out“Montana” under events atspartanrace.com.

Check out the kindgrind that is northwestMontana during the Scenic

Tour of the Kootenai River, or STOKR.Day one features a choice between a 45-or 98-mile bicycle ride, while day twoinvolves a 38-mile loop. Get stoked onthe countryside, as well as the fact thatyou’re raising funds for Habitat forHumanity. Find the full lowdown atstokr.org.

Look up and you’ll see the skyis filled with the glory of flightas International Migratory

Bird Day marks one of the largest birdmovements on the planet. The NationalBison Range celebrates by opening the19-mile Red Sleep Mountain Drive forthe summer season for viewing oflazuli buntings, red-breasted nuthatch-es and golden eagles. Call 406-644-2211ext. 207.

MAY 12Head to the ScratchgravelHills northwest of Helena and

test your mettle during the Unravelthe Scratchgravel cross-countrymountain bike race. The course is a5.8-mile loop that is 70 percent dou-ble-track and 30 percent single-track.

All levels of riders welcome. Visitmontanacycling.net.

MAY 18Take a two-day toodle andclear you noodle at the 43rd

annual Tour of the Swan River Valley,a supported bicycling tour that leavesMissoula via Hwy. 200 and swings onup to Seeley Lake before heading overto Flathead Lake and returning to base.Food, baggage arrangements andaccommodations are all handled by tourorganizers—just bring yourself andyour bike. Visit missoulabike.org.

Cast off to the northwest cornerof the Treasure State for twodays of fine fishing during the

Koocanusa Resort Salmon & TroutDerby, a competition where you try tocatch a big one or a mess of biggishones on Koocanusa Lake, 23 milesupstream from Libby. Call 406-293-7474for info.

Tri your best at Missoula’sPEAK Triathlon, whichincludes a 500-yard swim, 12.4-

mile bike and 3.1-mile run. All levels ofathletes are invited to take part. Go topeaktri.com for more info.

Helenduro is not whatstate legislators calltheir biennial session,

but rather a two-day endurancetest for cross-country mountainbikers. Competitors battle for the fastest times through variousrace-course sections, with slowpokes penalized for slothfulriding. Only the strong survive.For more info: Cruise on over tomontanacycling.net.

MAY 19Uh oh, here comes thehammer. The Heron

Hammer, that is. This cross-country bike race takes place atHerron Park outside ofKalispell and features technicalsections, downhills and tightswitchbacks. For a list of categories and costs, visit montanacycling.net.

MAY 22Learn how not to battleyour paddle and

instead make it an extension ofyour inner desires and outer limbs atthe American Canoe AssociationWhitewater Kayak Course. Become amore fluid paddler and get certified toinstruct others. Following the introduc-tory class, the course takes place May23–May 27. Visit zootownsurfers.org.

MAY 25Paddlers compete on Class Vrapids fueled by chilly spring

runoff on the Swan River’s Wild Mileduring the annual Bigfork WhitewaterFestival. Events include slalom racesand head-to-head time trials. Dial 406-837-5888 for more info.

Up in Havre, catch two days of buckskins and black-powder at the Bullhook

Bottoms Black Powder Club’s BlackPowder Shoot. In addition to the long-range black powder cartridge competition, there are 35 other shootingevents, as well as tomahawk and knife-throwing contests. Most importantly,there is a pancake race. Muzzleloadersand black powder cartridge guns areencouraged (cartridge rifles only). Call406-265-2483.

Chad Harder

After the Tonkin bamboo arrives from China,it’s eyeballed for the choicest culms, splitinto strips, roasted in an oven, eyeballed

again, re-humidified, measured and milled to exacttapers, re-eyeballed, separated into groups of four orfive or six or eight, eyeballed one more time, and thendipped in glue. Now Glenn Brackett is ready to set thestrips into poles using an antique-looking pedal-oper-ated contraption. That’s the last step before things getcomplicated, and it’s the first point in the process atwhich someone who doesn’t know how to build a flyrod out of bamboo—which is pretty much everyone—might recognize what Brackett is making.

