For the Love of the Sufferfest: Bear River Beatdown

Days with a lot of Type II fun tend to make for the best stories to tell. A couple weeks ago, I was sitting on the front porch having a couple of adult beverages and discussing lawnmowers with my friend Tony, when inevitably the conversation switched to some of our exploits in the backcountry. I started to wonder out loud what my five most heinous days of touring were. It took some deliberation, and arguing with myself, but I think I finally whittled down the list. I thought it would be fun to relive those days and share them with you because it's summer and quite frankly, I'm struggling to find content for this blog. So here we go... Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of my better stories. Where being arrogant bastards prevailed over whatever conditions were thrown at me and my friends those days. (Oh and they'll be in order from least heinous to most heinous...in case that wasn't clear!) Number 5: March 27, 2015 2015 was a difficult winter in general. For starters, it was the worst snow year in Utah history (in case you forgot). On top of that, I spent most of the season riding with a torn LCL in my left knee (which I refused to have checked out till after my 23rd birthday in April, two months after the injury occurred.) I should have cut my losses in February and got it fixed. But I didn't. Part of it was denial. Part of it was hoping for the season to turn around. Much like this season, we had to get pretty creative at times to find good touring options. Me and my buddy Jeff figured the Bear River Range north of Logan was a good place to go. Which it would have been, had we made our objective. The day was pretty much doomed from the start. We left Ogden shortly before 3am on the morning of the 27th for the hour and a half drive north. A very early start was necessary with warm temperatures in the forecast. The adventure began when I turned off the highway onto the partially melted out jeep road in Logan Canyon. This was the only time the Falcon didn't make it.... The snow on the road was track packed and frozen solid, meaning it was passable as long as you stayed on the road. However, we needed to find a preferably dry spot to park before we went too far. We went about 300 feet too far. As we attempted to turn around, the front tires of my truck found the one hollow spot where water had undermined what was left of the snowpack. The snow collapsed, and the front axle was beached. And we were fucked. No amount of four wheel drive was gonna get us out of that hole. The front tires weren't even touching the ground. We spent the next 6 hours shoveling and chipping away at the frozen 6 inches of snow, trying every trick in the book to get unstuck. Nothing worked. Finally, around noon, a group of 4 showed up on their way to one of the yurts. With their help, we finally got out. Now after all that, most people probably would have cut their losses and went home. Not us. We decided to start skinning anyways. Knowing our primary objective was probably out, we decided to just go as far as we could before the snow got too wet. Remember when I said I had a torn LCL? Well that became a factor almost immediately. Sometimes the pain was tolerable and I could skin up no problem and be fine the whole day. This was not one of those days. Each step was excruciatingly painful. We gained the first ridge and I physically could not go any further. A glimpse of our objective gave us a reason to go back. It was time to turn around, though. The ride down was equally shitty. By this point, the snow had become saturated at lower elevations, making turning difficult, especially with a bum knee. The exit also required a good amount of split-skiing, which I'm bad at now, but was terrible at 3 years ago. Meanwhile my knee continued to hinder every movement. The thing is, you can't just give up. I was at the point where I was crying because I was in so much pain. But I still had to get back to the car. And I wasn't gonna ask Jeff to drag my ass out. He would have done it. But I didn't want it. I got myself in and I was 100% getting myself out. It took awhile, but I made it back to the truck. We got back to Ogden, grabbed a beer and laughed at our misfortune. You could make the argument that this day should be higher on the list. I put it at number 5 because this was the original sufferfest. This was the day that taught me how to deal with those relentless days in the mountains. There have been a lot of them since then. Jeff loved days like this. I'm sure if he hadn't moved to California to surf and run marathons barefoot this day wouldn't even crack the top 5. Maybe not even the top 10. He taught me how to love the sufferfest. And paved the way for the next four stories I'll share in the coming days.