Grizzlies, Fleece and Ibuprofen, Oh My

By Amy Linn, 8-10-09

I could have dealt with the pain, but the chocolate fudge Clif bar lodged somewhere mid-sternum made the ascent up Mist Ridge early in the morning the ultimate endurance test.

I should have taken the time this morning to cook my gruel-like instant oatmeal, but the mosquitoes around our campsite were relentless, attacking in wave after tenacious wave, like the Normandy invasion. Both the insect cloud and the presentation of my freeze-dried food dampened any appetite I could have summoned. So I set off to gain 1,000 feet in altitude in a two-mile climb, fortified with what felt like a handball from the gym stuck in my esophagus.

This was day three of a backpack trip in Yellowstone National Park’s (YNP) Pelican Valley, so my pack should have been lighter. Despite its custom fit and the titanium products I was packing, it felt as if I were carrying another person on my back—giving a piggyback ride to a sadistic imp. 

I was one of eight students in the Yellowstone Association Institute’s backpacking course to study grizzlies. We were there for a wilderness experience in the richest grizzly bear habitat: the Pelican Valley in the northeast section of the park. “Pelican Valley” sounds romantic, but in fact it was named after a dead pelican—one that had been shot by a group of trappers in the 1860s who quickly declared the bird to be inedible. 

We were a diverse group sharing a common fascination with the carnivore considered to be the top of the food chain. Even the grizzly’s Latin name is scary: Ursus arctos horribilis. Grizzlies are big (males can weigh from 400 to 1,000 pounds), they make loud aggressive sounds called a “chuff,” and occasionally they will eat people. 

Grizzlies intrigue and horrify us. Like the wolf, they symbolize the wildness in the world that is becoming ever-more-scarce. Like humans, they are carnivores and predators, fierce protectors of their young, and occasionally homicidal.

Naturally I wanted to get to know them. The Yellowstone Association Institute partners with YNP to educate the public through summer and winter courses taught by top experts in wildlife biology, geology, photography and special areas such as volcanoes and cougars. Led by Kerry Gunther, grizzly expert and bear management biologist for YNP, my program would focus on grizzly habits and habitat. The trek would also, I hoped, let me relive some of my receding memories of the Woodstock era. I am not talking about the shall we say celestial experiences of many fellow Boomers, but rather of my terrestrial adventures backpacking through the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. 

A mere 35 to 40 years ago I thought nothing of picking up my Army surplus backpack with its exterior frame, perfect for attaching a frying pan and overstuffed sleeping bag, and heading off with friends for an Appalachian wilderness experience. Then Woodstock ended and reality began—job, responsibility, mortgage—and the backpacking adventures became memories as dim as the rock concerts I attended in the ‘70s. 

When I moved to Montana in my 50s I began to revisit those days. After all, I live in Big Sky, Montana, an outdoorsman’s paradise. The joy and freedom of setting off from a trailhead with all you need in the world on your back began to beckon to me. But the last time I had backpacked I had a few less miles on my body and a willing boyfriend to carry the heavy stuff.  Could a 57-year-old woman who really doesn’t like to get dirty and who is not as fit as she should be, once again hit the trails? In order to find out, I signed up for one of the Institute’s most difficult hikes, with “strenuous hiking over 13 miles per day and altitude gains of 2,000 feet per day,” as the course description notes.

The result? I learned a lot about grizzlies and a lot about myself, and found a few surprises: A majority of the course participants were close to my age, and there were almost as many women as men. In summary I learned this: there are no age limitations on what one can achieve, with the right attitude and boundless determination. It also helps that the new high-tech, microfiber outdoors equipment and clothing make backpacking more accessible to women and to those of us who last enjoyed it during the Ford Administration.

The Pelican Valley, as it turns out, has a long history as a proving ground. Around 1840, before Yellowstone was established as a national park, a trapper/journalist named Osborne Russell had an experience in the valley that clearly demonstrates how trappers in the 19th century American West were tougher than anyone living today. In a throw-down with Blackfeet Indians, Russell was shot with arrows in the hip and leg. He crawled out and wrote a book called “Diary of a Trapper” that recounts his nine years in the Rockies—hunting, trapping, fighting Indians, and having a series of near-death experiences that makes John Wayne look metro-sexual.

Then there was Truman Everts, a hapless member of the Washburne-Langford-Doane expedition of 1870 that was commissioned to chronicle the wilds of Yellowstone. Everts became separated from the expedition and then from his horse, which carried all of his supplies. For 37 days he wandered the Pelican Valley with only the shirt on his back and an opera glass. He survived by eating thistles and hunkering next to thermal springs for warmth. Finally he was found in October by Jack Baronett, a former scout for General Custer for whom Baronett Peak in Yellowstone is named, and who at first mistook Everts for a wounded bear. Everts moved back East and lived to be 85, fathering a child when he was in his 70s. His story is retold in a book, “Lost in Yellowstone: Truman Everts’ Thirty-Seven Days of Peril,” by Lee Whittlesey.

The Nez Perce Indians, meanwhile, are believed to have traversed the Pelican Valley in 1877, fleeing from U.S. Army General Oliver Howard’s command after Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Just over the top of Mist Mountain, we happened upon a team of archeologists searching for clues that may point to the route taken by approximately 700 men, women and children through Yellowstone’s backcountry. 

Our nearly 40 miles of backpacking through the valley did not approximate the ordeals of Russell, Everts or the Nez Perce. But the journey left me with a profound respect for this stunning upper valley in the park, where grizzly bears graze on the thistles that sustained a lost assayer, and where Pelican Creek looks just like it did when trappers hunted for beaver here. 

Early explorers of Yellowstone managed to survive, most of them, without the benefits of titanium cookwear, water filters, microfiber clothing, Thermarest mattresses and ibuprofen. The modern world has consumed most of the wild areas in this country and turned them into malls and subdivisions with anthropomorphic names likes “Elk Meadows” and “Bighorn Acres.” Since that process has also given us fleece and Gortex, the least we can do is seize these by-products of modernity and get out there to the places they’re meant for.

To all women over 50: you can still backpack like you did when you were 20. The equipment is better, lighter and less smelly. The clothes are more comfortable and attractive. And you’ll lose weight because the freeze-dried backpacking foods are as inedible as a pelican.