The Mule Speaks 
(pretty close)

He wanted it bad. But I played hard to get.

After all, why would a retired Engineering Director for Micron, someone who spent his adult life competing against Asian companies for dominance in the microchip world, want to volunteer for us?  We had all the chips we needed.  What could he possibly bring to the table?

Eventually I invited him on a ‘shoot’ for an hour show on the Pioneer Mountains, outside of Ketchum, Idaho. His job would be to carry a 17 pound tripod – along with his personal gear – to the highest-named mountain lake in Idaho. Goat Lake sits at 10,438 feet and is a bit over 5 miles from the trailhead with the last mile being a real killer. Most books label the trail ‘difficult.’

 

Frankly, none of us held out much hope for Terry Lee. This would be an elevation gain of almost 3,000 feet. I was pretty sure he’d do what others before him had done: give up halfway to the destination, turn around, and leave Jay carrying everything and making his job more dangerous. 

“Living in the mountains of Boise County, we got one good TV station and that was PBS, so I watched a lot of Outdoor Idaho,” Terry said. “When I retired in 2015 from a high tech, high stress job, I asked myself, what do I want to do when I grow up? I was watching Outdoor Idaho one day, and I said, That’s what I want to do, right there.

“But how do I get into that? Maybe if I ask for zero dollars, they’ll accept my salary. So, I sent Bruce an email and said I’m available. Weeks went by. At one point he emailed me to ask if I had a drone. I told him No, and more weeks went by. Eventually he emailed me and said, ‘We’re going on an adventure. Wanna join us?’”

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“We had a planning meeting, trying to figure out everyone’s skills, and I said, ‘Well, I’m a mule. The reason I’m a mule is because my wife has called me that for years. I’ve always been the family’s beast of burden, carrying in the groceries or the wood for the stove. ‘I need my mule!’ So you can call me The Mule. That seemed to put people at ease. After everyone agreed I wasn’t going to get special food just because I was a Mule, I officially became part of the team. Carrying the tripod was now my new job.”

Baptie Lake, just below Goat Lake, would be our basecamp. The trip into the Pioneers involved a bigger crew than usual, because we had added a cooking segment above 10,000 feet. An outfitter with several packhorses wanted to join us. He knew he couldn’t charge us because he was out of his designated operating area, so we accepted his generous offer and promised to interview him for some aspect of our pledge show, “Into the Pioneers.”

The next day, at the trailhead, the packhorses left before the rest of us did. I remember watching videographer Jay Krajic and The Mule load up the backpacks they’d be carrying for their first trip together. Jay carried the camera; The Mule had the tripod affectionately called Bertha, which came with a little blue bag and a short strap that went around the head and neck.

 

Terry remembers that trip well. “There was a parallel trail, and it turned out we made a mistake and took the trail above the main trail. The packhorses were ahead of us on the main trail, but across the meadow from us and making good time. Jay wanted to get some shots of the horses on the trail before they made it to camp, so we started scurrying uphill.

“There was a lot of downfall on the trail, and every time I’d crawl over a downed tree, Bertha would slide on my shoulder and grab me around the neck and try to strangle me. The next day, I retired the blue carrying bag forever.

“By now, Jay and I are sprinting up the trail. We can see the horses below in the meadow and Jay is able to get a few shots in the clearings. So it was jackrabbit runs, trying to get in a quick shot when possible, and then seeing a clearing a thousand feet ahead and double-timing to get a few more far-away shots.

“Once we got about 9,000 feet of elevation, we both realized we had started the marathon a bit too quickly. I remember thinking, this is crazy! But I also thought, this is interesting!

“We eventually caught up to the horses on the trail and got the shots Jay thought we needed. I was surprised how much video we had already shot, and we hadn’t even gotten to camp.

                                                      

 

 “The Outdoor Idaho crew is always talking about “serendipity” and how important it is to the show. I got my first glimpse of it when two gals rode up on horseback, nicely dressed with beautiful horses. We talked with them for a while and decided they were worth interviewing. I remember one of them was hot for Bruce. They ended up in the show. My first taste of Outdoor Idaho serendipity.”

On his first adventure Terry also got a taste of bad weather. He recalls, “I’m convinced “Pioneers” is a native American saying for ‘hails all the time.’ We had hail for all three days we were there. The young chef who joined us had gotten wet the first night, so he hung out his sleeping bag to dry. While he went on a hike, it hailed hard again. His bag was soaked, so we all donated gear to get him through the night.”

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The Pioneers may have given the Mule a taste of what his new job would entail. But it was our hour-long show, “The 12ers,” that allowed him to prove up his worth.

