The Mountain Men

Departure day is upon me and I am so excited, especially since I ran across this picture today of  Moraine Lake in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. It is on my trip itinerary. I think this view is AWESOME.

There is little left to do except food shop and pack the car. Since everything fit on my last trip, I am confident I can make it all stay below the window sills on this trip also. I need to clean the windshield and set up my auxiliary GPS. My new wide truckers rear view mirror is in place to help me see my blind spots.

I went to charge my trusty “Coleman Hot Water Heater” and discovered it was “trusty” no more. Luckily for Amazon Prime my new one arrived today and is getting its initial charge. The charge makes the propane light which then provides the energy to pump and heat water for dish washing and showers. I didn’t want to “leave home without it.”

In reviewing my itinerary I discovered a really cool thing. It is a bit of a story to get to the point but here goes. All winter I have been reading up on American History and read the biography of Alexander Hamilton (yes, the broadway show source), then several books of historical fiction about the Revolutionary War. Then I read two books about the bison (buffalo) in the west and how they were hunted and virtually decimated except for a rare few in Yellowstone and a few other places. Then I started to wonder how the west was really settled and I discovered a group called the Mountain Men. 

The Mountain Men were lone beaver trappers who roamed the upper West on the Missouri, Yellowstone and other western rivers. The movie "The Revenant" was about Hugh Glass who was an early Mountain Man Then I read several histories about others such as William Henry Ashley, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, John Colter, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Andrew Henry, and Jedediah Smith. John Jacob Astor funded a Fur Company to buy furs from the trappers. I am now reading about Lewis And Clarks’ expedition and discovered that they ran into at least 11 of these Mountain Men on their 1804-6 expedition. The lone trappers soon started working for several companies such as Astor’s that competed for the precious beaver furs. The Mountain Men were hearty souls who only had muzzle loading single shot rifles, pistols and knives for protection and hunting.

It was an incredibly strenuous life for these men as they often trapped in territory in which no white man had ever traveled. They had to kill what they ate and had to deal with often hostile Indians and grizzly bears. They traded with some Indians and lived with some Indians part of the time. It was an arduous thing to trap the beaver in the colder months when their fur was the best and then transport their hides back to civilization for sale. They had to resupply too and then they did it all over again by going back to their beloved solitude in the mountains. 

The fur companies started to lead wagon trains out to meeting places in the west in order to resupply the trappers and buy their furs. These meeting places turned into yearly meetings in the summer at various locations in the upper west and became known as "The Rendezvous.”. Their first Rendezvous was located in McKinnon, Wyoming in 1825. Rendezvous were held almost every year until 1840 when the beaver had been played out. Guess where I plan to camp on May 13-14th? I will be at the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in Green River, WY, located just a few miles from McKinnon, WY. I am psyched. In fact I will be driving through McKinnon on my way to Salt Lake City. 

Writers found their way to the Rendezvous and sent their fantastic stories of the west back east. It was about 1840 when the beaver had played out that the wagon trains started to arrive on the plains. All of the wonderful stories about the west had inspired the homesteaders to make the trip west. Only a few trappers knew of the passes to get over the mountains and thus signed on to be guides and hunters for the wagon trains. One of the Mountain Men discovered the South Pass in western Wyoming which turned out to be the easiest route across the Rockies. (“easiest” being a relative term here).

The Union Pacific Railroad, the first railroad to go across the country, used the South Pass route. I don’t think the current I-80 uses South Pass but I will cross the Continental Divide very near that location. All of this will happen during the first few weeks of my trip as I hope to be in Salt Lake by the 15th. 

I discovered that there are many current day re-enactors of the Rendezvous, held all over the upper west in the US and Canada. The participants perform the same competitions that went on at the real Rendezvous. James Beckwourth describes: "Mirth, songs, dancing, shouting, trading, running, jumping, singing, racing, target-shooting, yarns, frolic, with all sorts of extravagances that white men or Indians could invent.” (James Beckwourth was a mountain man that dictated his life’s story to a writer named Bonner who produced the book “The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.”)

My next real blog post probably won’t be until I get to Flaming Gorge or Salt Lake.