Night of the Grizzlies (12 page)

The Kleins, Robert and Janet, had not been married long enough for major arguments, but now they were having a major disagreement. Janet had heard about the bears of Granite Park Chalet, and she announced that there was no force on Earth, including her handsome six-foot seven-inch husband, that could get her to sleep out in the campground that night. For his part, Robert still was not convinced that the presence of a few bears should change their plans for a night underneath the limitless vault of the sky. Janet was more than a foot shorter than her husband and weighed barely 100 pounds, but she stood her ground and finally announced that big brave Robert could sleep outside if he wanted to, but she was going to scrape $ 12.50 out of her packsack and sleep in the chalet.

“You would do that?” the shocked husband asked.

“I certainly would,” said the determined young lady.

It was odd how the subject of bears had come up so often on the young couple’s camping trip. Nothing had been further from their minds when they had planned the two-week excursion into Glacier National Park. Robert, a 23 year-old geologist originally from Denver, and Janet, a 23 year-old schoolteacher originally from Nebraska, were both in love with the outdoors, and when they acquired a fancy new Japanese camera and some vacation time simultaneously, they decided to put both to use on a camping trip. The idea might have been sound, but an immediate complication set in: On one of their first day hikes in Glacier Park, they left the camera at their luncheon site, and when they returned to retrieve it, the camera was gone. “That should have tipped us off right away that we were operating under a dark cloud,” Janet said later, “but all we did was borrow a camera from a friend and keep right on going.”

The friend was Robert Frauson, ranger-in-charge of most of the eastern portion of the park and one of the most highly respected rangers in the Park Service. The Kleins were glad to have a contact in the green ranger uniform when they first arrived from their home in Longmont, Colorado. They had a long talk with Frauson, and they listened interestedly when the subject of grizzlies came up. Frauson told them that there was always the possibility of running into a bear and that they should carry bells or other noisemakers with them, or sing or talk loudly as they walked. If they took these simple precautions, the boss ranger said, it was extremely unlikely that they would even see a grizzly.

“And what if we do?” Janet asked.

“Well, there’s no set thing,” Frauson said. “You can’t outrun them, that’s for sure, so maybe the best thing is to run for a tree, and if you can’t find a tree, just roll up in a fetal position and take whatever the bear dishes out.”

The Kleins had all but forgotten Frauson’s advice in the general exuberance and delight of planning a seven-mile hike to Granite Park Chalet a few days later. To be sure, they wore their bear bells as they set out from Logan Pass a few hours after Joan Devereaux’s party on Saturday, but as they picked their way along the tall cliffs and gazed across McDonald Valley at the mauve-, purple-, and pink-banded peaks that shattered the skyline, bears were forgotten. Bob Klein clicked his borrowed camera at marmots and ground squirrels and mountain goats and almost anything that moved, including his slender wife, and despite the soaring heat of the day and the sniff of wood fire that tinted the air, their packs had never felt lighter.

They were munching on their lunch at the midway point of the hike when another family pulled up and joined them in the easy informality of the trail. “Are you gonna sleep out?” one of the newcomers asked, seeing the Kleins’ packs.

“Sure,” Robert Klein answered.

“Where?”

“Oh, we don’t know. Somewhere around the chalet, I guess.”

The man asked the Kleins if they had heard about the bears, and the couple said that they knew there were grizzlies in Glacier Park, but they had heard nothing specific about Granite Park. “Well,” the newcomer said, “they’ve got’em.”

Shortly before three in the afternoon, ]anet and Robert Klein were taking a break about a quarter mile from their destination when a party of four hikers overtook them-a mother and father and two teenage daughters. Once again, the conversation turned to grizzlies, and once again the Kleins were asked if they intended to sleep out. “It’s your own business what you do,” the father said, “but I can tell you for sure, there’s at least five grizzlies that hang around that chalet, and you wouldn’t catch me camping out there for a million dollars.”

