12,000
ft. Buck Mountain, from Alaska Basin12,000
ft. Buck Mountain, from Alaska Basin
In the silence, a distant rock clicked from somewhere among the barren boulders on Buck's summit pyramid. I startled, was there someone else up here where I had seemed so alone and close to God?
Worse than a fellow climber, the shape that appeared around the mountain's shoulder was inhuman, with two large, massive horns, and four hooved feet. In the alpine meadows far below I had seen three elk, but this could not be an elk. Not this high.
It took me a moment to grasp the reality. I was less than sixty feet from a very large Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep, probably a ram. I was alone, and he was alone. No one would ever know if he butted me off into the oblivion nearby on the mountain's awful north face. I stood quietly in the thin air, surveying my fate. Mr. Bighorn did the same, and then moved in utter quiet, suddenly vanishing like smoke over the mountain's shoulder. When I climbed to that place, there was no sign, no sign of his passing, nothing remaining upon the great peak.
The marmot is the quintessential mountaineer's companion, found all over the alpine ranges of the West. This one was eyeing us from his impenetrable rock haunt near Death Canyon Shelf. The size of these guys takes you by surprise as they bask in the sun among the giant-size rockslides of the Tetons. When this one waddled leisurely across a small meadow, we were amazed to see that he or she was as big as a medium size cat! John Muir (1838-1914) wrote an elegant piece about the Sierra marmots and their life amongst the highest Sierra peaks..... Many years later, Marmot Mountain Works, founded on April 1, 1974 in Grand Junction, Colorado, had an extensive quote from Muir about the animal, their namesake... Please go to page bottom for the complete text of John Muir's wonderfully thoughtful writing about the marmot, and see a beautiful marmot painting from the 1977 Marmot Mountain Works catalog.
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click to query Bruce Johnson, author of the above story
"...(the marmot) dwells on high bleak ridges and boulder piles; and a very different sort of mountaineer is he-- bulky, fat, aldermanic and fairly bloated at times by hearty indulgences in the lush pastures of his airy home. And yet he is by no means a dull animal. In the midst of what we regard as storm-beaten desolation, high in the frosty air, beside the glaciers he pipes and whistles right cheerily and lives to a good old age. If you are as early a riser as he is, you may ofentimes see him come blinking out of his burrow to meet the first beams of the morning and take a sunbath on some favourite flat-topped boulder. Afterward, well warmed, he goes to breakfast in one of his garden hollows, eats heartily like a cow in clover until comfortably swollen, then goes a-visting, and plays and loves and fights.
"In
the spring of 1875, when I was exploring the peaks and glaciers
about the head of the middle fork of the San Joaquin (river),
I had crossed the range from the head of the Owen River, and one
morning, passing around a frozen lake where the snow was perhaps
ten feet deep, I was surprised to find the fresh track of a woodchuck
(marmot) plainly marked, the sun having softened the surface. What could the animal
be thinking of, coming out so early while all the ground was snow-buried?
The steady trend of his track showed he had a definite aim, and
fortunately it was toward a mountain thirteen thousand feet high
that I meant to climb. So I followed to see if I could find out
what he was up to. From the base of the mountain the track pointed
straight up, and I knew by the melting snow that I was not far
behind him. I lost the track on a crumbling ridge, partly projecting
through the snow, but soon discovered it again. Well toward the
summit of the mountain, in an open spot on the south side, nearly
inclosed by disintegrating pinnacles among which the sun heat
reverberated, making an isolated patch of warm climate, I found
a nice garden, full of rock cress, phlox, silene, draba, etc,
and a few grasses; and in this garden I overtook the wanderer,
enjoying a fine fresh meal, perhaps the first of the (spring)
season. How did he know the way to this one garden spot, so high
and far off, and what told him that it was in bloom while yet
the snow was ten feet deep over his den? For this it would seem
he would need more botanical, topographical, and climatological
knowledge than most mountaineers are possessed of.".... Image
is the front cover of the 1977 Marmot Mountain Works catalog.
