Yellowstone Standoff (9 page)

“It's a different story six miles farther up the creek,” Lex continued, “where the park ends and the Teton Wilderness begins. Cross the boundary into the national forest in the middle of the summer and it's like you've stepped into downtown New York City. They'll start pouring in from the south on horseback in another week or two, when the snow on the divide fully clears. By the end of June, there'll be camps every few feet, people cheek by jowl, thick as the mosquitoes that'll be eating them alive, not to mention illegal campfires, and all the pack animals eating the grass down to the roots, leaving nothing for the elk.” Lex shook his head wearily.

“I've heard the real yahoos show up in the fall,” Chuck said. “The outfitters with their pay-to-play elk hunters. Rumor has it some of them have even set salt licks just outside the park in the past, to draw trophy bulls across the boundary for their clients to gun down. And I've heard, because the state of Wyoming won't limit the number of outfitters, some of them take matters into their own hands, sabotaging each others' camps, shooting over each other's heads to scare game away from one another. And God help you if you're a private hunter up here on your own, competing with the outfitters. They say you're liable to have your stock run off or your water supply fouled—anything to keep you away from the bulls the outfitters see as their divine right.”

“The truth is, there actually are quite a few good, dedicated outfitters,” Lex said. “The majority, I'd say. They understand the limited nature of the resource and are willing to work with each
other and the game-and-fish folks to ensure its sustainability. As for the few bad apples, we keep waiting for natural selection to do something about them, but it hasn't happened yet.”

“They can just get away with it?”

“We don't have any say. They operate outside the park. There are those who claim the outfitters own the Wyoming Fish and Game Department lock, stock, and barrel. I can't speak to that. But I do know this much: when you watch them from this side of the boundary, you get the pretty clear sense they'll do anything—
anything
—to score a trophy kill for their big-spending clients, and that goes for the good outfitters as well as the bad.”

“Including killing wolves, I suppose.”

The broad brim of Lex's hat tilted back and forth as he nodded. “Whenever they can, wherever they can, as many as they can. It's funny; the success rate for guided elk hunters in the Teton Wilderness went way up—from thirty or forty percent all the way to ninety percent—after the 1988 forest fires in and around Yellowstone. The fires were so destructive that there basically was no cover left for the elk to hide in. These days, though, the new trees are tall enough to provide cover for the herds again, and the hunting success rate has fallen back to historic levels. But will the outfitters admit that's what's going on? Of course not. When the success rate was high, they started offering their clients guarantees—kill a bull or get your money back. Now that things have returned to normal, where hunters actually have to go out and hunt if they're to get a shot, the outfitters are fit to be tied. And what do you think they blame their troubles on?”

“Wolves.”

“Of course.”

“Which explains the push by the states around here to get the feds to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List.”

“That's right. Gray wolves already are under what amounts to extermination orders outside the park. De-list them entirely, and who knows what'll happen.”

“They're doing well inside the park, though, right?”

“That they are, thanks to the East Coast politicians who set aside the lands of Yellowstone National Park a century ago for the American people.”

“
And
for the animals,” Randall added.

“And for the animals,” Lex agreed. “Can you imagine that happening in Congress today?”

They hiked on. After another mile, the smell of sulfur overrode the scent of the pines.

“What's that?” Rosie asked, sniffing.

“I know what it is,” Carmelita said. She turned and walked backward up the trail, looking past Rosie at Chuck. “It's what you told us about, isn't it?”

Chuck nodded. “It's what Yellowstone is known for, along with all the critters.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” Rosie said, thrusting her hand skyward. “It's the Thermos stuff!”

“Thermal,” Carmelita corrected, turning forward and hurrying to catch up with Lex.

Curving, the trail left the forest and cut across a grass-tufted hillside. A mile away, on the far side of the broad Thorofare valley, the creek flowed between stands of pines. Between the creek and trail stretched the Thorofare thermal basin, a pan-flat expanse of hissing steam columns, cauldrons of boiling water, and bubbling mud pots.

Lex stopped. Everyone piled up at his back, ogling the otherworldly scene before them. Pools of water in irregular shapes,
some a few feet across, others as large as tennis courts, pocked the black crust of the barren basin. Scalded white rims bounded the pools of water, while the pools' underwater walls gleamed blaze orange in the sunlight. Mud filled a handful of the pools, churning and gurgling and spitting clods of viscous, lava-like muck into the air. Steam columns marked the location of fumaroles—openings in the earth's crust from which superheated water, sulfur, and carbon dioxide shot from the ground. The fumaroles spewed upward, forming bright white pillars that dissipated in the morning breeze.

