Yellowstone Standoff Read online

  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

  For 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 chann
eled 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!”

  16

  Chuck scrambled out of the water and yanked his wet pants up his legs. Were Janelle and the girls safe? No more shouts came from above as he hurried up the trail, boots untied, pack in hand, Clarence and Keith close behind. He topped the rocky rise and found the others peering across the rolling terrain of the upper Thorofare Creek basin. Janelle stood among the hikers, the girls holding hands at her side.

  Chuck slowed, catching his breath. “What’s going on?”

  “Bear sighting,” Janelle said evenly. She pointed at a tiny, brown dot crossing an open stretch of tundra more than half a mile away, on the far side of Thorofare Creek.

  Clarence bent beside the girls, his hands on his knees, breathing hard. “Que bonita,” he said to them.

  The girls nodded, their eyes on the grizzly.

  Chance trembled at Keith’s side, ears forward, eyes on the brown, moving spot.

  Lex faced the hikers, his back to the distant grizzly. “It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s going about its business, just like us.”

  “You mean,” Randall said, “in spite of us.”

  “You don’t think we should be here?” Lex asked him.

  “This is the grizzly’s pad, not ours. We should be chill with it, man. Instead, we show up here, see the bear, and start screaming and yelling.”

  “I was letting it know we’re here,” Sarah said. “It’s what Grizzly Initiative team members are trained to do.”

  “You’re cool,” Randall assured her. “It’s just that what you’re trained to do is not a part of this environment. You’re not a part of this environment. None of us are. It’s foreign to us, so we end up screaming and yelling instead of hanging and chilling. Dogs run off for no reason. We build huge camps in the middle of nowhere. We make a mess of things, when, really, we don’t even have to be out here to do research anymore in the first place.”

  Sarah raised her head, her neck stiff. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Uh-oh, Chuck thought.

  Randall aimed a thumb at the drone riding in its fiberglass frame high on his shoulders behind him. “We’ve got these things now, lady-cakes.”

  Sarah’s face flushed. “The very idea that—”

  Lex raised a hand, cutting her off before Chuck could tell if she was responding to Randall’s boastfulness about the drone or his calling her lady-cakes.

  “Who knows?” Lex said to Randall. “Maybe someday your contraption will take all of us humans out of the backcountry. We’ll be like those drone operators in the Air Force who blow up people in the Middle East from air-conditioned offices in Las Vegas. At this point, though, your contraption has a total possible flying time of what? Ten minutes?”

  Randall avoided Lex’s gaze. “Fifteen,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “You’re not going to make it too far into the backcountry in seven and a half minutes.”

  “It won’t be long before—”

  “I know, I know,” Lex broke in. “Someday you’ll be able to fly that thing for hours on end. But that’s in the future, maybe way in the future. For now, today, the only way we can conduct research is to get up close and personal with the creatures we’re studying.” He glanced at the bear. “Just not too close.”

  He addressed all of the hikers. “Roughly two hundred brown bears call Yellowstone National Park home at any given time, and each of them covers a lot of territory. It makes sense that you’ll see grizzlies like this one as they move around. It’s important to understand you’ll be surrounded by them all summer.”

  “Surrounded?” Rosie yelped.

  “We’re supposed to be surrounded by them,” Lex told her. “That’s the whole idea. We’re out here where they live—in their pad—” he raised an eyebrow at Randall “—so we can study them. But as long as we give the bears plenty of warning, they won’t bother us. In fact, they’re probably used to having us around. A recent tracking study in Montana found that grizzlies actually trail elk hunters on national forest lands in the fall. They wait until the hunters make a kill. After the hunters quarter their elk and leave, the bears swoop in to feast on the rest of the carcass.” Lex directed a sharp look at Randall. “In that case, at least, the grizzlies appreciate having humans around.”

  “Opportunism, pure and simple, dude,” Randall responded. “Can’t blame the grizzlies. But it certainly doesn’t make it cool.”

  Sarah bent toward Rosie. “The key is letting them know we’re here.”

  “Sarah did what she should have done,” Lex said, “in crying out when she spotted our friend over there. That’s a good thing to do upon first sighting a grizzly.” He gazed around the group. “For those of you new to the Yellowstone backcountry, it’s worth repeating: none of us wants to surprise a grizzly out here. Surprise triggers a brown bear’s attack response. We made plenty of noise talking with one another as we hiked through the forest this morning. Any bears in the vicinity would have heard us and moved away without our even knowing they were there. Up here above tree line, as we continue to make noise, the odds of our seeing bears as they move away from us—like the one across the valley—will logically be higher.”

  The grizzly topped a rise and passed from sight.

  Lex tu
rned to Chuck. “Do you need to go back to the spring?”

  Chuck glanced at Clarence and Keith. “We rinsed off the muck. The sun will dry our pants quickly enough.”

  “Onward, then?”

  “Can’t wait.”

  Trident Peak loomed ahead, its three prong-like ridges falling away to the west. Fifty years ago, a pair of matching glaciers, Trident One and Trident Two, had spilled from the two shadowed canyons between the three ridges all the way to Thorofare Creek. In the years since, the glaciers had retreated to the heads of the matching side canyons. Today, Trident One and Trident Two were classified as snowfields rather than glaciers. Though the two snowfields grew and shrank between winter and summer, they contained little, if any, of the expanding and contracting glacial ice that had led to their original classification as glaciers when the park first was mapped in the 1800s.

  The pack trail skirted the base of the northernmost ridge. From the base of the first ridge, the trail cut across the green tundra of the upper valley away from the next two ridges and along Thorofare Creek toward the top of the divide.

  Where the trail turned away from the three ridges, Lex forged a cross-country route up an open slope. The mossy tundra depressed like a wet sponge beneath Chuck’s boots as he trailed the girls and Lex past the toe of the first ridge and on to the second.

  He stopped to gaze up the canyon. Snow spilled down the north-facing wall, while the south face glowed green with newly sprouted tundra grass. The deep cleft between the first two ridges doglegged half a mile up. The dogleg hid the canyon’s terminus, where the remnants of Trident Two Glacier awaited exploration. But Chuck was here to see what last summer’s melt-off had revealed to the climbers who had looked down from the summit of Trident Peak at the remnants of Trident One, where the higher of the two canyons ended at the base of the mountain.