Though he would cringe at the title, Brackett is thedean of Montana bamboo fly rod builders. Since 2006,he and business partner Jerry Kustich have owned andoperated Sweetgrass Rods. Today they employ fourother rod makers— they call them “Boo Boys”—andthe company turns out about 300 rods annually, whichis an impressive number only if you consider twothings: a) building rods out of bamboo is a craft thatdemands absolute, dream-haunting obsession from thecrafter, and b) no one fishes with bamboo rods.

The latter wasn’t always true. Generations ago, ifyou knew how to cast a fly rod, you knew how to casta bamboo fly rod. There was nothing else. Bamboo wasthe lightest, strongest and most tolerant fiber for thephysics of a fly cast.

Then, in the mid-’50s, fiberglass became the rodmaterial of choice. It was lighter, cheaper, and demand-ed less skill from the builder and less upkeep from theangler, but its preeminence wouldn’t last long.

In the late-’70s, graphite ushered in fly-fishing’smodern era. Graphite is lighter and more durable thanfiberglass, but what really made graphite revolutionarywas its power. It’s stiffer, and therefore transfers theenergy of an angler’s cast to fly line so efficiently that itchanged the way flies are cast. Remember, in A RiverRuns Through It, when Rev. Maclean teaches his sons tocast to the rhythm of a metronome? “It was made ofsplit bamboo cane ... powerful but not so stiff it couldnot tremble.” Graphite doesn’t tremble.

Since their introduction, graphite rod makers havecontinued to make them stiffer and more powerful,each generation pushing bamboo further to the fringe,appreciated only by collectors and retired craftspeoplewith dimly lit basement workshops.

But there is a town in southwest Montana whererod builders still believe in bamboo. Twin Bridges ishome to the Beaverhead, Big Hole and Jefferson rivers,and about 373 residents. Outside the Blue Anchor Bar& Cafe blinks the town’s only traffic light. Within ahalf-mile of that spot, there are three bamboo rod com-panies, putting Twin Bridges in the running for theonly place in the world with more bamboo rodbuilders than stoplights.

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There’s not much in Twin Bridges save

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who still believe in bamboo

After the bamboo strips are glued and wrapped together,Brackett stows them in a closet for a month of curing. Then theymust be measured and cut to the specifications of whatever rod heand his employees are building. This step follows a complex set ofmathematical rules, and while each rod follows a formula, each rodalso produces a formula. In this way, says Boo Boy Dave Delisi, theprocess is always evolving: “Especially with multiple-piece rods,you have to play with your cuts and dimensions,” he says.“Everything is beta. It’s a living thing.”

After the rods are cut, they’re varnished, guides are affixed to theblanks using hand-wrapped thread, and a reel seat is carved andglued to the rod. The entire process takes months.

Delisi came to work at Sweetgrass shortly after it opened. So far,he says, he has built about 150 rods. He says that bamboo has beenunfairly shrugged off as a novelty rod material. “The truth is thatbamboo will teach you how to cast. The rod will do the work foryou if you let it,” he says. “That’s what I love about it. That’s whatpeople who don’t fish bamboo are missing.”

In the mid-’70s, Brackett and his then-business partner, TomMorgan, bought R.L. Winston, a San Francisco fly rod manufacturer.Wanting to build rods closer to where they could use them, theymoved Winston to Twin Bridges in 1976.

“When we came to Twin Bridges, fiberglass rods were goinggangbusters. And a few years later, graphite completely took over,”Brackett says today. “People traded in bamboo rods straight across.It was just a dying craft.”

By the early ’90s, R.L. Winston had established itself as a manu-facturer of the highest-quality graphite rods, and the name Winstonbecame synonymous with Montana fly fishing. Though the lion’s

share of sales were graphite, Brackett also continued to make bam-boo rods. “The bamboo thing was really secondary,” he says. “But Ijust felt we had to keep the tradition alive.”

