7,500 miles, 28 days in a tent; Babe’s first real camping
ever. We saw license plates from every
state (32 in one day) except Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and
Hawaii. It seems like we only met nice
people with the exception of a waitress who tried to scam us in Almo,
Idaho. We took it out of her tip. Our trip brought us within a few miles of
both the Mexican and Canadian borders. I
sold my house on Bainbridge Island and on Father’s Day received a very special
gift. My oldest son Colin graduated from
the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Science Degree. He is graduating debt free with my 2008 VW
GTI as a graduation gift and a good job.
Colin is a lucky kid who is smart and hard working enough to appreciate
all of it.
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| Perseverance, Courage, Adaptability |
This will be the last blog of this journey as we decide
whether to go back to work or buy an RV and head out on a multi-year road trip
to Argentina.
Over the previous two weeks we visited Teton and Yellowstone
National Parks. We also attended a family
wedding north of Spokane where we spent time with my brother Drew and I did my best
to make Banditos out of my nephews.
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| Carson - Bandito in training |
I had planned to climb the Grand Teton but the weather was
uncooperative: snowing and cold the days we were in the Park. This is a rock climbing trip and we did not
come equipped for mountaineering as the conditions dictated. Babe also lacks the necessary glacier
experience so we treated ourselves to the luxury of the Teton Mountain Lodge at
the base of Jackson Hole ski resort.
Fabulous, luxurious, elegant and a welcome change from our tent. The forecast was for more of the same so we
decided to spend a day in Yellowstone and then head up to Bozeman. Majestic is the best word to describe Teton
National Park, but we saw little of it this time because of the low cloud
ceilings.
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| Mother Grizzly and cubs |
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| Hot Springs |
Yellowstone Park is as close as you can come in this country
to a wildlife safari. We sat for 30
minutes watching an osprey hunting fish in a small, meandering stream. It flies around looking for fish, then hovers
silently with little movement before falling like a spear to the water from a
height of 50-75 feet. As long as we
watch it comes up empty, only to start the cycle again and again. We spy a black bear foraging, several big
horn sheep on steep cliffs, a coyote hunting moles, countless bison and mule
deer, several moose, a pronghorn antelope, bald eagles, great blue heron, and some
large elk. There are baby animals
everywhere. The highlight comes at
Lupine Meadows in Grand Teton Park where we come across a mother grizzly bear
with three cubs. I have seen dozens of
bears in the wild, but have never been so close to a mother grizzly with her
cubs. As she starts to come toward us I
make a beeline for the car while the rest of the tourists edge closer to get a
better shot. I call out a warning to no
avail, learning later that the mother had previously charged a group of gawkers
in the same spot.
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| Osprey |
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| Big Horn Sheep |
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| Bison |
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| Lunch meat |
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| Hunting |
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| Moose |
In Bozeman we stop to have dinner with two friends that I
have known for over 35 years, Joe and Robin Sharber. There is no one I have more looked forward to
seeing on this trip than the two of them.
Joe’s mom, a Babbitt, was the first
woman graduate of Harvard Medical School.
She put that to good use by practicing medicine for a whole year before
proceeding to pump out nine kids. Joe’s
uncle Bruce was governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior under
Clinton. Robin, an observant Jew,
managed to convince a bunch of us heathens to practice kosher rules while
floating down the Green River for two weeks.
She now owns and runs a successful candy business.
Joe was the person who first took me climbing and kayaking. We have spent countless hours together in the
wilderness but I haven’t seen him in two decades. In the meantime, he raised two daughters
(poetic justice if there ever was any), while I raised two sons. We were both smitten by Robin when she came
to Flagstaff working for Gore, and bet a case of beer as to who would first get
into her pants. Joe cheated by asking
her to marry him right off the bat. She
was crazy enough to say yes and they have been together ever since.
Dinner is fabulous and we tell numerous stories which his
daughters relish. They are remarkable
girls who love each other and their parents.
One attends the University of Washington the other goes to Montana
State. In particular, they like hearing
about the time Joe was stopped on the Navajo reservation and cited for driving
under the influence (he was). While Joe
was sitting in the back of the police car I got out to piss. The cops were berating me over the
loudspeaker to get back in the vehicle and asked Joe if I was always so
uncooperative. His response, “Only when
assholes are fucking with him”, didn’t exactly endear him to the cops. They haul Joe off to a local hospital where
he is forced to give blood to measure his alcohol content after he failed a
field sobriety test. I am told to drive
his truck because I hadn’t been drinking.
I was, however, totally stoned.
Joe gets out of a DWI by leaving the cap off the blood sample, thereby
allowing the alcohol to evaporate before the technicians notice the mistake a
few hours later.
While in Bozeman we
go sport climbing on excellent limestone at Bozeman Pass. Walking into the climbing area we see several
parties carrying the longest clip sticks (used to clip the first bolt on sport
climbs to avoid a ground fall) I have ever seen, easily telescoping to 20
feet. The reason becomes apparent when
we get to the climbing area and note that the first bolt on all the routes
is way off the ground. My version of a
clip stick is 36 years of runout lead-climbing experience and a clear
understanding that falling is not a good idea.
I make it to the first bolts and decide this is a good time in life to buy
a 20 foot stick clip. 5.10 feels
comfortable but Babe decides she would rather belay than climb.
