Where Angels Fear to Tread
Our band of 11 men, six mules, and three packhorses left the Mill Creek trailhead on a cloudy September morning, bound for Duane Neal's Grizzly Creek camp, some 16 miles away, half of it uphill-very uphill, from roughly a mile in altitude to two. I was much encouraged to learn that I wasn't the only geriatric case in the crowd. Neal, who has operated Black Otter Guide Service (406-333-4362; blackotterguideservice.com) for nearly 40 years, was 70; one of his guides, Dave Morton, was 66; and one of the hunters, John Nolander, was 64.

Perhaps an hour into the ride, we encountered a blowdown blocking the trail. We dismounted and took turns removing it with a double-bit axe and two-man saw. Farther up we hacked through another in the same way, then a third and a fourth. I can't speak for the others, but the chopping and sawing made me feel old-timey and rugged and ready for whatever the wilderness might dish out.

Snow is what it dished out, snow up to the horses' knees. The firs and lodgepole pines were flocked with the stuff, and clouds and mists veiled the rocky escarpments above. The trail grew steeper in a series of tight switchbacks, then leveled off and wrapped around the mountainside, the slope on our right falling a couple of hundred feet to the Mill Creek headwaters, the slope on the left almost sheer.

Approaching Wallace Pass, the trail became like a catwalk against the face of a tall building, and in this precarious position, the pack train stopped. I stood in the stirrups and was dismayed to see that the trail ahead had vanished under the snow. One of the guides, Gary Francis, was on foot, looking for it. He didn't appear to be having much success as he lunged through waist-deep drifts. Behind him, the mules and packhorses stood blowing steam. Without a trail to follow, the danger of a spectacular wreck had increased considerably; that is, if the lead mule took one wrong step and fell, he would pull the whole string down with him.

We shivered in our saddles. Neal passed the word to dismount and allow the horses to find their own way. That was when we knew we were, if not in trouble, then in an interesting situation. Getting off a horse on what amounted to the side of a cliff was a delicate operation. As I trudged behind mine, a pale gray gelding named Spirit, my sea-level lungs labored in the thin air, my heart thudded unnaturally fast, and my mind shot back to a story I'd heard about a 78-year-old man from Colorado who had accepted an invitation to go elk hunting despite his recent recovery from a triple bypass. When his wife objected, he replied, "I'd rather die on a snowy mountain than in a nursing home, watching TV, not knowing what's on."

Having undergone two cardiac operations in the previous year-a procedure to cure atrial fibrillation, then the insertion of a stent in a blocked coronary artery-I got to thinking about the septuagenarian's remark. I had come to terms with my mortality long ago in Vietnam, at an age when it is normal for you to think that you will never die. Now that I own far more shares of the past than I do of the future, my dread is not of nonexistence but the loss of physical and mental powers-the heat in the lump of dust that expires before life itself. No, I did not want to die on a snowy mountain, but given the choice between that and watching a TV in a nursing home not knowing what was on, there was no doubt which one I'd pick.

And therein I saw a better answer to Jim Harrison's question. I was on an elk hunt because I was capable of it, at the same time that I knew I might not be next year or the year after. I was greedy to do the kinds of things I love while I still could.

Wait, you say. Do you mean to say you love crawling up snow-filled mountains? Yes. Not for the sake of it, but for the rewards it brings. One of which was granted when, after some difficulty, we reached Wallace Pass. Below lay the Grizzly Creek and Knife Creek valleys, bounded by mountains that made a white-crested, jagged horizon, range upon range, some greened by dense pines, some blackened by the vast forest fires that had burned through the Absarokas only weeks earlier, but altogether a landscape that looked as wild and pristine as when the Crow and the Blackfeet and the mountain men had hunted and trapped there.

Some three hours later, we arrived at a broad meadow of ¿¿copper-colored grass, through which Grizzly Creek meandered, cutthroat trout flashing in its pools. I was delighted to see smoke curling up from some hills overlooking the meadow. Camp consisted of several wall tents heated by woodburning stoves, a large mess tent, and a corral, where we were all glad to part with our horses, for the time being anyway.

We were served hot coffee by Terry and Elnora Neal, Duane's brother and sister-in-law, who do the cooking and manage the camp.

"Heard you had quite a time getting over the pass," Elnora said to me. "Duane said it was the worst crossing he's made coming in for nearly 40 years."

"Yup," drawled Duane, sitting nearby in the dining tent. "Hairiest I've ever seen it."

I was a little surprised to hear this. It hadn't seemed all that rough, but that, I now realized, had been due to my own ignorance of the situation. As the old saying goes, if you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs, you probably don't know what's going on.