Wilderness researchers are living the dream

LAKE PLATEAU, Mont. - While large swaths of the West have suffered through extreme drought and wildfires this summer, Dan Pendergraph and Sage Stowell have endured numerous hail, rain, lightning and wind storms and the occasional snow flurry while working in the Beartooth Mountains, and they enjoyed almost every minute of it.

"I love the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, and getting to backpack for work is a great thing," Stowell said.

Stowell and Pendergraph, both 28 years old, have spent the summer working as field leaders for the Wilderness Institute's Citizen Science Program at the University of Montana. This year the program, which organized a decade ago, was gathering information on remote campsites and trails for the Custer Gallatin National Forest.

As the weather this summer emphasized again and again, the working conditions for the trip leaders was often challenging. While carrying backpacks weighing 60 pounds or more, the crew leaders hiked to different locations in the remote wilderness area, sometimes trudging more than 10 miles a day. Along the route they talked about the area's flora, history and wilderness lore with their crew of volunteers.

Once at camp, they erected their tents and then began cooking a large dinner over gas-powered camp stoves, chopping up scallions and zucchini to add to quinoa or a tomato sauce for hearty and tasty one-pot meals. Before going to bed, they hung their food from ropes lofted high up into tree branches to keep the meals out of the reach of bears.

The next day, they would crawl out of their sleeping bags and take day trips from a base camp to collect information for a 30-year-old Forest Service study of wilderness impacts from campsites and trails.

Work, work, work

All this doesn't include the prep work they would complete in Missoula before the treks, such as shopping, packing, cleaning gear and entering data. The leaders work eight days in a row, then have four days off. Pendergraph mentioned none of the work when asked about what he likes best about the job, though.

"I like having really thoughtful discussions with the volunteers about public lands and ecology," he said. "It's nice when people get out in the wilderness, everybody loosens up a bit. We have good campfire talks."

Pendergraph and Stowell possess a rare blend of trail smarts, athleticism, good humor and people skills. Although more than 25 people applied for the four crew leader positions this year - as many as 60 have applied in the past - only eight made it to the interview stage, said Lisa Gerloff, the program's director.

"We're trying to find the combination of being knowledgeable and personable and, for me, people that are self-starters and work well on their own," Gerloff said. "I couldn't ask for a better group than the one this year."

She added that over the years the program has had a great track record of taking care of volunteers while also balancing the need to get the cooperating agency's work done.

Out of state

The leaders seem almost overqualified. Stowell grew up in Nederland, Colo., in a family of dedicated river runners who made frequent raft trips down the Grand Canyon's Colorado River and then cross-country skied in the winter. After earning a degree in environmental studies and wilderness studies at the University of Montana, she worked two summers as a ranger in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. She also worked for three years on a ponderosa pine research project in Colorado. Tall and wiry, she said her favorite thing to do once she gets out of the backcountry is to shower while drinking a cold beverage. Second on that list may be to eat a banana shake - she admitted consuming one each day for five days to recharge her calorie count after cool days atop the Beartooth Mountains' Lake Plateau.

Pendergraph grew up in Hartford, Conn., and followed a friend west to Great Falls almost immediately after graduating from high school. A hunter, angler and grower of numerous beets, he apprenticed and worked as a welder in Seattle before deciding to return to Montana and go to school where he's studying resource conservation. In between, he also worked for three years with the Montana Conservation Corps, the last two as a crew leader, mostly in Idaho. Pendergraph was quick with a smile, a joke and had the most unique fashion sense - wearing his knee-high rubber boots with baggy shorts, shorts with long underwear and a variety of hats as well as a tie-dyed headband. What Pendergraph craved the most when he was in the backcountry was a Swiss steak with red gravy from The Oxford Saloon and Café in Missoula.

Beartooth exploration

This summer, the two crew leaders made five trips into the Beartooths, carrying everything they needed for excursions lasting five to six nights and sometimes covering 10 miles while climbing to 11,000 feet. They visited the Mystic Lake area, Lake Abundance near the headwaters of the Stillwater River, the Lake Fork and West Fork of Rock Creek, ending the season atop the Lake Plateau for two trips - the first trip ascended the West Fork of the Stillwater River, the second traveled up the East Boulder River drainage.

Although that first Lake Plateau trip beat the crew down with endless rain, hail and lightning storms, Pendergraph called it his favorite place of all the ones he visited this summer.

"But when it was storming, I was ready to get out," he added.

Not one to repeat an unpleasant experience, though, he wore his knee-high rubber boots into the Lake Plateau for his second trip, despite the additional four pounds of weight. Stowell shrugged off the two-month-long challenges of wet weather, lumpy campsites and endless mosquitoes.

"When I'm suffering in the backcountry, I know what I have to do," Stowell said. "It's not the same in the real world when I worry about: 'Where am I going to live, and what am I going to do?' Whereas out in the wilderness, I know what to do."

It's simple, she explained. When there's a bad storm in the wilderness she brews a hot cup of tea and retires to her tent to read a book.