Yellowstone Standoff (5 page)

8

T
hey ate their sack lunches at a picnic table on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake, down the hill from the porticoed front entrance to historic Lake Yellowstone Hotel with its vibrant, yellow-and-white paint scheme. Afterward, they drove on around the lake's western shoreline to Bridge Bay Marina.

Yellowstone Lake stretched fourteen miles from the mouth of Bridge Bay to the foot of the Absaroka Mountains, the swath of forests, tundra, talus fields, and barren peaks that continued eastward out of the park to form one of the largest roadless areas in North America. Beyond the mouth of the bay, a cold, hard breeze piled waves into whitecaps. The wind rushed across the harbor, up the concrete boat ramp, and through the marina's gravel lot, lifting dust in tight, spiraling dervishes.

Chuck put a protective hand to his nose and mouth as he crossed the lot while Janelle and the girls waited in the truck. A wooden dock, gray and weathered, extended a hundred feet into the water next to the ramp. Halfway down the dock, the two boats that made up the park's cross-lake transportation fleet bobbed in the water, snugged by their boxy sterns to the dock's rubber bumpers. The diesel-powered launches, thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, squatted in the bay like miniature tugboats, their bows upswept to break the lake's notorious swells, their open sterns low in the water. Three-sided wheelhouses, each big enough to accommodate a single, standing pilot, stood near the bows of the matching boats' otherwise open decks.

A handful of scientists unloaded blue plastic storage containers in the shape of beer kegs, hinged plastic boxes the size of suitcases, and rubber-coated duffle bags from a pair of white
cargo vans parked at the head of the ramp. The researchers carried the gear to a growing pile on the dock next to the secured boats. A woman stood beside the stack of gear, a clipboard in her hand and a nylon satchel draped from her shoulder.

“And you are...?” she asked Chuck upon his approach.

“Chuck Bender. You're Martha?”

She nodded, a crisp tic of her chin.

Yellowstone National Park Research Logistical Coordinator Martha Augustine was as legendary for her drill-sergeant-like officiousness as for the power she was said to wield over scientific work in the park. According to widely accepted rumor, proposed research projects in Yellowstone gained approval only with Martha's assent. It was whispered she could sabotage a project or researcher she didn't like—and was regularly accused of having done so—with a mere stroke of her pen.

Martha's fine silver hair poked from beneath her Smokey Bear hat. Wrinkles fanned out from her thin lips like the spokes of a wheel. A translucent plastic cover known among park personnel as a hat condom protected the hat's porous straw material from spray coming off the lake. Crisp creases ran the length of her forest green, park-service-issue slacks. The badge on the breast of her gray jacket gleamed. Above the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, her brown eyes glinted with sharp intelligence.

“You're the Archaeology Team, correct?”

“I am. With one other.”

“More than one, as I recall.”

Chuck risked a smile. “I do have three members of my fan club with me.”

Martha's face turned to marble. “Five total,” she said. “You, team lead. Clarence Ortega, assistant. Janelle Ortega—” she paused before biting off the word “—
wife
. Carmelita and Rosalita Ortega,
daughters
.”

She glowered at him over her glasses, her eyes flinty.

“Lex approved it,” Chuck said.

“His decision, not mine.” She checked her watch. “I've got you for 2:00. Place your things here with the rest and be ready to board at 1:30. That's thirty minutes from now.”

“Got it.”

“Two boats every ninety minutes. One for gear, the other for passengers. The Wolf Initiative made their two runs first thing this morning. Lex and Jorge, the cook, went in with the first boat. The Grizzly Initiative made their runs next. The 2:00 is for the rest of you—Meteorology, Geology, Drone, Canine.”

“We get the afternoon wind and swell,” Chuck noted.

“From what I understand, you brought your family along for the experience.” She jabbed her pen at the white-capping waves beyond the narrow neck of the bay. “There's part of your experience right there.”

