ONLY STUPID PEOPLE WINTER CAMP: A Confession — by Jim Stiles (ZX#37)

“He who learns must suffer…” —Aeschylus

Ever since humans shed their fur and felt the warmth of a lightning-caused fire and realized that if they could keep the flame alive, they could avoid the brutal cold forever, we’ve spent a good portion of our time in pursuit of that goal. We want to be outside, but we don’t want to freeze our butts off. For those of us who reside in the “modern world,” the effort to stay warm is as challenging as turning the dial on the thermostat. But before gas furnaces and heat pumps and electric radiant heat and solar collectors, staying warm could be a full-time job. If any of you has ever tried, at least for a while, to stay warm with a wood fire and a good cast iron stove, you know the challenge. The work never ends. There’s never enough fuel and the fire always dies at three in the morning. But for most Americans, at least, even that chore is only something to be read about—“Honey, turn up the heat,” is all we need to do to stay warm.

Even when we’re away from a nice source of heat like a good wood stove, we seek out products that will allow us to actually enjoy the cold while buried inside our protective gear. In days past it was a good buffalo hide. Goose down when it fluffs up and doesn’t get too matted with age, will also keep us toasty. And all kinds of new hi tech products are being introduced all the time. Electrically heated coats and pants and socks, powered by lithium batteries can actually make a man sweat on a brutally cold day. It’s the hubris of the human condition to beat Nature at its own game. Still, the numbers of macho winter wanderers and thrill seekers are still relatively few. Most have the good sense to stay home, crank up the thermostat and watch the next episode of “Yellowstone” if they want a wilderness experience.

But there are a few of us, driven by forces that can’t quite be explained, who possess a willingness to suffer and display an utter lack of common sense that causes us to abandon these comforts and deliberately seek the misery of sub-freezing temperatures. I’ve been doing this for years and still dabble in self-inflicted misery from time to time. It’s called ‘winter camping.’ It started like this…

I loved the outdoors. I loved to explore our nearby “Woods,” and my dad had even brought home a second hand canoe from work. He was the manager of the sporting goods department at Sears and was always grabbing damaged “returns,” and buying them at a discount.

BOY SCOUTS, WINTER CAMPING & ‘KAPOC.’

It was only natural that I would want to become a Boy Scout. My dad had been a Scout, as had all my uncles. It was a family tradition. My birthday falls in the middle of December and I signed up immediately. At that very meeting, when I was presented my tenderfoot badge, our Scoutmaster, Mr. Linton announced the next troop campout. In two weeks. I had assumed we’d wait until Spring but Bill Linton ran Troop 246 like a boot camp. He had, in fact, served valiantly in World War II and had suffered serious injuries during his service. In fact, he had lost his right ear in battle and it was always difficult not to stare at the small wrapped scar on the side of his head. But he wasn’t a cruel man. He was just tough.

Two weeks later, we boarded our battered and barely functioning Scout bus, an old pre-war school bus, to go camping at a place called Lake Hideaway in southern Indiana. Being an ex-Marine with a penchant for self-discipline, Mr. Linton almost made me cry on that first trip. On the long bus ride to our winter camp, before I even had a chance to get cold, I found myself yearning for a urinal. I really had to go but our scoutmaster plowed forward through ice and snow drifts with a single-minded determination I have seldom encountered. I finally staggered to the front of the bus and meekly told my leader of the situation. He looked at me briefly, snarled, “Tie it in a knot and sit down,”. It took me an hour just to figure out what he meant.

We had the most basic equipment and indeed, during the glorious/miserable pre-recreation boom era, decent camping gear was hard to come by. We slept in army surplus canvas pup tents that had no floors. Indeed, we each carried a tent half and buttoned the damn things together. My sleeping bag was another Sears Roebuck reject. But even if he’d bought me a top-of-the-line sleeping bag, I wouldn’t have been able to notice the difference. The big insulator in those days was ‘kapoc,’ a fibrous material that comes from something called the ceiba tree. It offered about as much warmth as the Sunday copy of the Louisville Courier-Journal. So my first experience with winter camping was also my first with near-frostbite. Somehow I survived but I didn’t get any smarter.

