by Waits, Chris
One cold, -20° morning Betty took the dogs for their daily walk. I remained home from the logging job to do some paperwork. I knew the job site, 1,500 feet higher in elevation, would be at least 10° colder, too frigid even to start the machines, so I called the crew and told them to stay home. It was the end of February 1987.
Before I ever got a good start on my work, Betty unexpectedly returned home, ver^ startled, and said Ted w^as up the gulch about a mile, camping at the old miner's cabin. The dogs smelled him first, barked and ran at him. It frightened her. She held the dogs as well as she could while Ted talked to her, asking what day it was, what time it was, and how cold it was, his usual line of questions when he had been out for a while. He then told her he had been hiking on the ridge above, got caught in a storm, looked dow n into the gulch and spotted
the cabin. He moved down off the ridge into the bottom of the gulch and took shelter in the cabin, spending the night. He had a campfire burning right outside the cabin door.
Betty and I were amazed. It was the first time Ted had ever spoken to her. He obviously had been caught in a compromising position. Even though Ted knew he was always welcome in the gulch, he had reacted strangely. I really began to wonder what he was doing up there in such cold weather.
But it wasn't even the weather that made me the most suspicious. It was what he had said to her that alarmed me. He had lied. You can't see the cabin from the ridge. In fact, it can't be seen until you get within a hundred yards of it. And he had known for years the cabin was there; he'd hiked by it hundreds of times.
Troubled, I decided to hike up the gulch and talk to Ted. I promptly left the house, but by the time I got to the cabin Ted was gone. He had doused his fire with snow and left, following his usual trail along the other side of the gulch. I followed his tracks until they crossed Stemple Road. He had been walking down as I was going up. He must have seen me.
Still not satisfied I decided to trace his trail back up the mountain and find which ridge above the cabin he had come down. Returning to the cabin, I then followed his tracks upward through the trees. It was like he was returning from somewhere and he had been working his way back to his home cabin.
I knew he wasn't out hunting. Betty had said he wasn't dressed warm enough for the cold weather. Also, he hadn't cooked any meat on his campfire, only canned food.
I continued backtracking his trail for more than three quarters of a mile, then the wind started to kick up and snow drifted into his tracks. I could have picked my way farther but it would be a lot of work and I wasn't really dressed for a long trek through cold snow. I dismissed the encounter, turned and headed back. I decided to ask Ted about it the next time I saw him, but I wondered if I would get a straight answer.
Little did I know how close I had come to finding his secret cabin that day; I had followed his tracks to within a quarter of a mile of its location on the mountainside before I turned back.
Just as other stran
The spring of 1987 arrived; late snows and early rains kept the roads muddy, halting my logging work.
One afternoon while Betty and I were returning over Stemple Pass from a Helena shopping trip, we came upon Ted across from my logging operation at Windy Point, his bike parked at a wide spot on the road. We were surprised he had ridden all the way up there in the mud; he was about ten miles from home.
He was sitting on a grassy knob not far from his bicycle—the same spot where he had sat many times before—looking across to my logging units. I pulled over to visit with him. He was friendly, but seemed preoccupied. I mentioned he was a long w^ay from home in very difficult riding conditions with the mud in places extremely soft and slippery. He agreed, but didn't elaborate.
The conversation didn't last long. After commenting to Ted about the beautiful day and that maybe spring was here to stay, we headed for home to put the groceries away.
I remarked to Betty that if Ted was just out for an early spring ride, w hy didn't he head west where it was lower and drier instead of up around my logging operation.'^ I wondered why he was still so interested in that site after I'd worked there for two years already.
Summer arrived and with the addition of several more contracts my logging and road construction company was expanding and spreading out. This meant more employees, more responsibility and less time away from work.
I cherished my free time and I hiked as much as possible, by myself or with my wife, when I wasn't working on equipment. The leisure trips were mostly in and around my gulch, but I'd also hike into some of my favorite old mines in other gulches near home.
During that summer and fall, a placer mining operation opened in Sauerkraut Gulch, just a few miles west of Ted's place. I was hired to clear trees around the portion of creek to be mined. I didn't think of it at the time, but this mine meant that each direction but one from Ted's home cabin now was the site of major logging or mining work.
North, east, and west were no longer untouched wilderness. But to the south, McClellan Gulch still was.
Fall came, and along with it a curious pre-hunting-season invasion. It seems, at least to Lincoln people, National Guard helicopter pilots out of Helena log a lot of training exercises and flying time at the start of hunting season. The helicopters create a great deal of noise while flying low over the mountains, with the valleys acting as echo chambers, amplifying the "whop, whop, whop" of the rotors.
That fall was no exception. The helicopter activity seemed to increase with the late-October opening of deer and elk season. Locals knew the pilots weren't out just to spot game because it's illegal in Montana to fly and hunt on the same day, but it made for good conversation over morning coffee at Lambkin's. Even if the guardsmen were trying to take advantage of their time in the air, the extreme noise would surely scatter the game.