She tucked her pen in her clipboard, reached into the satchel hanging at her side, and extracted a handful of plastic items. The bright red objects, three inches long by an inch wide, looked like fishing bobbers. Each one tapered to a recessed button and tiny LED light at one end and a metal clip at the other.

“Personal locator beacons to be attached to your packs,” she explained as she counted five beacons into Chuck's cupped hands. “One for each member of your group. Required equipment as of this year, along with the camp satellite phone.” Each beacon had a small sticker naming a member of Chuck's group. “Attach the beacon corresponding with the correct recipient to each of your packs—” she flattened her lips “—fan club members included. The beacons are to remain with you at all times. When the button is pressed and held for three seconds in the event of an emergency, a distress signal and locational coordinates will be sent via GPS, the Global Positioning System.” She
slitted her eyes at Chuck. “You'll make certain your daughters understand what ‘in the event of an emergency' means, do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

Back at the truck, Chuck clipped the appropriate beacons to zipper pulls on his, Janelle's, and the girls' daypacks. He wrestled Rosie into her rain jacket, and they all walked across the parking lot to the dock, where they left their duffles with the growing gear pile. They returned to the emptied truck for their daypacks just as Clarence sped into the parking lot. He slid his dented hatchback to a stop, raising a cloud of dust, and hopped out.

“Can I help unload?” he asked.

“Just finished,” Chuck told him.

“Yessss.” He struck a pose, thumbs raised at his sides, pelvis pumping. Chuck handed him a beacon.

The five of them headed to the boats, their hiking boots echoing on the dock's thick planks. Clarence added his own armful of duffles from his hatchback to the stack on the dock. A pair of park staffers loaded the gear into the nearer of the two boats. The staffers lined the stern of the craft with the plastic storage containers, piled the duffles on top, and strapped the mound into place.

Kaifong, from the Drone Team, wandered up to Clarence. They struck up a conversation, her smooth face breaking open in a wide grin at his banter within seconds. She belly-laughed along with him a moment later.

Chuck rolled his eyes at Janelle. “Your brother,” he said to her out the side of his mouth.

“You're the one who hired him. And let's remember: he's the reason you and I met.”

“That's one thing in his favor. In fact, that may be the only thing.”

The park staffer who'd loaded the boat took up his position in the windowed wheelhouse. The man turned a key in the ignition, and the boat's inboard engine coughed to life, then purred with a guttural murmur.

Martha unhooked the heavy ropes that secured the stern of the vessel to the dock and tossed them into the back of the boat. The pilot shifted the engine into gear. Diesel exhaust drifted across the water, acrid and pungent, as the boat chuffed toward the open water beyond the harbor mouth.

“Greetings,” the other staffer said to those waiting on the dock.

The scientists turned their attention to the staffer, a woman in her mid-forties with collar-length brown hair, her bangs pressed to her forehead by a dark green baseball cap emblazoned with the arrowhead-shaped National Park Service logo.

The woman stood below the dock in the open stern of the second boat. “I'll be master and commander of your cruise to the southeast arm trailhead,” she told them. “I understand this will be the first time most of you have crossed Yellowstone Lake.” Her sparkling green eyes found Carmelita and Rosie. “Certainly for the two of you, am I right?”

Carmelita studied the laces of her hiking boots while Rosie clapped her hands and crowed to the woman, “I'm going on a boat ride!”

The pilot beamed. “That's right.” Her brows drew together. “Most people think the biggest danger in Yellowstone National Park is the wildlife. But did you know Yellowstone Lake actually is the single most dangerous place in the whole park?”

9

C
armelita looked up from her shoes.

Rosie grabbed her sister's hand. “No,” she said breathily to the pilot.

From behind Carmelita and Rosie, Chuck directed a look of warning at the woman. Who did she think she was, playing the part of drama queen in front of the girls?