NEW YEARS IN JACKSON, WYOMING

A few years later, having discovered the West and yearning to be there whenever I could, and regardless of the weather conditions, my buddy Tynes and I set out for Jackson, Wyoming on the 27th of December in an MGB convertible. We were 19. We battled snow and wind across the Great Plains and into Wyoming on I-80. When we exited at Rock Springs, conditions got worse. The road was snow packed for 180 miles. Near Bondurant, we struggled to put chains on the car but our hands froze after just a few moments outside the car. There was a small store there and though the lights were off, we knocked anyway, hoping to get a cup of coffee. A woman finally came to the door and opened it a crack. “We’re closed! Can’t you see that? Why are you out in this weather?”

“We’re trying to get to Jackson,” I replied through the blowing snow.

She looked at us like we were insane. “Do you know how cold it is? It’s 37 degrees BELOW ZERO!!!”

That explained why the little thermometer inside my MG was only measuring minus five. It wasn’t broken after all. She wished us luck and we kept going.

The road was treacherous through Hoback Canyon. Before they widened the road in the early 70s it was barely a lane and a half wide and nobody seems to have heard of guardrails. It was a long way down to the Hoback River. But finally we reached Hoback Junction and knew we were close. We hardly had any money and when we finally reached Jackson I still wanted to camp; I didn’t think we could afford a motel. Tynes said something like, “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND?” He had “borrowed” his father’s Gulf Oil credit card and we discovered that a few of the motels in Jackson would honor it. Just off Broadway on Milward, we spotted the Four Winds Motel. Its neon lights were still on, including the ‘vacancy’ sign. A sweet woman named Dorothy Wilson came to the desk, even though it was well past dark. She took one look at us and shivered. “You boys must be freezing! You poor things! We’ll get you fixed up right away.” Dorothy charged us eight bucks for the night and we decided we’d stay four. Thirty-two dollars for four nights in a motel in Jackson, Wyoming during ski season.

We lived in luxury for the next few days. Every morning Dorothy’s husband George had to come out and jump start my MGB. He didn’t seem to mind but thought we were both somewhat dimwitted for coming to northwest Wyoming in a convertible with a bad heater and the worst electrical system known to the human race. Still George was good natured about it. In years to come, I’d get to know the Wilson Family much better and realized the Wilsons were some of the valley’s earliest settlers. Just down the road is…Wilson, Wyoming.

ALTITUDE MATTERS MORE THAN ATTITUDE

Finally, we left Jackson on January 2. Tynes wanted to watch the bowl games on TV. His father’s alma mater, the University of Texas won the national title that year and Tynes wanted to celebrate the moment. The next day, however, we drove south eventually hoping to reach the Grand Canyon. But the roads were still treacherous and we didn’t make Salt Lake City until dusk. We drove up the road above the state Capitol and snapped a picture of the valley. But Tynes felt he’d pushed the limit on his father’s credit card so we kept going south.

Interstate 15 was only partially completed in 1970 and there was a lot of traffic on the two lane. In addition we had loaded the tiny trunk of my MGB with so much gear that it had weighed down the rear end of the car to the point that our lights, even on low beam, appeared to shine right into the faces of oncoming traffic. Literally every northbound car flashed its brights at us, and all I could do was hit the brights to show them I wasn’t deliberately trying to blind them. This went on for hours. God only knows how many Mormon husbands we infuriated that night.

We finally stopped at a rest area near Cedar City and tried to sleep in the car. But the bitter cold temperatures kept us awake through the night. We were both Western neophytes and it had not yet occurred to us how much altitude plays in the ambient air temperature. At 4 AM, we gave up and proceeded south toward St. George. As we descended a log grade, we could feel the air warming by the minute. By the time we pulled onto St George Blvd and spotted a Denny’s, it was twenty degrees warmer. It was one lesson we’d never forget. (NOTE: Though Denny’s later moved its franchise out to the new interstate bypass, the original Denny’s building is still there, or was the last time I passed through town).

THE GRAND CANYON…ALL TO OURSELVES

The next afternoon, we finally arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and made our way to the campground. We were surprised to find it empty. Perfect, I thought. We have the place to ourselves.