                                                                                

In Idaho there are nine peaks higher than 12,000 feet, each mountain peak with a different story to tell... or a different way to die. “Even Mt Borah, which actually has a trail to the 12,662-foot summit, can get you in trouble if you’re not careful,” said Terry. “I’m not really afraid of heights today, but I was relatively young into my 12ers career and I found Chicken-out Ridge tricky. The exposure was scary, with a two-thousand-foot drop amplified by a poor route choice, offered bonus exposure and a more difficult traverse."

Hang around climbers and inevitably you’ll hear, “The summit is optional, but the descent is not.” As they were descending Idaho’s tallest mountain, the Outdoor Idaho crew ran into a climber who had caught his foot on an exposed root, fell and broke his leg. That meant extra effort slowly descending the trail, taking turns hauling the man a couple miles back to his rig.

Thirty years earlier I climbed Borah for an Outdoor Idaho program, so I already knew that coming down was harder than climbing up, and that tree roots are particularly dangerous. That was the trip where we took llamas with us, trying to get them to the very top of Borah. What a picture that would have made! But llamas are smart. They went no further than Chicken-out Ridge, leaving the last 300 feet elevation gain to humans.  No doubt they wondered why anyone would be silly enough to crawl over a pile of rocks where one false step meant sure death.

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At least someone might see you if you fall off Mt. Borah. It’s on the seldom-climbed peaks, like Breitenbach Peak, where a misstep can be deadly and no one might find you for days, or maybe longer. “It was a snow hike, so you’re heavy because of the extra gear,” Terry said. “We were following each other near the top of a knife ridge and its cornice. As I walked toward the others and in their footsteps, I fell through the snow. I just plunged and instinctively I put my arms out to stop my fall and to pull myself up. Adrenaline took over. After I got up, I looked down into my plunge, and there was nothing but air. It was just a hole. It was just space. It was one of those times you thought you were still on rock and safe, and suddenly you weren’t.

 

“Maybe it’s because I was the last one through that stretch, or maybe it was because I was carrying the tripod and had more weight than the others, but I plunged.

“We still had to get to the summit, which required another knife ridge traverse. I remember it was pretty scary, because the route had to turn a corner around a large boulder, and my crampons were sliding  while I hung on to the mountain with my ice axe. Each step had the same outcome. I eventually figured out that the crampons needed to be cleared of some packed snow to regain traction. That trip was one of a handful of close calls that I remember.”

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The wind gusts at 12,000 feet can blow a hiker off a narrow ridge.  On the day they climbed Mt. Church and Donaldson Peak, the wind was particularly fierce.

“Most people climb them together,” explained Terry.  “You go up to Donaldson and then take a long knife ridge over to Church, so it makes for a long day. When we got up there, it was really gusty and the wind noise was rowdy. You can’t tell this by watching the show because the sound isn’t incorporated. However, if you look carefully, you can see my backpack strap flying horizontally. A couple of gals had made it to Donaldson but gave up on Church because of that ridge.

“One woman said that she was proud of what she had accomplished to get to Donaldson, and when she got on the ridge, it just got too scary. That’s how windy it was. And she said, ‘I just got pretty spooked with the exposure and the wind and my fatigue level, and I just thought, you know, I’m not having fun anymore.’ And that is the reality of the 12ers. They're not for everyone."

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There was one mountain peak that did defeat the crew. Lost River Peak is notorious for something climbers call Super Gully. It’s a wide-open slope visible from U.S. highway 93 that extends 3,000 feet to the mountain’s false summit. It’s steep, in places a 45-degree slope. 

“We started at Zero Dark 30. We had two ‘sherpas’ because we were going to go up, get the footage and then ski back down. They were going to carry our skis. We left the campsite near Mackey Reservoir and the sherpa carrying my skis made it maybe 500 feet of elevation, and he was done. He was a long-distance runner, but he felt sick and went back to the car.” 

The other sherpa, a firefighter with the Forest Service, continued to carry Jay’s skis up the steep slope. "This taught the lesson that endurance alone wasn't sufficient to carry weight up mountains. Powerful legs are also required," said Terry.

 

“Very early in the morning, the snow was frozen and the crampons worked well,” although you needed to zig-zag up the gully due to the steep slope. There is a section called Cathedral of the Gods where you’re in a coliseum with large rock spires on both sides. You can see this dramatic section clearly from the highway. Later in the morning, things started to melt and all hell broke loose.  

