Worst, Best Trip with the Grim Boys.

by Timothy Lawrence (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find USA

We shouldn't have driven to Montana in a blizzard. No sleep, all-night drive to the mountain fire-tower in Bozeman, Montana would be a lovely idea–in the summer. The five of us boys jumped into Malachi's 2017 Jeep Cherokee and drove through the blizzardy South Dakota night in February. We finished our jobs in Minneapolis late in the afternoon and we piled in for the long haul. On the way we had a couple spin outs on our way on the road, narrowly missing a pileup on the highway by speeding between a spinning car and a flipped car on black ice. We took turns sleeping once the adrenaline wore off from the almost-crash. After finally getting to the base of the mountain at first light, we made our trek up to the mountain fire-tower. We got as high up the mountain as we could in the Jeep and then gauged how far the tower was from trail opening. Four-hour hike. We were very tired but got our sausage egg McMuffins and coffee in us and planned out the hike. We grabbed our gear for our first trip up the mountain. Three hours into the supposed 4-hour climb through 2ft of snow, we decided to check our cooler for some sustenance. Cool. We had half a dozen 6-packs of beer and three cans of soup. Nailed it. With this discovery, we decided to unloaded a few pack of beer into the snow, grabbing them the next trip up. Once we got back onto the vague path, we made our way again. By now we were 6 hours in. Perfect. We HAD to be closer to the tower than the car. Turns out. Kinda. So, two more hours and one bag of sugar-puppies (thanks Ari), we finally saw the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain had snow swirling around the crest and as we finally topped the final tree-line, we saw the snow barely open and the tower stood strong and proud looking over the valleys below. Huzzah! We quickened our crunches through the snow, tightened our backpacks, angled into the wind and powered through. Finally we were there up in the fire-tower, which was surrounded by windows on every side, heated by a stove in the corner, standard-issued bunkbeds lining 3 walls and a stationary table in the middle. We chopped some wood from the cave under the tower, stoked the fire, and started cooking our two cans of soup and drinking some of our cans of cursed beer. Needless to say, we finished our food and beers, took some pictures, chatted, laughed, and quickly fell asleep in the daylight as wind howled around us and pounded on the stronghold we slept in that night. Thankfully whoever would wake up at night would stoke the fire to keep us warm at night and in the morning we had some granola bars, made some coffee and left the fire tower, down the mountain which only took about three hours to get down. The next night we stayed in a cabin that we were able to drive up next to and where we had a lot of fun drinking, eating and regaling the memories we would have of the terrible climb and the terrifying winter drive. We only found out a years later that we parked in the wrong spot and there was a better, much easier trail just a mile from where we parked. We are still planning on doing a redemption trip.