The noise was apparently seriously irritating a person around Lincoln. Rumors again circulated about somebody randomly shooting at the helicopters overhead. Was it true.^ I wasn't sure at the time. Others sw^ore the guilty party was out there and remained at large.
As the 1980s wound down, acts of vandalism and occasional cabin break-ins continued. Some cabins were hit and nothing of value was taken; these acts of destruction seemed to be related more to the noise level of the receational forest activities of the people who used the cabins.
Another Forest Service contract was in the works, but to the southwest of us. I didn't bid on the sale because I had my hands full with three or four other contracts. Loggers from outside Lincoln w ere awarded the job. After they started up I heard their equipment was hit; skidding cables wxre cut and dirt w^as put into their machines' oil and diesel fuel. Luckily, one crew member noticed a machine had been tampered with, so all were checked quickly.
It's a time-consuming and costly job to repair cut cables, drain and clean oil and fuel systems, and replace all filters, but not nearly as expensive as major repairs or the downtime that follow^s.
The criminal acts were so scattered, times varied and methods were diverse enough that it seemed there had to be different people involved. But were there.'^ Could one very crafty individual be respon-
sible? Nobody c cr listed all the e ents together and compared them for time, tVeciiiency, severity, and most of all motive.
The Stemple area is just one that has grown in recent years as a popular seasonal recreation spot. Rochester Gulch, just a few miles from my house, runs north and south just off the Stemple Pass Road. Strait!;ht south across the road is Prickly Gulch, also a north-south gulch.
Both are popular spots for cabins, mostly older and scattered, but there are a few newer ones as well, and some trailers and trailer spots where people park their rigs for the summer. There are probably a dozen or so places in Prickly Gulch and half that many in Rochester, nearly all close to Stemple Road. Nobody l
ives in any of these cabins year-round, but at times during the summer the area is very active as people enjoy outdoor activities. Some of them stay around until the winter snows fall.
These summer dwellings had become frequent targets for break-ins and vandalism because of the number of buildings and scarcity of people.
The last cabin to be hit was also the biggest and newest cabin in Prickly Gulch. One summer in the early '90s the people had a small gold-panning operation north of their cabin. They returned home after a time in the woods to find someone had destroyed the set-up. Things were missing, tools and equipment smashed, shovel, pick and ax handles broken, and the most remarkable of all, a large pick head was broken. Someone had pounded and beat on the head until it literally broke in two. As they searched the area trying to find clues, they discovered some of the missing items partially buried or hidden under old logs. Hatchets were broken or thrown awa> but not until they had been used to destroy a wheelbarrow and other mining-related equipment. If all that wasn't enough, they went on to find that their cabin, too, hadn't escaped the vandal's wrath.
The method and potential motive were becoming clearer. Somewhere out there, an extremely angry person was set off, apparently by their mining activities.
About this same time, I started to think in earnest about not only all the destructive and potentially lethal activities, but also how drastically the countr^, especially the area around Ted and me, had changed.
Nearly a dozen new places had been built near Ted's cabin where only two or three existed when he arrived in Lincoln. Likewise, near me, almost twenty dwellings now exist where only four had stood prior to 197L
Additional cabins mean more people, more dogs and pets, more motorcycles, snowmobiles, and four-wheelers, more cars, trucks, and machines of all types, and most of all, more noise. A flurry of Forest Service logging jobs during the '80s brought in more heavy equipment and workers. Cloistered privacy was a thing of the past.
Even though Ted had always spent most of his time out in the surrounding mountains, his time away from his home cabin increased as the years went by. He spent more and more of his time up my gulch, sometimes not coming down for days or even weeks.
I knew Ted had camping spots up McClellan, and I found a few I was certain were his. He had others outside McClellan that he also used in the earlier years. In about 1980, for example, while hiking a few miles northwest of the South Fork of Poorman Road, I came upon a small lean-to. It was in a thicket that consisted predominantly of wind-thrown lodgepole pine trees. The lean-to was constructed from a fallen pole with an olive drab green plastic rain poncho draped over it. Evidence of past fires could be seen near the front. The shelter was barely visible, and I found it by accident. The green plastic rain poncho looked familiar. But the camp looked like it had been deserted after some use; it probably wasn't nearly remote enough for Ted. Even though it wasn't far from Rochester Gulch, another of Ted's favorites, I believe he abandoned this camp because it was far too accessible by the hunter traffic that increased every fall.
Another spot Ted had used for shelter when caught out in a storm or late at night was a cave high at the head of Fields Gulch.
In the early '70s, while out hunting elk in that area, I had crossed mountain lion tracks of a mother and two kittens in the snow. I followed the tracks until they entered one of several natural caves in the area. I left the animals alone, and on the way down found another cave. It was a nice spot and would be a good location to take shelter during a blizzard.
Years passed and, while hiking again close to the area, heading for
the top of the ridge to walk a portion of the old pack trail, I neared that second cave. Curious, I entered it and found some candles and canned food stashed inside.
Later that year a friend of mine disc() ered the cae and described what was inside. I had never told anyone it was there.