“You'll be entirely safe today, of course,” she told them, hurrying on. “Our boats are specially designed to take on the roughest weather Yellowstone has to offer.” She licked her lips, avoiding Chuck's gaze. “But that wasn't always the case.”

“It wasn't?” Rosie croaked.

“Anyone who tried to cross the lake before the invention of PFDs—personal flotation devices—took their lives into their hands,” the pilot said. “At 7,775 feet above sea level this far north of the equator, Yellowstone Lake is one of the coldest navigable bodies of water on Earth, if not
the
coldest. The lake is covered with ice most of the year, and for the few summer weeks when the ice melts, the water temperature is barely above freezing.” She lifted her eyebrows until they nearly reached the brim of her cap. “Yellowstone Lake is big, deep, and cold. In the old days, before PFDs, anyone who fell into the water was paralyzed within seconds and sank to the bottom of the lake like a stone, their bodies never to be recovered.” The pilot's tone lightened. “But you can rest assured that Bessie here—” she tapped the rear deck of the boat with the toe of her black work boot “—couldn't flip in the worst Yellowstone storm if she wanted to. Even so, PFDs are mandatory.”

She beckoned the scientists into the back of the boat.

Chuck rolled his shoulders, loosening the muscles at the back of his neck. It probably wasn't such a bad idea for the pilot to emphasize the danger of the lake to the girls.

Inward-facing bench seats lined both sides of the long, narrow stern. The pilot lifted each of the hinged seats in turn, pulling PFDs from the storage compartments beneath and passing them out before donning one herself.

The researchers slung their PFDs loosely over their shoulders and took their seats on either side of the stern, facing one another, their backs to the gunwales.

The Canine Team researcher, Keith, climbed into the boat and lowered his dog, Chance, to the rear deck. The dog, a shepherd with brown and black fur and a long, black snout, stood thigh-high next to Keith as he accepted his PFD.

Chuck sifted among the PFDs until he found a pair small enough to fit the girls. He fastened his own life jacket tight around his chest, then strapped the smaller flotation devices snug around Carmelita and Rosie.

“The temperature of the lake reminds me of the water in the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon,” he remarked as he worked, squatting in front of them. “The river there is freezing cold, too.”

“But that's in the desert,” Carmelita said. “It should be warm.”

“The water in the Colorado comes out of the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from the canyon, so it's ice cold.”

“Just like here,” Rosie said, eyeing the bay water lapping against the boat. “Can I feel it?”

Without waiting for an answer, she set off for the center of the boat's stern, where a break in the railing allowed for easy loading and unloading of gear and passengers. Chuck chased her down before she could plunge her hand into the water that showed in the gap between the dock and the rear of the rocking boat.

“Maybe when we get to the other side,” he told her. “There's sure to be some sort of a beach there.”

He sat her beside him on one of the bench seats while the pilot entered the wheelhouse and started the engine. Janelle and Carmelita settled next to Rosie. Keith sat a few seats away, Chance tucked between his legs.

Chuck rested his elbows on the gunwale behind him as Clarence took a seat on the opposite side of the boat, still in an animated exchange with Kaifong. The second Drone Team member, Randall, sat with them. He joined their conversation, throwing his head back in a full-throated guffaw at something Clarence said.

Martha freed the ropes securing the boat to the dock and tossed them into the stern. The pilot engaged the throttle and the boat accelerated across the smooth water of the bay, the noisy cough of the engine forcing the researchers around Chuck to speak directly into one another's ears to continue their conversations.

Clarence rested a hand on Kaifong's knee and said something to her with an accompanying grin. Clarence's comment brought a smile to Kaifong's lips. She turned to Randall and, still smiling, spoke into his ear, obviously repeating what Clarence had said. Randall leaned around Kaifong and bumped Clarence's fist with his own.

The three settled back in their seats as the boat left the bay and headed out onto the open water of the lake. The boat pitched and rolled, rising and falling with the windswept swells. The pilot spun the spoked wheel, setting course across the broad body of water toward the lake's distant southeast shoreline.

