Matt Conover Memories 6-2007

 

 

SKINNER BROTHERS HUNTING CAMP - Autumn, 1969

This is about my autumn experience as a camp hand during camping and hunting season, 1969. 

I had been a river guide for the whitewater season on the Rogue River of Oregon until it ended, and didn't have to be back to college in wildlife biology at UC Davis until October, so hitched across to Wyoming and Montana, where I called Monte's house to look up my friend from high school, Bill Beckett. Mrs. Skinner told me that some of the brothers and Bill were up in Jackson Hole, guiding packtrains of hunters into the Gros Ventre Mountains. She gave me directions to a remote Forest Service road turnoff that had just a number on a post. So, from Yellowstone I hitchhiked down and found it on the outside of a turn in the road, from her fine direction-giving. Then I hiked through unknown woods of the Bridger-Teton National Forest for four miles.

 

Just as I finished listening to a drumming spruce grouse I rounded a turn, and looked out over a big meadow with green grasses turning autumn brown, back-dropped by a camp full of tents with horses staked out, all lit from behind by the morning sun. It looked like a painting, or a movie.

 

After dark, a pack train came in with hunters, led by Monte and Courtney. I helped to unload horses, cook dinner, and wash up, then offered to work for free to learn how to guide and pack.

 

Next day we got up in the darkest dark, about 4 a.m., and loaded up hunters for a day trip into the Gros Ventres. We heard elk, mostly in their whistling and grunting, and their high haunting cathedral organ call. In the pre-dawn darkness we couldn’t even see them, but as the sun came up and illuminated one meadow we could see a bull with a small herd before they disappeared into the wall of tree trunks. Mid-morning we finally got a break, and Monte pulled out his old Stanley Thermos of steaming hot coffee, just the thing for cold fingers and noses. We had seen a lot of country, but the best was about to blow us out of the water....

 

As we were riding back we could see over the last line of trees along the edge of the butte a white peak far away in the distance. That gradually became three white peaks. Then, when cresting over through that tree line, the Grand Tetons just SPRANG OUT in full glorious majesty, about 20 times as huge as we had thought they were, right in front of us, cloaked in new snow, with blue backdrop, in classic magazine beauty! Quintessential symbol of America!

 

The Snake River runs pretty straight there, left-falling riffles beneath sage-covered terrain benches that drop from the main basin floor in a set of plateaus, down to the river and ancient river bends that were cut off, and their waters stilled into ponds. Ansel Adams, the famed photographer, must have been about there when he took his famous black & white poster photo, of the Snake River with the Tetons behind in evening light.

 

In the bottomlands were deep stands of pine, fir, spruce and aspen, around beaver ponds with moose, and the occasional weathered barn stood out on the plain. Jackson Lake lay out there in the middle distance. The whole range was displayed, all the way down to the Rendezvous Peaks. Monte had never said a thing, never bragged about what he was about to show us. Just waited to let us discover it ourselves, and get blown away with amazement. “Just another day at work.”

 

BLIZZARD:  A few more days of this resonant life and it got real cold. Then it warmed up and snow clouds came in during the night. We didn't want to get snowbound back there, so broke camp, just as a blizzard started. We could hear the wind in the trees as it started to snow, but where we were, behind the moraine, down in the creek bottom, it was quiet, and the snow came down thick and swirling, covering everything in white real fast, like winter was coming on hard.

 

By the time we had rolled all those white canvas tents and heaved them up into the back of the green F-350 1-ton stakeside truck, we were in a full-on blizzard.

We finally climbed up into the cab, swept off the new snow, got the blower blasting and squeezed three guys in. Monte drove, swiping with gloved hand to clear fog, while we forced our way up the steep road onto the moraine.

 

We snaked out the 4 miles of rolling trail road in granny gear, compound low for power, grinding and roaring at low speed. Where the road wound around the base of hills it was often tilted. At times it seemed like our top-heavy load was tilting over so far that it threatened to take us all the way over onto our side like a horse rolled over a trail edge onto its back. Finally, we lugged around one last turn and down into a creek bottom, then up steeply onto the outside of the banked turn, humped over the top, and were at last on the dry pavement of the Wyoming highway between Yellowstone and Jackson. We drove through Jackson, and on down through Hoback Junction, and past the headwaters of the Green River, to Pinedale.

 

Burnt Lake Base Camp: Getting to finally see the Burnt Lake Camp was like visiting a national monument you had heard about for years. Tipis, log cabin sauna, icy lake, and trails up to the Continental Divide peaks which the teams had climbed. Mt Baldy, Bonneville and the Green River headwaters were over the ridges.