As they walked slowly on the last leg of their long hike, the Kleins realized that the subject of grizzlies seemed to be on everybody’s tongue, but they still did not know how seriously to take the information that was being offered to them in job lots. They walked up to the front door of the lonely mountain blockhouse, eased their packs to the ground, and spotted a pretty brown-haired girl wearing the uniform of the National Park Service. Klein brought up the subject of grizzlies, and the young woman said that she had just conducted her first guided tour into Granite Park, but she had been told by any number of old hands that several bears came into the chalet area each night for handouts.

Still, she said, people camped in the woods below the chalet, and the grizzlies did not seem to disturb them.

Robert Klein was surprised and asked the naturalist if she was kidding. “I wish I were,” the naturalist answered, “but I’m not.”

The conversation frightened Janet Klein and disturbed her husband more than a little.

“OK,” he said, “we’ll see about staying in the chalet.”

They were told that the young man in charge of the rooms was in the back burning trash, and the Kleins walked around the big log and stone building and introduced themselves to a sturdily built bearded man who told them his name was Tom Walton. By now, it was late afternoon, and Walton said that he was sorry, but every bed was booked. “What about the floor?” Klein asked, and Walton told them they could sleep on the floor and enjoy three full meals for $25.

“For sleeping on the floor?” Klein asked in amazement “Well, that’s the rate,” Walton said pleasantly. “I’d like to make exceptions, but I just can’t”

Klein asked if they could lay out their sleeping bags in one of the washrooms that lay huddled about the chalet, but the innkeeper told them that this was against the rules, and if he bent the rules for one couple, he would soon have campers choking up the washrooms and sleeping alongside the toilets, and no one would be satisfied with that arrangement.

“Well, OK,” Robert Klein said, “then tell us frankly, what’s the bear situation around here? That seems to be all anybody talks about.”

Walton told them that two grizzlies had been coming in on a regular basis for two or three weeks now, that they came from the trail that led down toward the trail cabin and the campground and returned by the same route, and that they did not appear to represent an immediate danger to anyone. “They come in, eat their scraps, and leave, and that’s that,” Walton said.

“And they head down toward the campground?” Klein asked.

“In that general direction,” Walton said. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. Hundreds of people have camped there this summer, and the bears haven’t eaten anybody yet. ” The two men laughed, but Janet Klein gulped and told herself that the campground was out so far as she was concerned. Walton went about his chores, and the young couple discussed their problem. At first they had been in total agreement that it would be ridiculous to pay $25 to sleep on the floor of the chalet. But now Janet was thoroughly frightened, and she delivered her ultimatum that she would find the money and stay inside in safety. Robert said he wanted to think about it some more and left for a quick climb up to Swiftcurrent Lookout, 1,000 feet above.

When he returned, it was about six thirty, and Janet introduced him to a 20 year-old hiker from Paradise, California, named Don Gullett. Janet had noticed Gullett’s pack and his sleeping bag and had asked him how he could entertain the idea of sleeping out in this grizzly-infested area. Gullett had told her that he was not worried about the bears, and he had staked out a nice flat spot in the shadow of the trail cabin. Robert Klein asked Gullett how far it was from the trail cabin to the campground. “Oh, several hundred yards anyway,” Gullett answered, and the three agreed to walk down the trail along the lava flow and take a look.

By now, Janet Klein was wondering if she was not overreacting and threatening her husband’s enjoyment unreasonably. The trail cabin site was charming; a tiny stream tinkled alongside, and there were big patches of purple asters and red monkey flower and cinquefoil. Off to the southwest, one could make out the general area of the campground, but it seemed a safe distance away. The logs at the edges of the trail cabin had been laid out in an overlapping crisscross pattern, providing four natural ladders to the galvanized metal roof, and when Robert pointed out that they could get up the side in seconds if a grizzly came around, Janet announced bravely that the site met her approval. The Kleins made camp just below the lava flow, some 20 feet from the uphill wall of the cabin, and Gullett laid his bag alongside the lower wall.

“Now let’s forget about bears and enjoy ourselves,” Robert Klein said, and the young couple began preparing supper while Gullett busied himself about 30 feet away. The Kleins were preparing to eat when a pair of teenagers arrived and asked where the campground was. When Robert Klein pointed off to the left, the boy, who called himself Roy and looked to be about 18, said, “Well, if the campground’s over there, why are the three of you camping here?” “If you want to know the truth,” Janet Klein said, “we’re afraid of bears.”