Learn about The Backpacking Revolution, which I also title "The History of Gear, 1946 to The Present." This is a new section, under development, and already has grown to over 30 pages. It focuses on some of the energetic pioneers of outdoor gear, those dreamers who utterly changed the stuff we wear, the shelters we use, and our outdoor survival tools, such as ice axes and mountain stoves.
Alice and Roy (LeRoy) Holubar of Colorado; Gerry Cunningham of "Gerry" in Colorado; Jack Stephenson of Warmlite in California/New Hampshire; Bob Gillis of Shelter Works in California; George Rudolph and designer Allen Steck of Ski Hut/Trailwise in Berkeley, Califorinia; Mark Erickson, Head Designer for many years at The North Face in the San Francisco area of California; Wayne Gregory and Dick Kelty of California; Bob Swanson and George Marks of Sierra Designs; Justus Bauschinger of Ski Hut who went on to be a major part in the stories of several other companies such as first North Face and later, in 1971, Class Five; Noah Lamport of Hobie Cat fame; Eric Reynolds and his designer George Hundley of Marmot; Snowlion; George Lamb's Camp Seven, Alp Sport and Alpine Designs; Dale Johnson's Frostline Kits (see Logo below); Carikit (Holubar Kits) of Boulder; Jonathan Hinebauch's Altra Kits of Boulder; Larry Penberthy's Mountain Safety Research (MSR) of Seattle, Feathered Friends of Seattle since 1972; Crescent Down Works of Seattle since 1973; JanSport (orginated near Seattle, founders Jan Lewis, Skip Yowell and Murray Pletz); W.L. Gore and Associates (William "Bill" Gore and his son Bob, who created Goretex circa 1974-76); Caribou Mountaineering; and tiny little custom companies like Down Home of Arcata, Calif./Deadwood, Oregon (Denice and Chuck Kennedy); Bill Nicolai's "Early Winters Co." (his tent the "Light Dimension" in 1976 was probably the World's first tent utilizing Goretex, and his 1976 mountain shell parka is reputed by some to be the World's first outdoor product using Goretex); Dana Gleason and Renee' Sippel-Baker of Kletterwerks (1975), which then became Dana Designs (early '80s), which was the well-known predecessor of the current pack-making company "Mystery Ranch."
More important names and companies include.tiny little custom companies like Down Home of Arcata, Calif./Deadwood, Oregon (Denice and Chuck Kennedy), Blue Puma, and the formerly tiny Moonstone Mountain Equipment, also of Arcata, CA. The list goes on to include: Sierra West of Santa Barbara, CA, which some have told me was founded by Richard Kelty the son of Dick Kelty of Kelty Packs; Rivendell of Idaho/Wyoming (Larry Horton and currently Eric Hardee); Powerhorn Mountaineering of Jackson, Wyoming, the Carmans of Life Link in Wyoming.
Patrick Smith of Mountainsmith packs and sleds; Himalayan Industries, of Monterey, CA. on Cannery Row; Dan Sherman's Synergy Works; Denali/Mountain Master packs; Ocate' foam bags/CosyQuip; Pivetta boots of Italy, such as the Pivetta 7, 8 or Eiger, imported by a Trailwise off-shoot called DMC, Donner Mountain Company; Yak Works of Seattle (Don Wittenberger); Plain Brown Wrapper kits, Jonathan Hinebauch's Altra Kits, and Andy Drolinger/Mic Mead's A16 of Southern California. Don Douglas of Alpenlite Packs in California (may be spelled Don Douglass)....And don't forget Western Mountaineering, which made great down bags and other gear.
I am also including Leon Akers, (Akers of Maine) because he was one of the very first to popularize cross-country skiing in America; in 1967 his store was virtually the only place in the USA where we at the University of Oregon Outdoor Program were able to purchase the gear that allowed us to begin the cross-country ski program!.(interview with Bob Woodward).
The two logos below will lead you to webpages with much detail about Rivendell and Frostline, and then you'll find links to many more of my pages about many of the above classic gear companies.
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