Outdoors
It was the morning of my 30th birthday and the world might as well have been coming to an end. My survival strategy consisted of sleeping late and going out for a nice big breakfast. But Telemark Girl had other plans.
“Rise and shine, old timer,” she barked, doling out a spanking for emphasis. “You’ve got 15 minutes to gather your ski gear and shove a bagel in your pie hole. Party Bus leaves at 06:00 sharp.”
“What the blazes is going on?” I queried, squinting confusedly into the predawn dimness.
“I’m taking you to a cabin in the woods,” Telemark Girl proclaimed, hefting a towering backpack over her shoulder.
“Which woods?” I asked, wrestling hurriedly into my pants.
“Quit yakking and start packin’,” she advised, marching out the door. “You’ll find out when we get there!”
Getting there took forever.
First we headed south. Then we headed southeast. Then we headed northeast. Then we headed south again but, this time, in a westerly direction.
At some point in that matrix, we apparently crossed the Columbia River. But you could have fooled me. Once we rumbled past the “You are now entering Umatilla National Forest” sign, so much snow was falling that I couldn’t tell top from bottom any more.
“What state are we in?” I asked, trying for a little better bead on our location.
“Powdertopia,” she said. “Does that answer your question?”
Fortunately, about a half hour and six inches of new snow accumulation later, we plowed into the trailhead to find the place deliciously deserted.
Midway through assembling our gear, however, I was surprised to see a pair of familiar-looking vehicles come rumbling in.
“Surprise!” shouted my buddy, leaning out the window of his Plymouth. “Surprise again!” shouted another one of my peeps, grinning over the steering wheel of his Bronco.
My birthday party had begun.
But first, we had to undertake a blistering eight-mile road traverse to reach Godman Guard Station. And, as delicious as breaking fresh tracks through all that fresh powder might have tasted, blinding whiteout conditions didn’t make it any easier.
Five hours later, after we finally managed to find the place, it took another hour of hard shoveling just to trench our way down to a front door.
Exhausted to the point of retching, we immediately set about building up a fire in the wood stove. Unfortunately, the warmer we made the cabin, the stinkier the cabin got. It smelled like rotting animal carcass in there.
Judging by the throng of live rodents we heard scampering behind the walls and ceiling every night, there were probably dozens of carcasses festering away all around us. But search as we might, we never found a single one.
Over the next three days, things got pretty gnarly in there. But the terrain and snow conditions were so undeniably epic, nobody saw reason to care. Thanks to good friends, shaped skis and my first-ever pair of Scarpa T-3s, turning 30 in the Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness Area is an adventure I’ll never forget.
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