Salt. Sodium Chloride. NaCl. The Universal Language of Love.

Original Post Date 7/24/2021

Ouch.  Yesterday put me over the 200 mile / 40k gain mark.  I’m going to say my last few weeks of hiking would commonly been an entire season’s worth for the most avid outdoors person. And I will get barely two months total this summer.

So, when I finished this hike, and washing the shuttle van at midnight, I did some serious damage to a box of Wheat Thins and a baby loaf of pepper jack cheese. I just felt like I earned it. Then I got to sleep like a hibernating bear for a solid eight hours and it was glorious. I think bears might have it pretty good sometimes. 

I carry my bear spray all the time now.  Especially for mountain goats, which I had not fear of until this last hike. Never been stalked by a mountain goat before.  It is like having to deal with a 200lb puppy dog, but with sharp hooves and the horns of Satan. A puppy that either wants to lick the salt off your body, or stick you in the femoral artery with a spike. Either way, just not my thing. 

I was revisiting the fire lookout on Mt Brown, right at the head of Lake McDonald.  You will recall I got about 2/3^rd up on my very first day here before I had to turn around and work my first shift. This is considered one of the toughest trails in the park and for good reason.  At only 5 miles one way, it will extract an excruciating 4300 feet of gain, battering your body step by painful step.  

Think of putting your treadmill at a 15% incline for three hours.  And then kiss all of you toenails goodbye on the downhill.  Just my luck I was trying out a pair of brand-new trail shoes that had just arrived from Amazon. Yeah, I like playing with fire.

Got a good start with a very rare and coveted full night of sleep. The gain was slow but steady, but you just have to put your head down and grind out the elevation as you climb above Lake McDonald.

About 1000’ and a mile plus from the top, I look up from the trail to see I had come face to face with a mountain goat. He was going down.   We exchanged looks.   His was like a cow that comes across a new gate and isn’t sure what to do. 

Mine was like an entitled American thinking this trail had been built and maintained with opposable thumbs, so I consider it more mine than his. I tried to recall from the Driver’s Ed in High School who had the right of way.  

Eventually I gave him the road and climbed a couple of feet up off the trail. Made for a few good photos. 

He walks down the trail, ass-end to me, just going his own way.  I take the trail going up, adjust my pack and iPod volume.  He looks back at me, I bid him a good morning, and onward.   Then it got weirdly personal. I get this odd feeling I’m being watched.  Look back, and sure enough, he is following me.  About 25 yards back. 

I speed up, he speeds up.  I slow down, he slows down.  I stop, he stops.  But when he stops, he half-turns his head and pretends to munch on some grass growing along the trail. But, all the while his eyes never leave me.  Kind of like saying ‘Hey, I’m just a goat here doing my own goat thing.  I’m chewing on this grass, but I’d really like to be chewing on you.’ 

So now clearly I’m screwed.  After seeing the cougar stalking video on YouTube from that trail runner, I have no idea what is going to happen behind me. 

Worse yet, I start to think what the goat might be thinking.  In my head I give him a name, family, backstory, and before I know it I’ve created a new full character to write about.  His dreams of getting away from the big mountain and the simple joys of living in the hills.  How life was good before the tyranny of the bears, and the bullying of the big horn sheep (why do the horns have to be so big?  Why do they always butt in?). 

And this family life isn’t what he thought it would be.  If she wants to have two kids this spring, let her.  But I shouldn’t have to support them both.  I don’t even know if one of them is mine.  Have you seen how junior can’t stick to the rocks and hates to lick lichen?  I was away foraging the Livingston Range last fall.  And we all know she always goes for those white trash goats in the Lewis Range. 

And those guys keep their raggy winter coats all the way into August.  What a bunch of losers. Real ungulates.

Clearly by the time I hit the fire lookout with whitey in tow (I refuse to capitalize that color, all goats matter), I had a lot of my mind.  But I went about taking some photos and smiled, remembering the glory days from the last time here. 

The true summit is another 1.5 miles and 500 feet DOWN and another 1500 UP.  Yeah, been there once, I’m good.  But the ten-mile long Lake McDonald really falls into perspective from up there. 

Here is a little commentary when I got to the fire lookout.

The goat keeps hanging around, so I go up to the fire lookout catwalk to dump my gear and get a little peace.  Kind of like a prison warden looking over the convicts, with a certain sense of superiority looking down on nature. 

For some reason I was thinking those narrow steps up to the catwalk would be seen by the mountain goat the same way a lion in Africa sees a ladder.

All those Brits on expeditions always slept on top of the Range Rovers on platform tents because big cats just can’t climb ladders. So I found a nice spot on the shady side of the lookout with good views and settled in for a nice little power nap. 

All is good.  Air was just the right temp. Got that fatigue buzz going and was happy with the world.

Up on the fire lookout:

Hooves on a wooden catwalk make a very distinct sound.  Like being below deck in an old wooden ship when it’s getting crushed on the rocks and you can taste impending death.  I jump up and peek around the corner.  Sure as shit, the goat has climbed the stairs, is on the catwalk, and smacking his lips. 

I don’t know if you have ever been on a fire lookout.  They are very very small, especially when it is just you and a goat.  My mind plays this scenario out a thousand ways in a few moments. They all end with me being chased around a 10’ x 10’ square for all eternity like in a Pac Man game from hell.  Even Stephen King never came up with this level of horror. 

So I did what anyone in such a situation would do.  I screamed profanities in my best little girl shrieking voice.  At least that’s how it came out.  Not really proud of it.  The goat freaked out.   Mainly because it had never heard such a horrible sound in nature.  Secondly, because he overplayed his hand and didn’t have an exit strategy. 

The catwalk is so narrow it acted like a cattle squeeze shoot.  Can’t turn around, can’t back up, all you can do is charge forward into the two-legged skinny guy howling like a scared banshee in front of you. 

I ran, he ran.  Then he kicked and twisted and let out all kinds of puffing sounds, and I realized the catwalk guardrail was only about 28” high (no OSHA in 1923).  Now I’m thinking he’s going to fall off and break a spine, and I’m back in the national news. 

First as the guy who bear-spraying the Amish on the climber’s trail at Logan Pass, and now the fellow who turned a mountain goat into a paraplegic. 

You know the press would be on his side. Yeah, talk about how he is confined for the rest of his life to an all-terrain wheelchair, and how the handicap parking placard discriminated against him (two legs good, four legs bad).

The kids taking would have to take turns pre-licking his rocks for the foreseeable future.  Mom moves out of the National Park with her new boyfriend and into the state forest. They aren’t even above tree line. Kids embarrassed for life.

PTSM after the horrific attack:

In the end, the goat figured his shit out and I mine.  Of course I know all it wanted was salt. I was more concerned about where it wanted to extract it from on me.  What have people been teaching this thing?  I gave him a few crushed-up Triscuts on a tree stump mixed with a little urine, as if an offering to the Norse gods for safe passage home.  

And I don’t know why I thought a mountain goat wouldn’t climb stairs.  After all, isn’t that technically what they do all day?  I’m pretty sure it is the non-climbing mountain goats that the bears are pulling out of the snow drifts at the bottom of tall cliffs every spring.

I have heard that everyone has a spirit animal, and that animal must pick you. Kind of like in the movie Avatar when that the blue guy had to pick out his flying dragon pet thing for life. Now I know what that bond feels like.

I’ll do something small tomorrow. Got a big weekend coming up. With a little luck the smoke will blow the other way for a couple of days.