We pitched the tent and rolled out our bags, cooked a can of Wolf Brand chili on an open fire (the NPS allowed such things then) and then hung out at Bright Angel Lodge for a while, trying to soak up as much heat as we could from that spectacular fireplace. When we told the guy at the desk that we were in the campground, he thought we were mad. “It’s going below ZERO tonight!” he emphasized. “ZERO.” We were unfazed. Why, I don’t know. Once again the “stupidity of youth” factor. Failing to learn from one’s mistakes, even when they were only made three days ago.

Tynes and I returned to our tent and crawled into our bags. It was about 9 PM.. The temperature began to fall. We broke every Park Service rule you can imagine in an effort to stay warm. We’d built a fire just outside the tent flap, and I’d pulled off the garbage can lid and placed it behind the blaze to act as a sort of reflector. The fire roared and reflected. We crawled deeper into our kapoc bags. The night wore on.

I felt the toes go first. Or I didn’t feel them. My fingers stiffened and my ears felt brittle— like they’d break off if I touched them. Through the night I suffered silently, wondering if my pal Tynes was as near to Death by Ice as I was. How much longer could I endure this misery? Finally, I thought of the approaching dawn and the warmth of that fire at Bright Angel Lodge. We’d become something of a curiosity at the Lodge. The bell boys and the desk clerk were concerned and one of them, who had morning duty, promised to have a roaring fire going when he came on duty at 6 AM. The fire sounded like a godsend.

Finally, I called out to Tynes, “Hey is it 6 AM yet? That guy at Bright Angel said he’d start a fire.” Tynes stirred in his bag and shouted back. “You idiot. It’s nine-thirty.”

We’d been in the tent for less than half an hour. It would be a very long night.

HE WHO FAILS TO LEARN…KEEPS SUFFERING. MOODY CREEK

After my first winter ordeal, I swore I’d get better equipment but was still stupid enough to keep pursuing my winter camping fetish. In my defense, one aspect of winter camping that could not be denied was that it was a great way to beat the crowds. I found that having a campground or even a park all to myself was a common occurrence when the ground was frozen. My longing for peace and quiet knew no boundaries, no pain was too much when it came to solitude. I managed the funds for a good goose down mummy bag the next year and for a while I got downright cocky about winter camping. With the additional invention of the self-inflating Therma-Rest sleeping pad, I was convinced that weather could no longer play a role in my camping habits. I defied winter and thought I had it licked.

A couple years later, I was living in Utah, had become a park ranger and fancied myself a true outdoorsman…a desert rat. I could survive anywhere, I reckoned. I had the gear and the knowledge. Nature was my friend and if she got a bit feisty from time to time, I could see my way through it.

I had gone back to work early at Arches and was looking forward to the new season. But I got four days off in early March and decided to make the best of them. The weather was clear and dry and warm during the day. I had my bag to stay warm. And I had my dog as well. Muckluk and I decided to travel west 150 miles to a side canyon of the Escalante River–Middle Moody Canyon.

We left in the late morning and by mid-afternoon we had bounced our way over the Burr Trail and down a side track to the head of Moody Creek. My pack was already locked and loaded, the dog was ready to chase jackrabbits, so we parked the car, slid down an embankment to the sandy wash and headed downstream. I felt excellent and the weather could not have been lovelier. It was so mild and so clear that I decided to forego the extra weight of a tent. Who needs a tent on a glorious day like this? Let the stars be my canopy tonight. We ate our supper beside a gnarled juniper tree on the edge of Moody Creek, I crawled into my mummy bag and Muckluk snuggled up close as she always did. We both fell asleep almost instantly.

It started to rain about midnight.

I had pulled the drawstring on my mummy bag tightly around my face so that only my nose protruded into the air. It soon began to take on water. My nostrils were filling up. The drizzle became a hard rain that became a steady downpour. And the temperature began to plummet.