“Never gets old,” Lex said.

“Incredible,” Sarah agreed from the back of the line, her voice filled with wonder.

A yelp sounded from the middle of the line. Chuck turned in time to see Chance shoot from Keith's side. The retractable leash swung from the dog's collar. Keith grabbed for the leash but missed. The animal raced down the grassy hillside, straight for the thermal basin.

“Chance!” Keith yelled as he charged down the slope after his dog. “Heel, boy!”

“Keith!” Lex hollered after him. “Stop! The crust is only a few inches thick. It'll never hold your weight!”

Chance reached the base of the slope a hundred feet below the trail and galloped onto the basin. The dog's claws dug into the black surface as it cut between bubbling pools of water and mud, the leash trailing between its front legs.

Keith sprinted down the hill, steps from the thin crust of the superheated basin.

15

F
or God's sake, stop!” Lex yelled at Keith.

When Keith kept running, Chuck plunged off the trail and down the slope. Clarence followed.

“Keith! Stop!” Kaifong's high-pitched cry sounded from the trail. Then she admonished, “Hold still, Randall.”

Chuck glanced back to see her wrestling with the straps that secured the drone in its frame on Randall's back.

Keith slid to a stop at the foot of the hill and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Chance,” he bellowed. “Chance. Here, boy. Come!”

“Doggie!” Rosie screeched from above. “You come back here right now!”

The dog, sprinting across the thermal crust, paid no heed. Chuck and Clarence slid to a halt on either side of Keith.

“Chance!” Keith cried again. The dog kept running. Keith leaned forward.

“Oh, no, you don't,” Chuck told him between heavy breaths. “You can't go out there. You'll kill yourself.”

Keith's gaze remained fixed on his dog. He stepped from the solid earth of the hillside onto the crust. Chuck and Clarence grabbed him from either side and the three fell forward together to their knees, fracturing the crust beneath them. Ooze, mucky and lukewarm at the edge of the basin, rose around their legs.

Chuck and Clarence struggled to their feet and dragged Keith back to the base of the hill. Chance had made it halfway across the thermal area. Keith stood at the edge of the basin, arms locked at his sides, gaze fixed on his racing dog. Chuck slumped down on a hummock of grass, his hands on his mud-coated knees.

“What were you thinking, letting go of the leash like that?” Clarence demanded of Keith.

“He caught me by surprise, yanked it right out of my hand,” Keith responded. “I've worked with him every day for the last three years. He does what he's told,
only
what he's told.”

“Looks like you've got more work to do.”

Keith watched as Chance galloped across a narrow isthmus between two large pools of water. “Chance!” he cried. “Chance!”

The dog didn't slow.

Chuck used one of Keith's mud-caked pant legs to pull himself to a standing position. A loud whirring noise, like a room fan at maximum speed, came from behind him. Kaifong stood in the middle of the trail holding the drone out from her body, the copter's spinning rotors a blur in front of her.

Randall pulled the plastic, batwing-shaped control console from his waist holster. He thumbed one of the console's toggle sticks forward. The whir became a high-pitched whine as the speed of the drone's rotors increased.

Randall nodded at Kaifong. She opened her fingers. The drone lifted off her palms and climbed into the air. Randall cradled the console in both hands, working its controls with his thumbs and forefingers. The drone flew down the hill, tracking the angle of the slope. It zoomed past Chuck, Clarence, and Keith, and shot across the thermal basin, ten feet above the crust.

Far out on the basin, Chance stopped and turned to face the noisy, oncoming drone. The racing copter neared Chance in seconds. The dog crouched with its belly to the crust. The miniature helicopter flew straight over Chance and stopped beyond the animal, hovering in midair.

The whine of the machine's rotors increased as the drone shot straight at Chance, angling toward the ground. The dog leapt away and ran ahead of the trailing copter with its tail
tucked between its legs. Randall flew the drone a few feet above and behind the animal, using the aircraft to herd the dog back across the basin.

“Here, Chance,” Keith called as the dog neared the base of the hill. “Here, boy.”

Chance ran to Keith and pressed, quivering, against his muddy legs while the drone flew up the hill and returned to a gentle landing on Kaifong's outstretched hands.

Keith grabbed the leash reel from where it dangled between Chance's legs and, holding tight to the lead, climbed with the dog back up the hillside.

Lex awaited him on the trail. “What were you thinking, letting go like that?” he growled.

“He's never done that in all the time we've been together,” Keith said. Chance panted at his side.