In 1991, Brackett sold Winston to David Ondaajte, a Californiabusinessman who would be able to pay attention to the money-mak-ing while Brackett focused on building rods. The decision would bedamaging. In the early 2000s, Ondaajte decided Winston would startmanufacturing low-end graphite rods in China, leaving only themost expensive graphite and bamboo rods to be built in TwinBridges. For Brackett, this was a “killing move” to Winston’s core principles.

In February 2006, Brackett and fellow rod builder Kustich leftWinston and opened Sweetgrass. Winston still makes bamboorods in Twin Bridges, and employs two full-time rod builders.Spokesman Adam Hutchison can’t say how many bamboo rodsWinston produces a year, but if he “had to guess” it might be“around two a month.”

These days, Winston’s primary focus seems to be finding thenext innovation in rod material. This year Winston released BoronIII-SX and Boron IIIx series rods, which use boron and high-modu-lus graphite composites, “providing the caster with an even broadercasting range, better line control, greater casting accuracy and theability to pick up even more line off the water,” according to thecompany’s product description.

Brackett has little interest in what aerospace technology has tooffer fly fishing. He feels bamboo is impressive enough.

“If you really, really learn how truly unique this material is—Imean, look at those dimensions,” he says, holding a strip of bam-boo that tapers to the width of a fork tine. “It still doesn’t break.

That’s strong. It tolerates the things we put it through. It has for-giveness graphite will never have. And still it outlives us. It haslongevity built into it.”

Kustich is retiring this year, and though Brackett himself says helooks forward to handing over more of the business to the youngerBoo Boys, he has no intention of quitting. “I’ll die at the bench. This ismy lifeblood,” he says. “It’s a love of what you believe in, and thatbelief is a craft we want to see continued.”

If Brackett believes in tradition, Wayne Maca believes in exper-imentation. Maca owns Beaverhead Rods, which operates out ofan alley-fronting garage shop equidistant from the Winston andSweetgrass shops. He arrived in the fly rod world from the snow-board industry, where he designed high-performance racingboards for World Cup snowboarders. Glenn Brackett gave him hisfirst rod job, sanding bamboo strips at the Winston shop. “After[Brackett and Kustich] left [Winston], I just started doing my ownthing,” he says.

Snowboards taught Maca about building with composite materi-als and adhesives, and the lessons inform his rod building. “Mythinking is, turn each [bamboo] strip into its own little snowboard,and then put them all together,” he says. “People assume bambooisn’t a composite material, but I don’t see anything monolithic aboutit. I’ve been training to do this my whole life.”

There are similarities between the way Maca and other bamboorod builders work, but not many. He burns the culms until they havea charcoaled skin, which makes them warp and shrink and maxi-mizes the percentage of “power fibers.” Later he zaps the bamboowith cold plasma, which burns all the natural glues in the fiber. Helater replaces those natural glues with his own adhesive, which istreated with carbon nanotubes.

“I waited for three years just for somebody to put nanotubesin the adhesive,” he says. “Why should I use Elmer’s glue just likeeverybody else?”

To a layperson, Maca’s ideas are difficult to understand. Toother bamboo rod builders, they are polarizing. Maca says he wasbanned from a casting competition in New York’s Catskillsbecause his rods contained nanotubes. “Nobody understandsthem,” he says. “The stiffness is still all bamboo, but it’s hard totalk physics in the world of myth.”

To anyone accustomed to the fast, punchy casting action ofgraphite rods—or who finds bamboo rods noodly and awkward—Maca’s designs seem as science-fictional as the methods he uses tocreate them. They reward an increase in casting energy with anincrease in cast distance, a trait that is strikingly graphite-like. Hisrods are tethered to science and imagination, they are both bam-boo and somehow not.