 

We got to work on camp improvements, and learned the vast capacity for hard work that was in the character of these people. Found Bill after searching around. He was way down in a deep hole in the glacial till, digging a new outhouse hole. It was on the moraine, far from the shore, and there was a pile of cobbles near their former home. He was slamming down a big crowbar to dislodge cobbles, and hefting and throwing these mini-boulders up over his head out of the hole. Then he'd slam his shovel blade down into softer dirt, and heave the shovelful out over his head, so that dirt was flying out from no apparent source, like behind the legs of a digging badger. "CLANG!" every time he hit one, my shoulders, elbows and wrists would hurt. "SCRAPE!" the blade would cut through sand striking smaller rocks, like dragging fingernails against a blackboard. But he was already down in over his head, and it had to last a long time. We finally got him up out of there, and lifted the outhouse back over the hole, ready for another 20 years of campers.

 

Meadow Lake: Some of us went on a horseback ride to Meadow Lake, which is a couple miles from camp, through lodgepole pine forest. There I got a great photo of the man on horseback in fringed buckskin shirt and black flat-brimmed hat with a bota bag at arm's length shooting a stream of water into his mouth. Meadow Lake is in the background reflecting blue, and diamonds of late afternoon sun are shining off the water near bright green reeds along the edges. Seemed incongruous to be so green this late in the autumn, after a near blizzard in the Gros Ventres.

 

Prairie Dog Hunting in The Desert: The camp must have been in its last session of campers, as we got to load up the truck and travel down South of Sublette County toward the Big Sandy River. We were way out in the desert, off road, with sage grouse drumming, and the kids were being taught by Monte how to find creatures in the landscape. A prairie dog village was out in the middle distance, and the kids were checking them out through the spotting scope. Pronghorn antelope were off in the far distance. When we were driving back toward the road more antelope suddenly popped up out of a dry arroyo and were running alongside the truck. We started hanging out the window, excited, and those antelope just shifted gears and took off like they had turned on their afterburners. Bill and I left and came back with a third friend, Casey.

 

 

WRANGLER FOR HUNTERS: Our first night at Burnt Lake with hunters, we were introduced to the region, practices, and famous people who had come to hunt there. The most notable seemed to have been the Randall Brothers from Florida, who are famous knife manufacturers. They could hunt anywhere in the world, but they chose Skinner Brothers.

We had to get up at 3:30 in the morning, when it was severely cold, and I was seemingly dead on my feet. We would go into each tipi to light stoves for the guests and hunters. Most were gentlemen of means, respectful of us wranglers, and grateful to not have to get up so early themselves. We'd scoop sawdust impregnated with kerosene and light a low fire so that the hunters would be warm when they climbed out of their sleeping bags on cots at 4 in the morning.

Then, we would go feed horses hay in the dark. We walked out with headstalls and bridles in the dark, and moved the horses over to be saddled after cold breakfast. We'd saddle the horses, get everyone gone, and go back to bed in the tipi for a few hours. When the pack string got back, we'd feed the hunters and guides and be back at work again.

 

WE HUNT THE HIGH COUNTRY: When I at last had earned the chance to go out on a hunt, Bob was leading and we were riding out to the South, along the trail that follows the rim between the lakes, looking out over the far bowl of Boulder Lake. Ole was riding near me and swept his arm toward the landscape below, saying "When I was growing up we could look into this valley and see hundreds of deer."

 

That evening, high in the mountains, we were privileged to share in a classic scene of Rocky Mountain beauty. Late light shone between thunderclouds behind us, lighting up a dark, green line of spruce and fir groves. As we rode through a break in the wall of spruce spires the sun lit up the great wall of the Continental Divide to the east and the meadow of skunk cabbage in front of us.

 

Suddenly a big mule deer popped his head up from grazing and looked over his right shoulder at us. He had been facing downslope to the South, as if to monitor for approaching predators. We locked gazes for a long several seconds before the crack of a rifle shot sounded, and his spirit slipped off to deer heaven. Everyone was silent for a moment, contemplating the spirit of the departed one, until one of the brothers reckoned I had the opportunity now to learn some more mountain survival skills.

It was my first experience, and somewhat of a ceremony, since I was training to become a wildlife biologist. Skinner Brothers taught me how to do a clean professional job, and subsequent employers noted and appreciated it. After barn surgery on sheep for a university research center, work in Alaska on moose and caribou, I was thankful that I had been taught well, with an attitude of honor and respect for the creature.

 

SPIKE CAMP:

Each of the three of us was assigned to a different brother, to support that brother’s group. I was helping Monte. We were headed up into the high country, hunting elk. After a few hours in the intermediate foothills and plateau country we were realizing why there were so few backpackers in this part of the world. The Wind Rivers have miles of long approach through foothills, and there isn’t real dramatic country right there to justify all the miles of walking to get in. The closer dramatic country lies to the south, with Wolf’s Head and Pingora, while the country here was thick with old burns of lodgepole pine -- just the kind of thickets where elk would lay up during the day.

