The Bear Trap Bed and the Crazy Horse: That Summer in Death Canyon, Second Day

Grand Teton National Park, 1959, a Monday morning in June: I was ready to move into the ranger station high up in Death Canyon and go to work as a back country patrol ranger. It was the first day of my best summer ever. But, as events unfolded, not the best day of my best summer.

In the rear view mirror I saw a green park service pickup turn onto the dirt road behind me. It was pulling a horse trailer. That would be Stan Spurgeon, Assistant Chief Ranger, who was hauling the second pack horse I’d use that day. We were headed for the White Grass Ranger Station, the location of  the Death Canyon trailhead.

When still a teenager Stan started with the Park Service as a horse packer and worked his way up through the ranger ranks. Now a victim of seniority, he did most of his rangering from a desk.

His eyes lit a few days earlier when he promised to come to White Grass and help me pack the horses. We both understood that “help” meant “teach you to.” 

     Groceries, bed roll and clothing were in the trunk of my car. In his truck Stan carried the pack saddles and odds and ends of government equipment that had been issued to me, including a troubling item—a sleeping cot.

The Death Canyon Trail 

(NPS)

The bear trap cot

      When I signed for my gear the previous week, the warehouse manager handed over the standard issue “bear trap” cot, so named because its folding legs, spring driven, close with a snap and have been known to draw blood.

The ranger station lacked a bed. I just had to figure out how to get the darn thing up there.

From the corral King and Sandy neighed greetings to the mare as Stan led her from the trailer.

Under Stan’s direction I sorted stuff into piles on the grass. Then everything steadily disappeared as Stan filled the pannier boxes. He packed food, fuel, clothes, and housekeeping supplies. The cabin waiting up in the canyon was already equipped with assorted tools, pots and pans, crockery and cutlery, candles and Coleman lanterns.

Packing the horses

Finally we saddled the horses. Stan had reduced the chaos to: four panniers, one still empty (a puzzlement); my bed roll; a sack of oats; and, leaning against a tree, that worrisome bear-trap cot.

We loaded the mare with two panniers and my bed roll. We loaded the third full pannier on Sandy’s right side, the empty one on his left, and nestled the oats in between. Then Stan lashed the cot outside the empty pannier. Of course. How simple.

Nodding thanks to Stan and waving goodbye to The Idiot (see First Day) I reined King toward the trail to the Death Canyon Ranger Station, the two packhorses turning to follow.

Me, with my later saddle horse Spud 

and the knuckle headed packhorse Sandy 

(family album)

My pack string runs away

We got to at the ranger station. I tied King to a tree and Sandy to the hitching rail that was spiked to the cabin wall. Then I made a greenhorn mistake. I tied the mare to the other end of the same rail.

When I unlashed the cot and lifted it off the pannier, Sandy—who had carried the thing from White Grass to Phelps Lake, then all the way up the canyon—rolled back an eye, let out a what-the-hell-is-that? snort, and reared.

The mare, panicked by his panic, reared too. Together they jerked the hitching rail off the cabin and, dragging it between them, stampeded into the pines by the corral.

The rail broke as the horses passed on each side of a tree, freeing them from each other. The heavy pannier on Sandy’s right side shattered against another tree, sending groceries flying. Both horses disappeared into the timber in the direction of an open meadow beyond.

King, calm throughout, watched the proceedings with mild interest. I left him tied, seeing little hope of wrangling the other two from horseback in the timber.

Walking up the trail toward the meadow, I was unsure what to do. I was especially concerned that the horses might circle around me and head back down the canyon together.

When the permanent staff at Park headquarters gathered for parties in the winter, their conversation often included tales of dumb mistakes made by summer seasonals. If the two horses showed up back at White Grass, the mare still carrying her pack and Sandy a single empty pannier, my story would be retold for years.

The crisis passes

The mare stood trembling just inside the meadow, still tied to her half the rail. As I took her halter rope and calmed her, I could see Sandy further on, head up and looking back, trotting in circles.

Tying the mare to a tree near the cabin, I went back for Sandy. He had slowed to a walk and was breathing heavily. Taking his head, I discovered why he kept running. The smashed pannier had snagged on the pack rope and, dragging behind, had been “chasing him" around and around the meadow.

When the horses were unpacked, unsaddled, watered, and snuffling in their oat boxes in the corral, I gathered what groceries I could find scattered among the trees. Odds and ends kept turning up all summer, including a can of corned beef I came across at the end of August, the day before I left the ranger station for the last time.

Mouth of Death Canyon 

(NPS)

NEXT POST:

Why Aunt Eleanor Shot the Goat