The pilot leaned out of the open back of the vessel's tiny wheelhouse, her hand on the boat's wheel behind her, and faced her passengers. She pointed at a black spot making its way across the sky, trailing the boat. “Osprey,” she called out, yelling to make
herself heard above the engine noise and rhythmic slaps of spray arcing from the sides of the hull as the boat cut through the swells. “It's tracking us, waiting to see what we send its way.”

The osprey tucked its wings and plummeted toward the water behind the boat. Just before the bird rocketed into the lake, it spread its wings, slowing itself. It skimmed along the boat's wake for an instant before plunging its clawed feet into the water. With powerful flaps of its wings, the bird rose from the surface grasping a shiny, silver fish in its talons. The fish struggled, flinging water from its tail, as the osprey flew back toward shore.

“Never fails,” the pilot hollered to her passengers. “Bessie gets the fish moving, and the osprey take advantage. We're doing our part to help the park service get rid of the non-native lake trout so the native cutthroat can return.” She smiled and turned back to the wheel.

As the marina receded into the distance, Chuck and Janelle wrapped their arms around the girls, who bent forward to avoid the brisk breeze curling past the wheelhouse.

Ahead, the Absarokas drew nearer. To the southeast, the snow-covered summit of Trident Peak reared highest above the lake's shoreline. After twenty minutes of plowing through the waves, the pilot again adjusted course, aiming the boat toward the opening into the lake's southeast arm, a two-mile-long, finger-shaped bay extending south from the lake's most remote reach. The upper Yellowstone River emptied into the head of the narrow bay, where the trail to Turret Cabin and on into the heart of the Thorofare region began.

Ahead, the gear boat exited the southeast arm on its return trip to Bridge Bay. The pilots exchanged waves as the boats passed one another. The stern of the gear boat was empty, the teams' duffles and cases waiting at the trailhead landing.

Opposite Chuck, Randall spun and knelt on his seat. Facing the open water of the lake, he trailed his fingers in the bursts of spray flying from the boat's hull. He lifted his hand from the water and shook it, then turned to Kaifong and Clarence and gritted his teeth. The pair twisted and knelt on their seats beside him, taking turns diving their hands into the spray.

Rosie turned to reach for the spray on her side of the boat. Chuck pressed her back into place. “Oh, no, you don't,” he said in her ear.

“But they get to,” she shouted over the roar of the engine.

“Sorry,” Chuck told her. “They're bigger than you.”

She crossed her arms over her PFD and thrust out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.

Randall stood up. Grinning and beckoning Kaifong and Clarence to follow, he crossed the boat's white, fiberglass deck. “Come on,” he encouraged them, his voice carrying above the engine noise. “We'll really be able to tell how cold the water is.”

He hammed it up as he walked to the back railing, staggering like a drunk across the rising and falling deck. “Whoa!” he cried out, waving his arms for balance, as Kaifong and Clarence approached behind him.

He bent at the opening in the railing and stuck his hand into the lake water. He straightened as Kaifong and Clarence reached him at the back of the boat. “Ow, ow, ow,” he cried, laughing and shaking his hand, his red halo of hair pressed back from his forehead by the wind. “That's what I call
freezin'
!”

He shook his hand once more and stepped aside, allowing Kaifong to take his place at the back of the boat. He gave a playful clap to her life jacket, slung over one of her shoulders, as she passed him. At the same instant his hand met her PFD, the bow of the boat climbed through a wave while the stern remained low in the wave's trough, causing the deck of the vessel to cant
sharply upward. Randall's clap and the sudden upward pitch of the boat threw Kaifong off balance. She tripped over the coils of rope on the stern's floor and teetered, windmilling her arms.

Randall's eyes widened as he shot out his hand, reaching for her. Clarence grabbed for her, too. Their fingers closed on air. Kaifong's unfastened PFD swung free from her shoulder as she tumbled, screaming, into the lake.