The younger couple laughed. “Oh, that’s nothing to worry about,” the boy said, and his companion, an attractive girl of about the same age, laughed again as though the subject were a joke. The teenage boy proceeded to tell a humorous story about grizzly bears, but later on no one was able to remember it. The girl, Julie, flashed a beautiful smile and said, “Well, let’s get going,” and the young couple bounced away toward the campground. The Kleins finished their dinner and carried all their refuse up to the chalet trash cans, hung around to talk, and returned by way of the upper edge of the lava flow, the better to watch the spectacular sunset. Then they covered their provisions with plastic and hauled them to the top of a medium- sized subalpine fir and climbed into their sleeping bag. “Now tell me again, ” Janet said, as the two of them lay under the bright moon and stars and tried to get to sleep, “what do we do if a bear comes?”

Robert Klein had carefully placed the flashlight and their boots within arm’s reach. “We grab these,” he said, “and we go up the side of the cabin to the roof.” Not long after, the Kleins heard Don Gullett come back down the trail and prepare to turn in, and by ten or ten thirty, they were all asleep.

The campground would never be confused with the Ritz, but to the two young hikers, their heads already filled with the wonder and joy of the wilderness, it was luxurious. The place was in obvious disrepair; the sign-“GRANITE PARK CAMPGROUND”- lay on the earth, as did beams and metal braces and other building materials, but at least there was a fire pit, and someone had left a few logs for the next campers. The boy and the girl looked at each other and smiled and nodded and headed back to the chalet to pick up the packs that they had left behind while they reconnoitered the area.

Except for the fact that they were an exceedingly handsome young couple, there was little to distinguish Roy Ducat and Julie Helgeson from the 850 other students who worked for park concessioners as waiters and busboys and cooks and clerks and valets and on other assignments befitting their tender years and their willingness to work cheaply. If all these young people had one characteristic in common, it was the brashness of youth. Early each summer, the park rangers would give lectures about the park and its dangers, and attendance was compulsory for the young employees, but none of them seemed to learn much from the lectures-or so the older rangers grumbled. It was a fact that the death and accident rates were high among the youngsters. Nobody kept score, but Mel Ruder, the newspaperman who kept a studious eye on the park from a range of fifteen miles away, once estimated that an average of one employee per year did not return home alive. They died on mountain climbs for which they were not prepared, on narrow roads they refused to respect, and in high-altitude lakes that were twenty degrees colder than the lakes back home. “But thank God none of them ever died at the hands of grizzlies,” Ruder said, “and maybe this is why the kids would yawn and hold hands and close their ears when the rangers would tell them about the danger from bears. The kids would sort of say to themselves, ’What danger? Name me one kid that’s been killed and I’ll listen to you.’”

Dorothy Love, manager of the gift shop at Lake McDonald Lodge, put it another way. “These kids come in from everywhere. Some of them do know something about the outdoors but only where they came from. They may be Pennsylvania knowledgeable, and they might be Tucson knowledgeable, but they aren’t Montana knowledgeable.”

Roy Ducat, working for the summer as a busboy at East Glacier Lodge, was Ohio knowledgeable and a cut above most of his young colleagues, both intellectually and physically. At 18, he was already a sophomore in biology at Bowling Green State University, not far from his home in Perrysburg, Ohio. He was not overpoweringly strong, but he could hold his own on an all-day hike; he had worked as a lifeguard, and he kept himself in shape.

His companion, Julie Helgeson, was Minnesota knowledgeable, a lovely slender girl with brown hair and blue eyes and a deep interest in nature. At 19, she was already two years out of high school, where she had been a pompon girl, a singer in the school choir, and a class leader. Now a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, she kept up her active life in the church. Her father liked to describe her in a short phrase-“a beautiful, bubbling girl.”

Julie had been in Glacier Park for two months, working in the laundry at East Glacier Lodge, before she felt ready for her first overnight hike into the wilderness. A few days earlier, she had said goo d-bye to her parents, who had headed back to Albert Lea, Minnesota, after a two-day visit in the park.