 

Suddenly there was a crashing in the woods, and then more crashing, as other elk jumped up and started fleeing through the forest. I couldn't see anything. Maybe the others could up front, but later one said that we were almost on top of them before they realized we were there, so no one even got off a shot because visibility was so tough. Made me appreciate how difficult it was for fur trappers to move through this country knowing that Shoshone or Blackfeet might be within yards of them and they wouldn’t know until it was too late to prevent close quarters attack.

 

We rose up out of the dense thickets of canyons into more open forest with bigger trees. We eventually took a rest break, even sleeping for a while in big open forestlands. It was the heart of the Wind Rivers, and we were IN it! In steep woods, on a curving trail crossing the headwaters of a creek, sudden noise of clanging kitchen boxes catching on trees spooked a horse and then others. The first one started buckin’ & kickin’, spreading tension to all the others, who started yanking back, and I could just see the whole packstring about to go tumbling down into the ravine. But he eventually settled down, and the others with him.

 

First Night: All through the afternoon we rode, rising and winding and dropping over various moraine ridges. When it got dusk I was beyond tired, starting to get a little pained, when we angled up over a little ridge, switchbacked sharply down into dense forest with low branches, and were suddenly stopped, at home, at the door of a tent camp on rocky cobble trail. We were able to use dishes and pans that were already there waiting. A wolverine or other critter had gotten into some of the things, but otherwise it was a settled place, and we slept quickly.

 

Second Day: That day Monte led us North to scan with binoculars into the highest ridges, and down into the drainages that flowed from the headwater bowls to form the Green River. That river eventually flows all the way down through Wyoming into Utah, to the Colorado River in the desert, so it was a place of geographic significance. We glassed the open country, and could see the tops of peaks back beyond the Green River headwaters, up into the Hoback, or even up behind Jackson, in the Gros Ventres. Years later I would look back southeast to these ridges above us when awaking pre-dawn near the top of the Grand Teton, and see the Wind River Range in black silhouette against an orange horizon.

We scanned with binoculars all the way down into the far canyons. It looked far down in there even through binoculars. Monte said that if we had seen elk down that far in we probably would not have harvested them, as it would take too long to ride down, prep them and get back in time. So we turned back, at that magical moment which became our furthest extent of penetration into the Wind Rivers. Turning around was hard when there was so much more country to explore.

 

More Horse Trouble: On the way back up a steep switchback trail over granite ledges and sandy trail the lead rope of the packhorse in front of me got under the tail of the hunter’s horse in front of me. He was a big cheerful farmer from Wisconsin who had saved all his life for a trip like this. Suddenly his face was full of fear when his horse suddenly whinnied and roared up on her hind legs, staggering backwards on the narrow trail above steep drop-offs into the canyon below. She was threatening to step back over the edge and tumble down the mountain with him on her.

 

That scared the pack horse, so she started backing up and pulling the rope even tighter. Monte realized what was going on and handed off his lead rope to the guy behind. He raced back, grabbed the lead rope of the farmer, spread the horses out and settled them down. “Your horse just got a wild hair, from this lead rope catching under her tailbone. You’ll be alright.” He might have saved a life or two that day.

 

VICTOR LAKE BLOOD RED at SUNSET:

We still hadn't gotten any elk and it was almost sunset. We had roamed up and over another divide and were back into big timber. The Golden Lakes were on our left in a basin between the last two ribs of peaks that form the Continental Divide. It was quiet except for the horses' hooves clacking on the granite shelves. The peaks to our left were real close, steeply above us, visible through the trees as crags.

 

Suddenly we heard that whistling sound indicating elk in the vicinity. Monte stopped the pack train to hear better. He was already getting off his horse. He motioned for the next two to do the same. I stayed with the horses on the summit while they dropped down into the canyon.

 

The wind brought with it the haunting sound of a cathedral organ, rising up the octaves with greater volume until the crescendo of a full-lung bull elk calling out his challenge to all other bulls in the Wind River Range and the Rocky Mountains. “Come out and show yourself! This ol' bull is going to take over the world, "UNK-Unk-unk!"

 

A shot rang out. The sharp crack splintered the early evening air of the canyon, and carombed all the way up into the crags above us, bounced off and echoed back, then projected out over Victor Lake, on its way to the cosmos. The wind picked up the sound and it echoed back through the tops of the trees, for a third time.

 

It was a long time sitting up there on that granite crest by myself. The horses adjusted their weight, harrumphed, and blew the wind out of their lungs. Saddles and wooden pack frames creaked in the quiet. I was looking West over Victor Lake, its surface reflecting sunset orange, and it was totally calm. After a while the sunset turned to blood red. Then Victor Lake turned blood red. I could see a little feather of a riffle on the surface of the water, indicating a breeze starting to whisper across the water. Gradually the breeze fanned out across the lake, feathering the whole surface into a textured red. I could hear the breeze coming through the trees in a growing whisper as it hit the slope and gathered itself in a rush. It roared up through the forest bowl into the treetops over my head, and onward to the crestline crags of the Continental Divide, sustaining a steady whoosh of evening wind.

