The crunch of footpads on the gravel road woke me, I’d been barely sleeping all night anyway. Even with my pistol stashed underneath the crumpled-up sweatshirt that had become my pillow, I just wasn’t at peace out under the stars. I’d seen too many bears in the Selkirks to sleep soundly.

I listened as the sounds of an imagined grizzly bear receded up the road and were then replaced by the harrowing calls of a trio of owls arguing in the night. I pushed the conjured carnivore out of my head, gathered what little courage I could, and rolled over to embrace to milky way splashed perpendicularly between the black valley walls.

It was 3:04 am, and I knew there would be several hours of random night noises until the eastern sky began to radiate.

My mind eventually wandered back to my first hiking expedition into the Selkirks. My aunts’ husband, Doug, had taken me to Chimney Rock, not from the more common Priest Lake side, but up from the Pack River. I was fairly new to North Idaho, and my uncle had taken an interest in my love of the mountains.

Hiking up the old road bed that climbed heartily from the river, I remember thinking Doug was trying to test my mettle. The abandoned road was relentlessly sustained. It kept climbing out of the valley, crossing creeks that poured over granite slabs, then soon became an actual trail that became even steeper.

This was my initiation to the Bailey Mile. The Bailey Mile is a designation with no actual relationship to any measurable number. Suppose some trail begins along a creek, climbs a ridge, rounds the north of the mountain and enters some dark woods before sharply climbing above the tree line toward the summit. This would constitute 4 Bailey miles (creek, ridge, woods, summit =4). The fact that this supposed trail was ACTUALLY closer to 9 miles holds no bearing.

About 3 Bailey Miles into the hike, after the trail crossed granite slabs marked only by rock cairns, Doug pointed through the clouds to the base of where Chimney Rock WOULD be if the sky wasn’t struck by a procession of unyielding clouds. We crossed boulder fields, then up a trail that rounded the base of the rock. We turned the corner and encountered a snowfield in our path. Doug explained that our campsite was on the other side of this snowfield and down on the granite shelf below. The clouds were dense and pouring over the ridge, and I was nervous. I felt like I was standing over a snowy abyss. We cautiously crossed the snowfield and began our descent.

I can’t remember if the rain began before we reached our campsite, or the moment we attempted to build a fire, but I know we spent a long time nurturing the sodden wood into a blaze. The storm began in earnest during this process and we soon gave in, stoked the stubbornly built fire, and retreated into our tents for the night.

During the storm Doug had to pile his gear on top of his sleeping pad in the corner of his tent to keep them out of the river which had begun flowing through his tent. Somehow, my tent stayed dry.

In the morning the fog still overwhelmed any sight of Chimney Rock. We cooked breakfast over our fire and watched as the fog slowly burned off. When the sky cleared enough that we were finally able to see the rock which emerged above us, I was astounded. It was grander than I had ever imagine. I never knew that something so bold could exist. This was my introduction to the Selkirks.

That day while hiking below the rock I found a red wire gate carabiner in the boulder field. When I showed Doug my discovery he told me that his brother Mike had climbed Chimney Rock years before.

I had never considered myself capable of becoming a rock climber, but that day in camp I envisioned myself standing on the top of that granite tower. I still have the red carabiner and I have since climbed Chimney Rock as well as several other striking features along the Selkirk Crest.

As the trio of owls continued their argument above me on the ridge, I noticed I could see fewer stars than I had been able to just minutes before. Soon the eastern sky was awash in shades of blue. I heard my climbing partner, Chris Doll, stir in the back of his truck and I morosely rolled to a sitting position, still in my sleeping bag.

I was in the Selkirks, west of Bonners Ferry. My climbing buddies and I were planning on spending the summers’ Sunday climbing a rock formation named Myrtles Turtle No. 2 (or the Myrtle Arches). I’d climbed the main “Turtle” several years before and had heard rumors about the Turtle Arches, located to the north.

We made coffee and wondered to each other whether the rest of our group was ever going to make it, and soon the sound of tires on gravel confirmed that Frank Dusl and Traci Sessions had made the drive out of Coeur d’Alene and would indeed be climbing with us that day.

As we all laughed and took in the early morning, pre-adventure sheen, I overheard Traci say that Frank had seen a black bear walking up the road that morning.

I wonder whether those footsteps in the night had come from the same bear.