Maca isn’t sure where he fits in the world of bamboo rods, and hehasn’t done any marketing in three years. “I tend to shut myself offduring design periods,” he says.

For Maca, reimagining what bamboo can do is more importantthan selling rods. “Everyone used to think I was crazy, but I’m stilldoing it,” he says. “I don’t know why. It’s just like terminal curiosity.I’m waiting to see when curiosity kills the cat.”

Brackett, Delisi, Kustich, Hutchison and Maca will all tell you therods they produce are made for fishing, not display—though at$1,000 to $3,000 a pop, they are not for every angler.

Tonkin bamboo grows only on steep, muddy hills bounding theSui River in southern China. Today it is cultivated in much the sameway it was 100 years ago. After it’s felled, gravity is the primaryagent in getting it downhill. Then it’s wheeled to town on a woodencart, where it’s sorted and shipped downriver. Most Tonkin bamboobecomes furniture, flooring or fencing material, but a tiny percentageof the straightest, most unblemished culms are handpicked andshipped to Seattle. From there, they’re distributed to the tiny percent-age of American rod builders who believe in bamboo. Which, in TwinBridges, is just about everyone.

Bamboo basicsSweetgrass Rods

The Boo Boys have a retail store attached to their workshopat 501 N. Main Street in Twin Bridges. Swing by for a tour or tocast one of their rods. Learn more at sweetgrassrods.com

R.L. WinstonWinston operates a showroom with tours available at 500 S.

Main St. in Twin Bridges. You can see their entire line of rods atwinstonrods.com

Beaverhead RodsMaca works out of a garage shop a few yards from the

Beaverhead River. His website is beaverheadrods.com, and thebest way to reach him is by emailing [email protected]


1705 Bow St. • Missoula, MT 59801549-5283 • sapphirept.com

John Fiore, PT • Rachael Herynk, DPT • Lindsey Flint, DPT


His comment reminded me of theother side of the ridge, and the uncertain-ty of what I would find. The last time Ihad seen it was on the first day of the tripwhen we kicked up it with crampons.Would I see remnants of our route? Wasthat still the safest place on the face?

One more night to go.

PI crested the saddle and raced for a

peek over the other side. A few largeloose-snow sluffs had left dirty tonguesbehind, but nothing had deeplyavalanched and I had to believe that theslope would hold. I had to trust it. Withquestions partially answered, I duckedinto the tallest clump of subalpine firsand hid from the wind. Wasting no time,I ripped skins from skis and double-checked my avalanche beacon. If thingswent bad, they could at least find mybody. I dug my hat and gloves from mypack and suited up. I fastened the heelof my tele bindings and climbed backout into the sun.

I kicked a few steps and hung my skitips over the edge. Then stopped.

I couldn’t help but think there mightnot be a better view in the world thanfrom this saddle: Cleveland, Merritt, thewhole Garden Wall, Logan Pass, and a

direct line of sight into the SperryGlacier basin. It was all spread jaggedand sublime before me. This is one of thefew remaining wild places in the Lower48, which left me wanting to stay andabsorb the lifeblood of the land.

But the snow was melting. I had togo. I couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t wait.Every second counted. I leaned forwardand didn’t look back. Three Super-Gturns later, I pointed it. I should’vepointed the whole damn thing, butfalling at Mach 1 with a heavy backpack,ice axe attached, and middle-aged ten-dons and ligaments holding my legstogether was as dangerous as an ava-lanche—especially alone and miles fromthe nearest trail.

Shooting into the closest timber—thefirst stand of mature spruce and fir—Iskidded to a stop. Under the shadow ofan old monarch I looked back at theridge, my sinuous tracks like pencilmarks on an otherwise blank canvas. Ilowered my head and caught my breath.

“Thank you for holding, good snow,”I muttered, eyes closed, head down.“Thank you.”