 

Finally a dark figure arrived back up at the top of the canyon, climbed aboard the lead horse, and called back, "Monte wants us to bring down the horses."

 

By then the forest was getting dark, and as the horses began to descend over the granite, sparks shot out from their feet. It was horseshoe steel striking the flint in the granite. We got down into the bottom of the ravine and recognized Monte when he stood up from a full, bent-over position, feet spread wide from preparing this immense bull elk. I was glad to hear him say that we wouldn’t finish tonight, but let it cool, and come back for it in the morning.

 

Night Riding On The Trail: We headed back up the steep headwall in the forest, and crossed a high meadow under trees. Suddenly I was SLAMMED in the chest and swept onto my back, vertebrae striking the cantle of the saddle, my head pressed into the top of the horse’s flanks, and fir needles stabbing into my face and eyes. It threatened to sweep me off, under the hooves of the following horse. The following horse just dropped his head while I spun my whole upper body around wide to the side, and tried to sit up again, fearful in the dark that another unseen branch was about to knock me off. 

 

Third Day: We were camped way up high, in a tiny meadow plateau of short grass and tundra, with perched pools of clear water fed by the last snow banks of the autumn. I was washing dishes away from the dribble creek that cut through the tundra steeps between the pools. When I went back to get a drink and looked down in , thinking about fish tickling and scooping, I thought I was going dizzy. I looked again to lock in on something solid, and it turned out that the surface of the sand itself appeared to be moving. I peered closer and realized that there were creatures with fine sand cemented around the body, legs sticking out, crawling around. Monte later told me they were caddis fly larvae, protecting themselves from predatory birds, until it was time for emergence into a flying insect with big lacey wings. I looked up from that micro-detail and gazed out across the vast 3-D space above the Green River Valley to the Salt River Range. 

 

Pack Hitches: 

On the way out we rode back down into the steep forest ravine and cut the carcass up into quarters. The front-quarter was reasonable weight, but the hind quarters were so heavy that one guy would have to struggle to lift the off-balance bulk. Where there were empty pannier pack bags, we loaded front quarters in. But there weren’t enough pack bags, so we had to rope and tie some of them to pack frames, and tie the rib sections onto the outside of the load.

 

We started with a loop around the bony topline of the shoulder blade, which was now the center-weighted bottom of the front quarter. From that loop we’d run a diagonal up the meat section, wrap around just beyond the widest part of the shoulder, as far as the far side’s diagonal line, then hook the end of the rope under the diagonal and pull it tight with a lock hitch. From there we’d run a line straight up the leg bone to the ankle, and tie a loop all the way around the shank, then loop the running section around the frame post. The quarter would then ride in its own loop. The antlers went on top of the tarped load, upside down, tines facing backward so that they wouldn’t catch in the trees.

Monte’s teaching was so clear that I can still remember it 40 years later.

 

Post-Hunt: It was good to finally get back to Burnt Lake, but sad to leave the Winds. We unloaded gear at the big Quonset hut, where the attic level was full of magical marvels, like the head and hide blanket mount of a polar bear Quentin had shot in Alaska. Monte showed us how to skin out a deer and an elk hanging from hooks. He taught us how to peel the hide back and use the curved blade of a Green River skinning knife to prevent poking a hole through the hide. We took hides up to a tannery in Jackson Hole.

 

The Legacy:

Courtney: Courtney's gift for description rose to advocacy in recent years, reaching all the way to the Wall Street Journal and magazines, in quotes by reporters about the changes wrought to the Wyoming landscape and impacts on antelope, grouse and migrating elk and deer.

 

I have followed over the Internet the achievements of this family, even going out on special trips to purchase copies of national newspapers and magazines in which they have been quoted. A quick Internet search by name and state, reveals the fascinating roles to which these gentlemen have risen. One recent search showed that Monte Skinner was on the Sublette County Board of Commissioners. His name showed up on a lawsuit against Enron Oil.

 

Courtney's name has shown up in websites of nature organizations as a referenced expert. Both are profiled on the website of the artist Ralph Oberg. (Check out Google Images.)

You'll also see the tough news about Bob Skinner, his wife Doris and his son Todd (who all died in 2006). But just remember that we can all take great satisfaction from having known these fine men and women. We have felt their influence on our lives -- even from that remote a place.

 

Thank you to all our families for helping us to have been exposed to these positive influences of our young lives. And thank you to those of you who have in turn sent your kids to Skinner Brothers. You've all been building a better society for the environmental ethics, transferable skills, and confidence adaptable to leadership in lifelong careers.