Even though the spot was remote I knew it was only a matter of time before word about the nice shelter would get around and it would be used by others.
To Ted, privacy was more than something to enjoy; he had to hae it. Privacy was essential and even his outdoor hidden camping spots were being discovered one by one.
He still had one sure bet: my gulch. With me as the gatekeeper to thousands of solitary acres, my gulch was his one private haven— and he knew I would keep it so. He had permission to be there and could come and go, day or night, anytime he pleased. It seemed as though he couldn't find privacy enough anywhere else, including at his home cabin.
Another incident during the early 1990s was related to me by a friend who had ridden his motorcycle past Dutch's sawmill and up an old logging skid trail near Ted's cabin.
Ted heard him ride by and raced out cursing and screaming at him. Ted's hair was long and wild; with no shirt on, he was covered with dirt, waving his arms wildly, severely admonishing my friend to leave and never return. Needless to say he made quite an impression on my friend, who said he would never ride up that way again.
A puzzling chain of events occurred at the first old cabin in my gulch, a mile south of home, where Betty had found Ted that cold February day in 1987. The cabin, built in the 1930s, was constructed of planed lumber and covered with heavy, black tar paper. Other than its slightly larger size of 13 by 15 feet, this cabin was nearly a carbon copy of Ted's home place, with a similar pitch to the roof, no eaves, the door on the same side, and three high windows. Even the stovepipe came through the roof in almost the exact location.
Like Ted's, this cabin never had electricity, running water or plumbing. Inside were a wood stove, low bedspring, table, and a food cabinet made from wood reinforced with angle iron and covered with sheet lead to prevent hungry mountain rodents from devouring its
contents. Even though this cabin was close to my access trail up the gulch, the site is still very private.
The cabin, unoccupied since the early mining years, is even located in a spot similar to Ted's home cabin, close to a creek, and is set among conifers and deciduous trees in a small opening.
I knew Ted not only passed by it frequently while hiking around but also he used the cabin once in a while. I didn't care.
But something strange was going on that I couldn't quite pin down. Something was different. In retrospect, I believe the changes started during the late 1970s or early '8()s when I first observed boards beginning to disappear from around the windows. Soon pieces of tar paper were vanishing from the outside of the cabin, exposing the lighter colored, unfaded wood beneath.
I dismissed the matter, blaming the wind and weather. Even though I wasn't in the habit of inspecting this old cabin, I did pay attention as things continued to disappear.
The interior of the walls had been sheeted with plywood and the glue holding the plies together had long since decomposed, leaving sheets of single plies still attached to the walls. These plies started to disappear too.
Again I thought the wind was to blame, but I wasn't sure; I really didn't have any other reason that made sense. The mystery deepened when I later noticed part of the food box missing; more than half of its angle iron and sheet lead were gone, and more tarpaper was missing from the back, which you wouldn't see unless you walked behind.
The next thing that disappeared was the bottom of one truss, a twelve-foot two-by-four that strapped the roof truss together. The two-by-four had been removed from one of the trusses near the back and wasn't readily noticeable.
My eyes had been drawn upward inside because I had at different times used this cabin to hang game while it aged before butchering. The blue-and-white nylon ropes I had always kept tied to one of these trusses to secure the game were gone as well.
Then rows of nails were missing from along the outside cabin base on the side away from the door and the back.
With my work heavy schedule, I once again was distracted and didn't try to satisfy my curiosity. "Out of sight, out of mind."
'I'hc cabin materials wouldn't he the only things to mysteriously
disappear out of my ^uleh.
I fmally completed my bi^ Forest Service contract up near the top of Stemple Pass in 1990 after two extensions. I hated to see it end, a job that o^ood so close to home. I had taken other contracts in between to prolong that job as long as possible. It is a real rarity to find logging and road construction jobs of that size just a few miles away from where you live. I had logged many millions of feet of timber all over the countryside, as far as sixty-five or seventy miles away.
As the job wound down and the machinery was hauled home, I left one line machine down near Poorman Creek to do some more mining. I removed the logging rigging, replaced it with a bucket and used it as a dragline to dig placer gravel.
I didn't get much mining done that fall since I had to haul equipment to another logging job about ten miles west of Lincoln. After spending the w inter there I was pleased to find out that severe winds had toppled trees on my old contract area near the top of Stemple Pass. After being awarded a new contract for a small salvage logging sale, I gladly returned to the old work site for a couple of months.
Logging w^as starting to get tougher with the jobs not only fewer, but much farther away as well. I had decided years before I wouldn't take any jobs that were too distant. I didn't want to have to live in my camper. That situation might be okay, or it might even appeal to a single person, but not me. I was married and if I couldn't eat at my own table and sleep in my own bed every night, I didn't want the job. There was other work I could do.
My father-in-law and I were very close and had been friends even before I was married to his daughter. Having spent a great deal of time mining during his seventy-six years, Leonard was my partner on every mining venture until his death in 1992.
He enjoyed it as much as I did and even when we weren't mining together he was nearly always with me, going together to the woods almost on a daily basis. He is still, to this day, greatly missed.