Then I turned for home.Skiing alone, I swallowed sunshine

and wildness, my spirit soaring as Icrossed grizzly, wolf, wolverine, snow-shoe hare, coyote and squirrel tracks.Ravens quorked overhead in passing,and the sweet, green fragrance of the subalpine blew thick on the steady breeze.

Later that afternoon, just as Idropped below snowline, the cloudsreturned. From the other side of LoganPass, a surly mass of wind, hail and raincrested the Divide and poured like blackmercury into the Lake McDonald Valley.When I reached Packer’s Roost, sheets ofcold rain blew sideways. Not wanting topause, I said to hell with rain gear andbarreled down the Going-to-the-SunRoad on my bike, my camouflage ball cap on backwards, pedaling for the drywarmth of my waiting vehicle.

At Avalanche Creek I tossed my gear in the rig, and fleeing the groves of slicker-laden tourists milling aboutthe parking lot I drove past LakeMcDonald and out of the park. I won-dered if Robertson and Iunghuhn hadmade it up Vulture. Had they made itback to camp before this storm? Surelyanother round of heavy cement wasfalling in the high country.

Turns out, Robertson explained overthe phone a few days later, they madeexhilarating turns from the summit ofVulture and landed back in camp justbefore the snow began. But they neversaw the sun the rest of the trip, andpacked up a day early and headed forthe barn door.

“What did we expect?” we laughed.For spring skiing in the Northern

Rockies, and June in Glacier, we came outsafe and all right, even if a little wet.

GlacierCONTINUED FROM PAGE 34


You don’t pass thingsup because the next daysmay bring snow, thenmelt, then floods washingout roads. Storms stalkthe land. You can looknorth and south andwatch 100 miles of slow-moving storm front. Rainfalls from cells in fibrous,prismatic skeins, lit fromwithin and blown intocurves. The entirety of thesky fills with action.

But it’s not enough topass through, lookingaround. Outside ofHarlowton one sunnyspring day, I ran on a dirtroad through hay fieldsand the occasional dustyhumps of sheep herds.The wind was a stagger-ing hip in my thigh, then asharp shoulder in mychest. I thought I wasworking, breathing hard—struggling, really,because I’m a terrible runner. Then I cameupon a rock quarry and watched rock pick-ers work, tendons in their hands thickenedand scaled, their days a flexless arpeggio ofgrasping.

These were people with splintered fin-gernails, fingertips so sore and worn theyno longer felt everything they touched. Allfor stones—beautiful and valued, true, infireplaces or patios, but stones that are sim-ply a piece of this earth until someonecomes looking for them.

They could have been cowboys calvingon a 10-degree night, farmers seeding 18hours a day between rains, sheepherdersshearing like madmen—people who pre-tend not to notice the alkali in the water, orthe windblown grit between their molars.People busting knuckles, busting sod, bust-ing humps, just busting ass. I was only arunner on this road. You can’t understandwhat spring on the prairies means just byshowing up. There’s always far too muchyou’ve already missed.

•••Until a generation or so ago, many of

the people who occupy eastern Montana’slandscape didn’t have running water orelectricity. Winter meant frozen up anddrifted in, days on end of chilled solitudewith just a fire and your family to talk toand intermittent forays into the stunningcold to feed animals.

Then, spring: release.

My forays into spring on the plains arefleeting, whimsical. I rarely know whatcame before those warm, breezy days. Ithink of someone like Maureen Curtiss—inher 60s now—as a young girl in the 1940s,hunkered down on a sheep ranch 30 mileswest of Circle in the middle of winter’s bit-ter winds. Maureen’s father liked to draw.Her mother was blind.

“My mother used to love to talk aboutcolors,” Maureen, who now paints Westernscenes on lichen-stained rocks, told me oneday on the ranch. “I used to take her fingerand put it on the painting and tell her,‘Here’s where the trees are, and here’s abarn, and I put a horse there.’ And I’d tellher about all the colors.”

