Almost twenty-two years ago, to the day at this exact time (9:30 pm), I was huddled under a snow-heavy willow tree seeking shelter from the vicious and incessant wind along Fossil Creek, deep in the White Mountains National Recreation Area. I was 15, and very, very cold…hypothermia had set in a couple hours earlier and I had passed the point of shivering. I couldn’t feel my hands, one of my feet had severe frostbite, and I had just about given up hope of getting warm. I was huddled therewith my father and we were both trying to keep each other sane and awake so that we would at least survive another hour until Dick Bouts came back on his snowmachine to carry us to the Windy Gap cabin where my younger brother Andy, hopefully, had a fire and warm sleeping bags waiting for us.
It was -45 degrees with a 20-25 mph wind and we had been in those conditions all day, trying to break trail with our snowmachines into the Windy Gap cabin. We had started at 10:00 in the morning, just as the sun broke the horizon and we had battled the elements all day, exhausting both our bodies and spirits. Around noon my snow machine had bogged down in a new patch of overflow on Wickersham Creek and, foolishly, I had stepped off the snowmachine to pull it onto more solid ice. I sunk in up to my knee and filled my right bunny boot with slush and water. I hated wet feet and the sloshing and squishing in my boot drove me crazy. By 2:00 pm we reached the Colorado Creek cabin where we intended to eat lunch and warm up before pushing on to the Windy Gap cabin for the night.
The Colorado Creek cabin is located next to a small kettle pond in a wide, windswept patch of tundra. As Andy and I broke out our peanut butter sandwiches, frozen stiff and solid, my Dad and Dick Bouts went out to find the woodpile for the cabin to light the woodstove. The plan was to eat lunch and allow me to dry out my boot and socks before proceeding to Windy Gap. In anticipation of the imminent warmth a fire would afford I took off my bunny boot and socks and put my cold foot in by parka to warm up. Just after I had removed my boot the adults returned with the devastating news that there was no wood to be found. To make things worse, the heavy snow over Christmas had buried all of the small black spruce that might have been cut for firewood in years with less snow. So, there I was with my wet, cold foot out in the -45 degree cabin, a pair of socks frozen stiff, and a bunny boot glazed inside and outside with ice. The next potential chance for warmth was 26 snowbound miles away at the Windy Gap cabin.
I had no choice but to don my frozen socks and boot. We all knew that the chances of my foot reheating the boot were next to none and we drove our snowmachines over the unbroken trail like bats out of hell in the hopes that the minutes we saved would lessen the inevitable damage to my foot, but we were stopped by deep snow and low gas almost 7 miles from the cabin. I remember sitting at the top of the ridge that dropped precipitously into the Fossil Creek drainage with 42 miles of trail behind us and 7 miles of unbroken powder ahead. We debated the pros and cons of going back or forging ahead and decided that our best bet lay in pushing on with one snowmachine to Windy Gap cabin to conserve gas. It was decided that my dad and I would scout and compact the trail with snowshoes down to Fossil Creek (almost 2 miles), Dick Bouts would follow our trail on an old BLM SkiDoo Tundra with Andy.
Once we got down to Fossil Creek, the overflow had created a smooth, new sheen of ice that Dick and Andy could follow without our help. It was decided that Dick and Andy would proceed to the Windy Gap cabin. Andy would remain at the cabin and get a fire started and Dick would then ferry my dad and I to the cabin, one by one, depending upon who was worse off. So, that’s why we found ourselves huddled beneath that small willow bower on a frigid January evening. I remember sitting there with my dad, the cold moonlight casting long shadows over the deep snow, straining our ears listening for the distant whine of the old Tundra coming back along the creek bed for us. I don’t remember much beyond this…neither does my dad.
My father and I haven’t talked much of this evening and I remember very little beyond being in the cabin, lying on an old moth-eaten mattress next to the fire crying as my frozen foot slowly began to unthaw. I am certain that very few people have experienced the sensation of warm blood flowing back into a frozen appendage, bursting the frozen, damaged blood vessels as it goes. It’s and excruciating experience and results in significant tissue damage. I eventually fell asleep, or passed out…I can’t remember which, but awoke the next morning in Windy Gap cabin with a coating of ice over my sleeping bag and a right foot that was almost three times its normal size. Our initial plan had been to head back to the Elliot Highway that morning and get back to town, but it quickly became apparent that my swollen foot was not going to fit in my boot. So we decided to stay at Windy Gap.
We ended up staying at Windy Gap for 4 days. We lived off old cans of Dinty Moore beef stew left from the winter before and by rationing our snacks. We spent that days stoking the fire to keep the -40 temperatures at bay, playing cards, reading and rereading old Outdoor Life magazines, and telling each other stories and jokes. In the evening we’d look out to see the most spectacular array of stars and we’d try and identify the few constellations we knew. The distant howl of wolves were haunting and left an indelible impression on me; I recall not being scared, in fact it was comforting to know that there were other living creatures out in the cold and I felt reassured by the nightly chorus of the wolves.
After our fourth day at Windy Gap the swelling in my foot had gone down enough to allow me to put on my boot again; it had also warmed up to a balmy -10 degrees so we packed up and ferried gear and people to the snowmachines we had left at the top of the Fossil Creek drainage. We unthawed our snowmachines and safely returned to our cars, parked near the Tolovana River on the Elliot Highway, but I still remember this trip every winter. When the temperature dips I still feel it in my right foot. My right foot has never recovered from the tissue damage and when the temperature falls below freezing my foot begins to get cold. My wife still doesn’t understand why I wear two pairs of socks on my right foot in the winter, and despite my best attempts my right foot still gets numb. So, at this time of year my foot always takes me back to that frigid evening on Fossil Creek when I realized that I was alone and alive.
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