Flathead Lake Lodge

At about age 14-17, as young boys Dad thought we were the perfect candidates for horse packing the groceries into hunting camp, 19 miles in the wilderness. Our parents would spend weeks at a time in the wilderness hosting hunters, many from foreign countries to shoot a prize elk, bear or mountain goat. On Fridays, the school would let us out mid day to prepare to haul hay and supplies into camp in the dark, often arriving around midnight. Our mother would put hot rocks from the campfire under our sleeping bags, so they were warm when we arrived after the long cold ride. This required mattying up the supplies in equal weight horse packs and loading 2 packs per horse. It took experience to get the packs just right and balance on a horse traveling down the trial. Occasionally there would be a wreck with the pack string of horses as and a horse would lose a pack. The long ride in the wilderness had a large population of Grizzly Bears, yet the always seemed to want to run off and weren’t particularly a big concern until this happened. One hunting season, my father Les experienced an attack by grizzly  bear on a horse near hunting camp. Following this incident, we had a new level of awareness to the danger of bears. We packed one or two sidearms and a 30-30 Winchester in a scabbard. Prior to the attack, we didn’t worry about bears and would often sleep in the saddle by tying the saddle strings to our belt to keep from falling over if we fell asleep in the saddle  as we were riding down the trail. How times have changed for kids today. In two days, we would ride 38 miles through the wilderness into and out of camp, in hopes of getting out of the woods in time to go to ball game on Sat evening. There was no communication with our parents in the wilderness hunting camp between visits. Just a goodbye wave and see you next week down the trail. Era 1960s.