Montana Made Me Do It: Climbing Sacajawea in winter
- charlesjromeo
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
This is my entry to Outside Bozeman's Montana Made Me Do It contest. It's supposed to be a few hundred words about some past adventure. This is more serene than wild, so it's unlikely to win, but it was a fun adventure from way back that I'd never written about before. No idea what I'll get if I win besides my story appearing in the Spring Issue: OB tee shirt maybe or a cup. Whatever it is, I'll display it in a future post if I am chosen. Hope you enjoy it!
Chuck
It was early January in 1981. Snow had been sparse; Bridger Bowl hadn’t yet opened. What do we do? A full moon would rise that night, and clear skies were forecast. It was me, Doug, Stan and Dave. I don’t remember who first broached the idea, but ‘Let’s climb Sac and camp up high,' got the nod.
Daylight was limited; we had to move fast. We were at the Corbly Gulch trailhead by late morning wearing gear for a typical January day. We steadily stripped off layers and strapped them to our packs as we climbed. It was a warm day for January in the 1980s; nothing like January can get to be these days, but warm enough so that I crested the peak in shorts and a long sleeve shirt. The wind bit in the last stretch of the climb; we tagged the top and headed back below.
I could feel it; hypothermia was setting in. The wind created a dramatic shift from warm to cold, and with no layers left for insulation sleepiness started to press upon me. I fought the urge to lie down and we all quickly donned gear. With layers back in place, I warmed quickly. We climbed back up and reveled in the view from the tallest peak in the Bridgers.
We headed down and found a flat spot on a bed of packed snow at the edge of the forest. We decided to sleep out under the stars using our tent flies and our meager ensolite pads for insolation. As darkness settled, a few points of light glimmered out in the valley; it was mostly empty back in those days. We were in our sleeping bags still talking when the moon was straight above us. ‘Let’s climb the peak,’ was suggested.
It took a few minutes in the dark and cold to rouse ourselves from the warmth of our bags. Cold boots on warm toes caused us all to grumble, ‘Whose idea was this?’ A flask was passed around for comfort, for courage. But we were all in. We crunched uphill through snow and scree, our breath visible in the glow.
The world shimmered in the beauty of white light reflecting off the snowpack. It was a new, purer view of a familiar world. Stan started to howl: ‘Oooowww.’ We all joined in. The wolfpack was roving through the icy stillness. It was but a moment of youthful exuberance with three guys that I would quickly lose touch with as we all went our separate ways in the world. Hopefully they too remember this moment.
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