On a goat hunt the adventure does not end until you are back in town.
I actually don’t remember dinner or whether or not we had some whiskey, but I’m sure we had a tot and some food. I do remember lying in my sleeping bag, warm and very happy to be at rest. I mused about what we had accomplished. We got the goat! The hard part is over – now we just enjoy the high country and go skiing until the plane arrives at the lake. I am awakened from my reveries by Dicky yelling to wake me up. He hears something outside and is convinced it’s a bear come to take the goat away. So we get up, leave our warm shelters and check things outside. It’s dark and the wind is coming up. No bear that we can see.
On every goat hunt in Kodiak’s high alpine there is a least one bad storm.
A few hours later Dicky wakes me up again. It’s snowing and blowing hard. Dicky is worried about the goat meat. That evening when we’d got back to camp we had simply dropped the meat and hide by a rock near camp, intending to better take care of it the next day. Now Dicky is worried about the meat getting buried, and lost in the snow. So we get up again and make a meat stash, wrapping the meat in a tarp and putting rocks over it. Good thing we did because we wake up in the morning to 2 feet of new snow and deep drifts.
Good idea to bring dried fruit and cliff bars on a goat hunt – food you can eat in your tent and not have to cook.
In the morning the wind is slapping snow against the tent and making weird banshee noises overhead, and there is no way I am leaving my tent. I got a Bibler single wall tent that is built like a brick house. It barely wiggles in the high wind behind the stonewall we built when we set up camp. All morning I subsist on cliff bars, dried fruit, and water from my pack. I use an empty nalgene to handle the plumbing issues. I curl up and read my book. I did not bring a full-length sleeping pad and am using all my clothes and gear as insulation from the ice below the tent. I have to roll over every 2 hours or so when my hip gets sore. Every once in a while I doze off. I watch the snow build up against the sides. Things are good in my tent.
Single wall tents are drier than tents with flies in a blizzard.
Not so in the other tent. The wind has been blowing snow up under their fly and it has been melting on the roof, and dripping down into the tent. Dicky and Scott are living in a humid swamp. When the wind shakes the tent it sends down a light mist of precipitation from the ceiling that slowly soaks Dicky, Scott and their bedding. They decide to evacuate, create a snow shelter and cook something up to eat. Dicky tries to convince me to leave my cocoon and join them. He is peeved when I refuse to budge from the nest. He finally gives up on me and joins Scott building the fort. Their voices join that of the storm outside, and off and on for the next few hours I catch isolated phrases and mumblings of their conversation. I doze on in the mellow light shining through the walls of the yellow tent while the storm rages overhead.
Snow caves beat forts for a kitchen in a blizzard.
Eventually, in the early afternoon, I do get up and venture outside. It is a completely different world than yesterday. Snow has covered all the familiar landmarks and has obscured the horizon in a whiteout blizzard. I find Dicky and Scott huddled up in a big pit with a constant stream of snow blowing in from on top. I can’t believe they have stuck it out for so long in such a miserable shelter. It is barely possible to cook. But we all agree that the skiing ought to be great when the storm lets up. While getting water by the lake I notice that the old snow overhangs the lake water, creating a sort of cave. I check it out further and notice that there is no wind under the ice overhang. So after convincing Dicky and Scott to leave their hard won ‘shelter’ we move our kitchen to the lakeshore under the overhang.
Albeit heavy, Dinty Moore stew sure is tasty.
The new ‘snow’ kitchen is quite comfortable and we eat a large meal and delve into the whiskey. We watch the falling snow turn the surface of the lake into an icy mush. And we begin to wonder what will we do if the lake freezes over? If the lake freezes over we will have to move camp to the lake at 271 feet above sea level for floatplane pickup. Big gusts swirl the falling snow out over the surface of the lake but nary a puff reaches us. We eat, drink hot fluids, and pass around the whiskey bottle. We are making a concerted effort to eat up all our heavy food first.
Never, ever finish the whiskey until you are sure there will be no more adversity!
Late in the afternoon we decide to explore our immediate environs and get some exercise. The snow has let up a bit and it seems like a good time to check out the beginning of the route down to the low country. So we strap on our skis and head out to circumnavigate the small knoll behind camp. The snow is so deep that we are forced to wallow in single file and the guy in front has to break trail through the deep snow. We do not go very far, but do determine that the direct route down is a no go because a granite cliff drops sheer into the lake. We will have to backtrack up around the hill behind camp before heading down to the low country. After our ski we retire to the snow cave to eat, ponder our plans, and finish the whiskey. The lake is not yet frozen over, but the temperatures are dropping, the lake is already ‘mushing over’ and it looks like freeze-up is imminent. We decide to move camp down to the lake at 271 feet above sea level, and will start our move in the morning. Our scheduled pickup is in two days, and we figure it will take that long to get all our gear down to the lower lake. There is a sense of severe disappointment that we will not be able to hang out and enjoy the snow while we wait for the float plane to arrive. Patrick
