V10E15_ Snowbound in the Absaroka Range

It's Sunday morning, September 6, 2020, and I was wandering through southern Montana, and I stumbled upon this recreation area, Natural Bridge Overlook and Falls. Turned out to be quite a beautiful setting. Adventure is afoot. Natural Bridge Falls picnic area. What a pleasant surprise that was. I was there for about three hours, and it's now around noon. By the time I left, the parking lot was full, so it's very much a destination. Also, there's a heat wave hitting much of the country right now. Yesterday in Bozeman, it got into the 90s, and today I'm expecting much of the same. In fact, I was in Bozeman when the Bridger Fire started, which is a wildfire in the mountains to the northeast, and I saw it go from nothing to just a really terrifying blaze. Now, if the weather forecast is right, the temperature is supposed to drop majorly tomorrow and Tuesday, and I think we're even going to have some precipitation, which will hopefully help with the wildfires. 18. It's 8 p.m. on Sunday night, and I saw some rough terrain today, so I know that I'm going to want my sway bar disconnected for tomorrow. Since my electronic sway bar disconnect is still out of commission, I'm going to go ahead and use my tools to disconnect these end links right here. This is snug. Disconnecting these end links, one on the driver's side and one the passenger's side, will increase the flexibility of the front suspension, which is helpful off-road, but before you go back on-road, on-highway, or at higher speeds, you want to reconnect it for safety. There's one passenger side. Now that the sway bar is disconnected, use a bungee cord to hold the end links up and out of the way. As I ventured farther into the National Forest this afternoon, I found this superb dispersed campsite next to a fairly small mountain lake. It's about a quarter mile in from the main dirt road, along a rocky and narrow 4x4 track that requires a decent amount of ground clearance on your vehicle. Furthermore, I was talking to other campers who are familiar with the area, and as I travel south along the forest road further up the mountain, the road's supposed to get fairly technical, so I want to start the day off tomorrow well-prepared. Adventure is afoot. I'm back on the main forest road, working my way south, deeper into the mountains. I've got my coffee, the front sway bar is disconnected as of last night, and I aired my tires way down so they feel like marshmallows. The jeep is rolling so gracefully over the rocks and through the potholes, it's riding like a Lincoln Town Car. A bit of a stair step there with some wet rocks that were staggered just right. The lockers didn't cut the mustard, but just tweaking my line to the right did the trick. Um, left or right? My map is only showing one way. Left. Left it is. We're going up anyway, and left goes up. When I got to this spot almost an hour ago, there was virtually no snow accumulation, and then as soon as I popped the camper, the skies opened up and it's been snowing heavily ever since. This is not a surprise to me. I knew at the higher elevations, I'm at 9,500 feet, there'd be the possibility of snow, and I checked the forecast, it's just supposed to last today, and then the sun's supposed to come out tomorrow. The only thing I don't know is exactly how much it's going to accumulate, and it already accumulated a lot, but I think that after I'm done cooking lunch, to be safe, I need to break camp and head back down the mountain. It's not worth the risk. This is Campbell's Chunky Spicy Chicken Quesadilla, and it's probably my favorite chunky soup. I haven't had chunky soup in a long time. I'm just doing it now because it's quick and easy, and I need to leave. Time to go! I blew it. I made a totally bad call, and the road down into the basin, by the time I got back to it, there was too much snow, and I was slipping and sliding all over the place. I couldn't claw up under the rocks, so I backed down, pulled the jeep into a flat spot, and the snow was still out there accumulating. I'm not out of communication. I have connectivity via inReach, and I've reported my location. For the remainder of the day, I've just been keeping an eye on the weather forecast, evaluating the road, and formulating a general plan and contingency plan, so I'm not in danger personally. I have warmth, food, and all the supplies I need, just, you know, being self-sufficient, and the weather's supposed to improve throughout the week. However, it's yet to be determined if I'm going to need extraction or not, and that's what I'm anxious about. Tomorrow morning, the snow will have stopped, and if it's not too deep, I'm going to attempt a winch fest. It's not too much of a climb out of the basin. It's just a rocky hill, and the rocks are slick with snow. There's a lot of direct pools, so I think maybe five or six winch pools, and I should be able to get to the top of the basin, and once I'm up there, it's all downhill. I'm just going to be patient, take one step at a time, and call for help if I need help, but I can tell you I really underestimated circumstances, and I made a mistake, and I regret it. All right, Tuesday morning, September 8th, 10 22 a.m. I started winching around eight. I didn't check, but that's not so bad. That's not so bad. I am out of the basin, and that was the part that I was extremely worried about, because I knew I'd just be pulling cable over and over and over again. The rest of the descent is fairly mild compared to that, and I'm going downhill, so that'll be in my favor, but for the next mile or so, I'm crossing a mountain plain, and there's not much vegetation to winch off of, and I can barely see the road because of all the snow, so I just have to take my time. My airbag light keeps coming on. It's new. So far, so good descending the mountain. I still have some snowy rocks to contend with, the ones that you saw yesterday, but the basin, the hard part is done, and I feel I'm