During the winter of 2011, I completed the smallest of four trips into Glacier National Park’s backcountry, seven days. With my average daily travel at approximately six miles, I thought I had done well on my snowshoes and said as much on my website.
Less than a day later, I got an email with the subject being “Breaking the myth”. Accusing me of doing pathetic mileage, some fellow, his name is unimportant, informed me that on cross-country skis, he could do 20 miles per day. I think he may have missed the part about the ascent of a steep slope while I was carrying over 90 pounds.
Going back a little further, in 1976, during the autumn, I watched a man pull a steelhead trout out of the Snake River in Washington. He was teaching his approximately eight-year-old son how to catch a steelhead using 3-pound test line. It took him 20 minutes to land the behemoth fish. As he was removing the hook, I made the comment that the joke was on him, that he had caught a rainbow trout.
On one knee, he stared up at me for a few moments then glanced at his son. I watched as their facial expressions quietly noted that there was a goddamned fool in their midst. I slunk away and a short time later did some research. I found out that among some other things, rainbow trout are landlocked steelhead who do not have the ability to live in the sea.
In 2011, I deleted the fool’s email without responding.
Today, I suspect there are more than a few who believe my half-mile to three miles per day winter travel on the Continental Divide is pathetic. My reads of the doomed Scott Antarctic Expedition of 104 years ago say otherwise.