A down sleeping bag holds up well when it’s dry–it’s all about ‘loft.’ But down flattens like a soggy pancake when wet and takes on an enormous amount of weight as it absorbs the moisture. Soon I was soaked to the bone. I thought of making a run for it and maybe find an overhang or a cave but incredibly, at that moment, my flashlight went dead. I could feel the dog pressed against me, drenched and shivering. There was no place to hide.

A fierce wind came up and the temperature sank, the rain turned to snow, my sleeping bag began to freeze up. Muckuk’s soaking fur turned hard. She was turning to ice. It occurred to me that we might just die there along the edge of Middle Moody Creek. Finally the snow stopped but the terrible wind raged on for hour after hour. I was starting to lose the feeling in my finger tips and even my nostrils felt frozen.

But it was the wind that saved us. We were camped under a half dead juniper tree and the howling breeze slowly dried out its dead limbs. I crawled out of my soaked sleeping bag and began to tear the dead branches from the tree—yes, this was surely some kind of natural resource violation according to the Code of Federal Regulations but I didn’t care. I clumped the branches into a pile, added a few sheets of toilet paper to the base of it, pulled out a match (at least I remembered them!) And lit a fire. I added more fuel and the fire grew hotter and hotter.

Nothing ever felt so wonderful. I could feel my parts thawing out. And to make an improving situation even better, at the base of that tree, deep in its hollowed out trunk, I had stuffed the one item that remained dry, an old Eddie Bauer down coat that my pal Jim Conklin had given me the previous winter. Why I’d brought it along, I’ll never know. How I resisted putting it on until after the rain stopped is even more surprising. But I pulled on the old coat and sat down in front of my roaring fire, where I fell asleep sitting on my heels for almost an hour.

When dawn came, the storm had passed as quickly as it had arrived. A sun rose clear and bright and what snow had fallen melted rapidly. My sleeping bag, still soaked, must have weighed 20 pounds. I lashed everything together and headed back to the car. It took me almost two hours to walk the four miles. I felt like Death eating a cookie. Yet, even then, I was a documentarian of sorts. As I reached my VW Rabbit, I thought, ‘This is the worst I have ever felt in my life.’ And somehow, whether it was vanity or the utter lack of it, I sat my camera on the hood of my car and snapped a picture with the timer.

THE LIGHT PILLARS & FINAL SURRENDER

But I survived. And I winter camped again and again. For many years. Finally I gave up tent camping but still slept in my car on long winter journeys where I was too tired or broke to get a motel room. Even once, my new wife joined in the fun when we were taking a late February trip. Traveling with our two ancient cats, we found ourselves in Walsenberg, Colorado in a blizzard. It seemed too late to get a room, so I convinced her to sleep in the local hospital parking lot. It wasn’t a good idea. Later in the night, our 20 year old cat Fuzzy peed all over Tonya in her sleep.

“Well,” Tonya remarked stoically and without a hint of humor, “At least her urine didn’t freeze.” No wonder she later divorced me; the beginnings of many blunders on my part.

I still continued to sleep in my car, albeit solo. But even I had my limits. In 2015, I tried to make the 800 mile drive home from Utah in a day. But it was January and brutally cold. Close to zero. Even with my super winter bag, stopping was impossible. But as I crossed the Plains I saw a phenomenon I was previously oblivious too. As I approached those small tiny prairie towns, it looked as if they had turned on high intensity searchlights, like we see at movie premieres. But they weren’t lights and I later learned they’re called “light pillars. According to Wikipedia, “A light pillar is an atmospheric optical phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light from tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere or that comprise high-altitude clouds.”
I finally pulled over in a parking lot and tried to sleep. It was a pipeline maintenance shop and just to remind me how miserable I should feel, it had a lighted thermometer. It was 6 degrees. I started the car, drove another 200 miles and made it home before dawn. Though clearly and obviously there were (and are) lessons that I have, to this day, failed to learn or appreciate, it was my last night sleeping outside in the middle of winter.

Today, as Christmas approaches yet again, and as cold weather returns, I feel nostalgic, and sad about many lost moments, but those near-freezing to death incidents are not among them. I’d like to feel warm and happy again. Warmth has many meanings and a thermometer is only one way to measure it.

My cat Rascal seems to have figured it all out. I wish I were him. Warm and happy…what else is there?

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