shaking a little bit. I knew there was going to be precipitation yesterday, and likely snow at the higher elevations, so when I was driving up this road, I paid attention. Is it something that I would have a problem driving down in inclement weather? I made note of potential campsites along the way, and if the weather was too harsh at the top of the mountain, I could always come back down the hill and camp somewhere within the tree line. And yesterday, after I had my spicy chicken quesadilla soup, I did just that. I said it's snowing too much, I better get out of here, and it was too late. So a little bit of a sobering wake-up call. When it comes to the weather, take Montana very, very seriously. It's Tuesday night, and it took me the better part of the day to come down off the mountain. Once I got to the main dirt road, I followed it north for about a dozen miles until I saw this campsite off the side of the road. I immediately started a campfire, and then I let my recovery gear out to dry. I just recently put it away, and for the first time since I got it fixed in April, I've got my Webasto gasoline heater running inside the Jeep. Last night during the snowstorm, I kept the camper closed because I didn't know how much snow was going to accumulate. So I slept downstairs, and I wouldn't call it sleeping. I just sat in the back seat, and I think I dozed off between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. So tonight I'm bound and determined to be warm and comfortable up in the camper with the heater running. It's Wednesday afternoon, September 9th, 2020, and I broke camp early this morning because it was quite frigid, and I used today as a travel day. So tonight I found this great campsite in Custer National Forest just west of Red Lodge, Montana. Today I spent some time in Red Lodge to get lunch and to run some errands. I stopped at Beartooth Market and got this kombucha and some burger patties, so I know what I'm having for dinner tonight. The ground at this campsite is fairly flat, but I did need to level the Jeep a little bit tonight, and that's standard procedure for pretty much every campsite every night. Since I sleep in the camper on the roof, a level Jeep is a level bed. Crude shelter between these boulders, possibly built by a woodsman or a bear. I want to go over a couple things that really saved my bacon this week. First and foremost, the winch. Because without it, this story would have had a totally different outcome. Now this is the Commop Seal 9.5 Si Gen 2, and while it was working there on the mountain, it functioned brilliantly. It got me out of the basin and did so without even breaking a sweat. Despite that, all is not perfect with this winch. If a lot of time has passed since the last time I've used it, the motor is seized up upon first use, like it has rust or moisture inside, and I need to give the motor a smack or two with a mallet in order to get it to turn. And that was true when I was down there in the basin, and it scared me for a moment. Of course, it works just fine now because I used the heck out of it yesterday. I need to tidy up that cable still. Also, the rubber shielding where the wires run into the winch controller has come out of the winch controller, exposing the wires. I haven't had any problems with functionality, but that's a glaring quality issue. As you know, I performed yesterday's extraction with my bulky winter gloves on, and I didn't really want to take them off. And to connect the winch line to the tree strap, I used these soft shackles from Bubba Rope. These are gator jaw shackles. They are 3-8 inch Next Gen Pro, rated for 47,000 pounds. And what I found was, I could easily open and close these shackles with my gloves on. To open it, you slide the rubber band down, and just pull up a knot like that. And to close it again, put the ball through a loop, and just constrict the rubber band to close the loop, and just like that. And I did that over and over again while running up and down the mountain, and I was grateful for how easy it was. Another critical piece that was just as valuable as the winch this week is my Garmin InReach Explorer Plus. This is a GPS, but more importantly, it's a satellite messenger. So it doesn't matter where I am, with this, I can communicate and share my exact location with anyone. The initial cost of this device is $450, and then there is a monthly plan for the satellite service, and I think those plans range between $12 US dollars and $50 US dollars a month. It's a beautiful Thursday morning, September 10th, 2020, in Red Lodge, Montana. Red Lodge is a charming town at the northern terminus of the Beartooth Highway from Wyoming up into Montana, and it's very much a hub for outdoor recreation, whether you're into backpacking, skiing, mountain biking, or overland travel. I'm going to call that a wrap for this week, but first, it's very important for me to convey that as happy as I am to be able to share that experience with you on the Snowy Mountain, the winch recovery, and the surrounding scenery. I made a mistake by going up there when I did. I was far too cavalier about the mountain weather, and luck played a huge role in my safe extraction. So while it might have looked like an adventure from the outside, I would chalk that up as an example of what not to do. On a completely different topic, and a more positive note, you might have noticed an improvement in the video quality of my episodes. That's because I started using an entirely different camera. Instead of the Micro Four Thirds Panasonic Lumix GH5, I'm now shooting with a brand new Panasonic Lumix S5, which is a forthcoming product from Panasonic. It's a relatively compact, mirrorless, full-frame camera with interchangeable lenses, and it should provide higher quality video, photo, better low-light performance, and more capable overall. As always, I hope you enjoyed this week's adventure. Thanks for following along, and I will catch up with you again next week.