Part Twenty Six

​     July 19                                Bitterroot Range, MT                         (Go to Pt 1)
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The south side was angled such that all the larger, loose rocks had already fallen to the talus field at the bottom, leaving behind steep gullies of mostly gravel sized scree that was too steep to plunge-step down without losing traction and sliding off down the chute.

“Godamit!” I spit.  Craig had dropped his pack and was peering down the mountain face, “Jesus!” he laughed, shaking his head as he turned away.  Having to turn back and descend to take the lower route around this ridge horn was by now unthinkable, at least in my mind.
 
There had to be a way to get down the south side of this ridge.  Then I had a most ridiculous idea; what if we did just go ahead and slide down one of the 500 foot chutes on the scree?

“Hey, Craig” I said, “watch this” and without giving this brain zinger so 

Click on map for larger image

much as a second, cautionary thought I started to plunge step down the summit scree slope, angling toward the top of one of these chutes.  Once I got positioned over the fall-line of the chute’, right where the real steepness began, I sat down in the scree and intentionally started myself sliding down the chute.  ​

Once I got going there was no way to stop other than riding it out to the bottom and, no matter how this turned out, I was going to end up at the bottom. As I plummeted down the chute I started a small-scale rock slide of mostly scree but, really, any sized rock that lay in my path and rocks exploded out of the chute, showering down onto the debris pile hundreds of feet below.

As I was propelled downward I knew I could not let my boots heels dig into the scree to deeply or I’d get flipped into a cartwheel so I stabbed at the scree with the heels of my boots in a kind of slow motion flutter kick action that actually did help to slow me down some.
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It was all over in less than 30 seconds and when I, and the pile of rocks that came down with me, slid to a stop at the bottom of the chute in a massive cloud of dust I was stunned!  I could not believe that had actually worked!

I turned around and looked back up the chute that was now filled with one, continuous dust cloud top to bottom.  I had no idea if Craig had followed me or not and then I saw another cloud of dust pealing its way down the adjacent chute.  Moments later old lanky-legs got spit out at the bottom in a hail of small debris.

I let the dust settle then yelled over “Hey Craig! You OK?” He stood up and was completely covered with dust and dirt right down to his tear ducts, as was I.  Normally, Craig would find this kind of high-stakes adventure disturbingly humorous with more wit directed at my ‘route finding’ or some other such profane exclamation but he was silent as he collected himself at the bottom.  
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We climbed down off the debris pile then made our way across gentle terrain to a stream and dropped our packs to rinse off the dust.  It was still fairly early in the afternoon and our scheduled campsite was not that far off so I started talking about pushing the route out a little further down the ridge to Lena Lake, which would require going over another valley-separating  ridge.  

Craig sat on his pack, head bowed, clutching his right knee “No!” he finally interjected “I am not going over another ridge today!” I did not pick-up on this at the time but there it was, Craig’s right knee joint was beginning to break down but he said nothing of it at the time; only that he was done for the day.

So, with that, I dropped anymore talk about pushing the route further and we descended to Slag-a-melt Lakes (which sounds like a couple of sewer ponds but were actually alpine gems) and made camp against a stand of tall pines along the lakeshore.  After pitching the tent I went down to the lake to take a splash-bath while Craig stayed behind in camp.  ​

Something was wrong but I didn’t know what it was.  When I got back to camp Craig was going over the map, assessing the passes still out in front of us.  There was scant conversation that evening and after the dinner chores were done I sat back to record the day’s events in my journal.  We shut down camp around dusk and I went to bed that night kind of pissed.  Was Craig starting to crap out on the trip? I didn’t know.
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The next morning I finally asked “What’s the deal, man?  Is everything OK?” Craig was silent for a moment then said “Yeah, my right knee has been acting up lately but it’s done this before; it’ll go away.”  And that was it.  

So I thought ‘Ok, I get that, an old injury acting up’ and dialed back the pace going into the day which started with a shallow pass followed by a steep descent to Lena Lake but one we could hike down.  Craig was a little slow on the descent but at least now I knew why.

From Lena Lake we ambled about a mile across a high plateau before descending to Ajax Lake where we found an unoccupied, Forest Service patrol cabin set at the outlet of the lake.  We dropped our packs and went up to see if anybody was about and when no one answered the knock I tried the door and it was open so we went inside to have a look around.

The cabin was sparse but comfortable with a picnic style bench and table, a made up cot in the corner under a small window and a few canned goods in the cupboard.  We pulled our mid-morning snack of granola bars from the pack and lounged around the table, reading entries in a log book that sat there with the earliest notations dating back to 1956.

After the morning break was over we circled around to the southeast end of the lake and climbed our way up to a scree and talus slope at the toe of a massive, unnamed mountain.  As we were crossing the rock slope we nearly got swallowed-up in a sink hole.  
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Craig was crossing ahead of me and was striding across the larger rocks when one of the rocks he stepped on wobbled in a very weird way; I was directly behind and stepped on the same 2 ft. x 2 ft. stone but when I got my weight over the rock it sank, like a stone you might say, about two feet. This threw me off balance as I lurched forward across several more wobbly rocks, stumbling to stay on my feet.

Once I regained my balance, I turned around to watch a gaping hole appear that was gobbling up barrel sized rocks all around it.  Within minutes, rocks were falling into a void 6 ft. in diameter, disappearing into the earth and showing no signs of stopping.  That’s when the danger hairs went up on the back of my neck.  

How big was this slope failure about to become? And how fast? That was something we did not want to find out and with all the swiftness that sudden panic brings we scrambled across the rest of the rock slope to the safety of the meadows beyond.

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Go to Part 27

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