Lex aimed a finger at the tether. “From now on, hold tight.”

Keith gave the nylon line a tug. “Got it.”

Chuck and Clarence arrived back at the trail. Lex eyed the sulfurous ooze dripping from their legs. “You guys stink,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“Pumpkin Hot Spring is somewhere around here, isn't it?” Chuck asked.

“You know about that?”

“I had all winter to research this area.”

“It's not in the guidebooks.”

“But it's all over the internet.”

“Is nothing sacred anymore?” Lex sighed. “By the way, good job keeping Keith from killing himself.”

Chuck pointed at the Drone Team members—Kaifong, reattaching the copter to the frame on Randall's back while Randall strapped the control console back into the webbed holster at his waist. “They're the ones to thank.”

With the console secured, Randall flicked a switch on its face. A green diode light in one corner died out as the console turned off.

“Thank you,” Keith said to Randall and Kaifong, “from both me and my doofus dog here.” He scratched Chance's ears. “That was some pretty sick flying.”

Randall shrugged. “It's what we do, man.”

Lex returned to the front of the line and led the hikers past the thermal basin and into a stand of pines. The sulfurous odor of the basin died away as they continued up the creek drainage. The cool breeze flowing down the valley from the divide pressed Chuck's muddy pants against his legs. The smell of sulfur picked up again half a mile farther on, riding the breeze where the forest grew sparse near tree line.

The hiking group climbed out of the last of the low, bent trees toward a grassy bench. To the south, the divide cut the skyline below hulking Trident massif and its high point, Trident Peak. The three parallel finger ridges that gave the massif its name dropped east to west from near the top of the snow-covered summit into the upper Thorofare Creek drainage. Snowfields fronted the north faces of the three finger ridges, and shadows filled the two deep canyons between them.

As the hikers topped the grass-covered bench, they saw steam rising from the surface of Pumpkin Hot Spring, fifty feet off the trail. In the 1950s, horsemen frequenting the trail had channeled hot water flowing from a steaming vent in a nearby hillside to a galvanized steel stock tank pieced together on site and dug into the ground. A chalky, orange-tinged coating of travertine around the rim of the ten-foot-diameter tank gave the manmade soaking pool its name. Freshly trampled grass surrounded the sunken pool.

“Somebody beat us to it,” Chuck noted.

“The wranglers,” Lex said. “Can't blame them. They hit it pretty hard the last two weeks.” He turned to the group. “Everyone but Chuck, Clarence, and Keith, keep moving. We'll wait ahead while they get cleaned up.”

Janelle walked with the girls and the others up the trail and out of sight over a rocky lip.

Lex stood at the edge of the pool. “We keep threatening to shut this thing down,” he said, “but people really like it.”

“Especially the rangers assigned to Turret Cabin each summer, I'll bet,” Chuck said.

“Especially them,” Lex agreed. “Can't beat the view, that's for sure.” He turned a slow circle, taking in the surrounding ridges and peaks, the broad Thorofare Creek drainage, the even broader river valley below Turret Cabin, and the southeast arm and rippled, open lake in the distance.

Chuck shucked his daypack, stepped out of his nylon hiking pants, and dunked the pants' dirty lower legs in the narrow stream of warm water flowing out of the pool. Next to him, Clarence and Keith pulled off their muddy pants, too.

“Be careful if you decide to get in. Wouldn't want you to scald yourself,” Lex said. “Thermal temps across the park have been fluctuating quite a bit lately.”

Chuck looked up from where he knelt at the edge of the pool. “I hadn't heard about that.”

“We've kept it quiet so far—and offline, too, I guess, if you haven't caught wind of it. We're still trying to get a handle on what's going on.” Lex squatted and dipped his hand into the pool. “Still perfect here.” He rose and turned to the trail. “Join us when you're done.”

Chuck, Clarence, and Keith finished rinsing their pants and laid them on the grass. Chuck stripped and slid into the spring.

“Can't resist,” he said. “Just for a minute while our pants dry a bit.”

He rested his head against the pool's travertine rim, up to his neck in the warm water.

“Ahh.” He closed his eyes, his arms floating at his sides. “I wish the lake had been this temperature yesterday.”

Keith set his pack on the ground and secured Chance's leash to it. He and Clarence disrobed and slipped into the pool with Chuck.

“I'm not sure I deserve this,” Keith said, sinking to his chin, “but it sure feels—”

A yell came from out of sight beyond the rock rib. “Bear!” Sarah's voice cried out. “Grizzly!”