I imagine a young Maureen Curtiss andher blind mother sitting outside on one ofthose eastern Montana spring days, whenthe grass was lush and the gumbo lilies andplains evening stars bloomed and fieldswere showered with pointillistic prairieflowers, and the birds in mating colorsflashed and swirled through the sky andbusily twittered and tweeted in the treesand brush. I imagine a mother and adaughter so far from anywhere, immersedtogether in the colors of the land andsound.

Living in such a broad, hard place,those people needed spring, and they occu-pied its every moment, just as it filled themwith anticipation of warming softness.They learned spring by heart.

The CruxCONTINUED FROM PAGE 62

Chad Harder


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Spring in eastern Montana is a subtlemarvel that traverses the spacebetween needing and wanting. Like

most necessities, it’s inevitable and unpre-dictable; like most desires, it comes andgoes. I keep trying to belong to it, but theemerald green sea of prairie spring toosoon crisps to brown. My visits areephemeral, nothing compared to the expe-rience of people here who earn spring.

The high plains and prairies are notbeautiful unless you want to understandhow a kind of beauty is inseparable fromsimplicity, how the absence of things canbe as important as their presence. Onfoot, wandering in such vastness focusesyou on elegant arrangements of pebblesand rocks at your feet, or the orangearabesques of golden willows, or ahomestead-era barn in full-tilt lean, aportrait of desuetude. Your choice isalways between something bundledvery close or the grand sweep, a con-stant tension between figure andground. I always feel like I’m searchingfor one and finding the other. Ultimately,it seems, spring in eastern Montana isnot a thing you can learn by watching.

I try things like learning the grasses,or the birds. The Bowdoin NationalWildlife Refuge, outside of Malta, is anoversized swampy prairie pothole sur-rounded by what seems like absolutelynothing. In the spring it becomes one ofthe most vibrant, living places on earth.

The morning air feels atomized withthe earthen smell of new growth. Risingsunlight tangles in the Russian oliveleaves. The water at Bowdoin, shallowblue and alkaline, is stippled with water-fowl as far as I can see, the larger whiteblotches of trumpeter swans and peli-cans clotting the distance.

I write lists of the birds I see, but Ialways lose these lists. I’m not there tocompile totals. I just want to understand,to name things as if naming is belong-ing. Listing them creates columns offound poetry:

Wilson’s phalarope marbled godwit willetwhimbrelsorawhite-faced ibis black-necked stiltyellowlegsavocetlong-billed curlew

The chirps of yellow-headed black-birds ring like metal chips falling onmetal. Pintail ducks whinny-whistle.Each is a highlight rising from theunceasing background of frogs creakinglike rocks rubbed together.

Heads and breasts blush rusty rose,avocets stalk around on twiggy, back-bent blue legs, sweeping the shallowswith upward-curved bills. The littlephalaropes paddle in fast, tight circles,whirling, then dipping their bills topluck crustaceans and insects suckedinto the mini vortex they’ve created. Aprairie falcon totes a blue-winged teal inits talons, circling for height then liningout for somewhere to perch and tearstrips of flesh from the duck’s breast inquick, head-shaking rips.

So much more goes on and on likethis, little dramas driving life, everyspring day. But it’s so far away; I’mlucky to catch a couple hours on anoccasional morning.

•••I was offered a pizza one spring night

in Malta—peanut butter, jalapeños, pep-peroni and cheese, no tomato sauce.Would I eat that in summer or winter? No.But one thing I have learned is that duringspring on the Hi-Line, you don’t pass up athing. Bar Olympics in Winifred? Youlearn to play. Branding cattle? You makeyourself useful, somehow.

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Learning by heartThe necessity of spring on the stark plains of eastern Montana

Rain falls from cellsin fibrous, prismatic

skeins, lit from within

and blown into curves.

Continued on page 60Chad Harder

Continued on page 60

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