The wedding takes place in Elk, Washington, another
beautiful location. My cousin Kent’s
youngest son marries a beautiful girl named Mary whom we had met several months
earlier in Coeur d’Alene at the wedding of another cousin’s son. After the wedding I take my sister Colleen,
brother Drew, sister-in-law Paige and my nephew Cade pistol shooting. We shoot the shit out of a bunch of targets
until it gets dark. It just doesn’t get
any better than hanging out with my brothers and sister unless it includes
doing so with my many cousins of which I am the oldest. The cousin’s love reading the blog and we all
love seeing each other. My extended
family is simply awesome, and I continue to be perplexed by families that are
anything but close knit.
Our last drive is to Eugene for the graduation, but we have
two important stops along the way. The
first is to watch my nephew Brady play baseball at a tournament in the
Tri-Cities. My brother Mitch is one of
the assistant coaches and he typically does a good job, but Brady’s team is
poorly coached and plays with no discipline and little hustle. It hurts to watch them play and I worry about
the lessons Brady is learning on that team.
Our last stop is in Hood River to see John Harlin and his
wife Adele. John and I have climbed
numerous big walls together including the Salathé Wall on El Capitan. My biggest and best adventure with him was
climbing the 4,000 ft. face of Mt. Asgard on Baffin Island, north of the Arctic
Circle. We flew my Cessna T-210 there
from Boston and had one escapade after the other, definitely an epic
journey. It included being forced to
land in northern Canada at night on a lonely runway with a 40 mph direct
crosswind that greatly exceeded the demonstrated crosswind component of my
airplane. We had no choice. There wasn’t enough fuel to get to the
nearest alternative: the airport we had left hours earlier. Surviving that, we found ourselves icing up
over the Hudson Strait while I kept changing altitude to keep from going
down. We finally broke out of the clouds
low over the water and encountered hundreds of icebergs below us. It was a magnificent sight that I will never
forget.
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| Mt. Asgard (center) from my plane |
After landing in Iqaluit we flew off to land on a dirt strip
in Pangnirtung where we leave my plane for a month. From there we were taken by boat to Auyuittuq
National Park to begin hiking 25 grueling miles up the Weasel River with 100+
pound packs. The hiking will be
treacherous with endless creek crossings and descents of unstable boulder
fields, so we have the brilliant idea to drop a climbing haul bag with half our
food and much of our climbing gear on to the glacier near the wall. We fly up a very narrow canyon with granite
walls towering above us on both sides and the river raging below. After several miles we head left over another
glacier only to find that the terrain is rising much faster than we are able to
in the plane. Surrounded by granite
looming thousands of feet above us, I make a 180 degree turn about 200 feet
above the ice while we close in rapidly on a huge wall that gets so close we
can almost reach out and touch it. Time
virtually stops while we complete the turn, hanging from the prop and expecting
to die any second. We don’t, but our
hearts are both pounding out of our chests as the plane climbs out of the
canyon and we regroup. Being slow
learners, we change seats to take another pass so John can shove the haul bag
out of the window while I fly the plane from the passenger seat. We are so nervous that John pushes the bag
out of the plane prematurely, right into the river, never to be seen again.
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| Treacherous hike into Asgard |
Our goal was to climb a new route, but that was no longer a possibility
after we lost so much of our gear.
Instead, we climb the Scott Route, called by some the greatest rock
climb in the world. Despite weeks of bad
weather and numerous treacherous obstacles we complete the climb, only to have
John get swept away on the walk out while we are attempting to cross one of the
myriad glacier creeks. These creeks are
fast, deep, extremely cold and deadly; you can hear the rocks being pushed down
the bed by the force of the water. Fording
these creeks is like walking over bowling balls while being hit by a monster
fire hose filled with ice water. I am
able to run down the bank and pull John to safety but he suffers from
hypothermia. Guess he was just looking
for an excuse to get naked with me in a sleeping bag. We have no food and won’t for another day and
a half until we find some Jell-O in a hut at our pick up point.
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| John found this underwear on Baffin |
Needless to say, John and I have discussed about every topic
under the sun. I remind his beautiful,
16-year old daughter Sienna that she owes me for her existence as I spent hours
extolling the virtues of fatherhood to John.
She is unimpressed. Sienna is
poised beyond her years, speaks three languages (two fluently) and is extremely
talented. The last time I saw her ten
years earlier she was sitting on my knee, engrossed in the book I had written
for her as a Christmas present. They all
have to leave for Sienna’s dance recital, while Babe and I make one last stop
to see another old friend, Arlene Burns.
Among Arlene’s many accomplishments is being Meryl Streep’s
stunt double on the movie The River Wild and
running the Telluride Film Festival. I
lost touch with her after learning that her husband died of cancer. The fallout is a sordid story that includes
the heiress to the Beretta fortune. It
is awesome to see John and Arlene, and I leave Hood River feeling like a
million bucks.
As we roll back into Ashland I realize that I am the
luckiest man in the world; living in an awesome country, blessed by a
magnificent family, wonderful friends and Babe.
Throughout this trip she has been a phenomenal traveling companion,
partner and lover. A true Bandito.
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| Bandito Babe |