“That’s when the rocks began to dislodge. They’re coming down on you from both sides, and you’re constantly yelling, ‘Rock’ and getting out of the way, and everything starts to loosen up and suddenly you shouldn’t be up there anymore. I once read a warning on a climbing website that you shouldn’t step foot in the Super Gully without a helmet, that it’s a bowling alley. I confirm.

“We burned some time getting footage as we climbed, and by the time we got into the meat of it, it was too warm, and we began post-holing.  Without notice, you’d post-hole and suddenly the snow would be at your waist. And you’d have to sort of swim a bit, get some snow moved out, try to get your axe up and try to get up, but then you’d sink back down. That process took a minute or two and used an unfortunate amount of energy. And it kept happening, and I was running out of fuel. So I decided I better stop and eat for a little bit.

 

“Jay decided to continue up to the false summit because he wanted to shoot video of the show guests skiing down. Jay started crawling on his hands and knees. Army crawling to keep his surface area wide, trying to get up to the false summit where the skiing descent begins. Once they reached the false summit, it was determined that the cornice and knife ridge conditions were unsafe to go any further.”

 

Eventually camera and tripod connected, and the men got the necessary shots. The question then became, how does one get down?

“My skis are hours below us,” said Terry. “So we start plunge-walking, and I hadn’t done that before. But the plunge-walking wasn't successful as we continued post-holing with minimal progress. The Forest Service sherpa I was with said, ‘ok, we’re just going to glissade.’ Glissade means a controlled slide down the snow slope. But control is elusive when the slope is 45 degrees, so you have to use an ice axe to periodically break your speed."

 

Eventually, the crew made it down the mountain and back to the car. They decided to try again the following season. They wanted to make it past the false summit and on to the real summit of Lost River Peak. That way they could honestly say they conquered each of the 12ers.

“It went a lot better the second time,” said Terry. “We weren’t carrying much gear and the cornice on the summit ridge was safe enough to cross over to the true peak.”

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Making it to the top of Lost River Peak put them in a small, select group of climbers who had bagged all the 12er peaks and recorded on the Idaho 12ers website, managed by Dan Robbins. Terry said he joked with Dan, “Can we start a new list for climbers who were carrying camera gear?” Dan replied, “We could add an asterisk.” 

 

After two years of bagging peaks, the show finally made it to the edit bay. Jay was the editor. Bill Manny, who had joined Jay and the Mule on most of the expeditions, wrote the script.

There was plenty to fit into the hour program. Not only did they have the nine peaks to feature, but Tom Lopez, author of Idaho, A Climbing Guide had suggested adding Cobb and Bell to the mix. He considered them worthy almost-12ers.  He also suggested an almost-11er, Thompson Peak. It provided a lovely view from the top.  

                                                

Like every good engineer, Terry was intrigued by the numbers. By his calculations, they had climbed 47,224 feet for the show. “That’s the equivalent of climbing two and a half Mt Everests," he said. "It’s the same as climbing nine miles straight up, all with camera and tripod and batteries, and often no trail.”

I'd say that definitely deserved at least an asterisk!

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“I found it interesting that sometimes a rough draft script was prepared, and we captured footage to fit the story, while other times, the script was developed after the fact," said Terry. "We had a loose theme, but it evolved as we encountered more experiences or learned more about the area.  We would meet people on the trail, and if they had good stories, we would include them in the show. Then there was the time Jay and I ran into some locals on horseback, and they told us about the petroglyphs that ended up in the show.  Serendipity again.

“It may not be obvious, be we spent a lot of windshield time producing a show.  Some of the locations were long drives from Boise, such as the Lost River Range, Selway Bitterroots, Lake Pend Oreille, or that awful jeep trail to the backside of the Lost River Range that was apparently built by domestic terrorists.  Fortunately, the crew is a lot of fun, and we passed the time making fun of current news events or ourselves.  This crew likes to laugh. They’re the kind of people that you’d think would enjoy this type of work.

“We would typically set up a base camp and spend a few nights with daily hikes to get our footage.  Base camp was usually a few thousand foot climb with full gear to a meadow, lake, or creek.  I used a single-man tent which provided a small footprint to avoid rocks and slopes.  Occasionally, base camp was at the trailhead, and we were afforded the extravagance of a pillow or a cooler.

“Because I was carrying the tripod, I seldom could use poles like the others, so I had to learn to use the tripod as a tool. Bertha was a pretty big girl, and sometimes she made a decent ice axe or trekking pole, but she was predominately a burden worthy of a beast. 

"Each tripod had a different best way to carry.  I would optimize the leg extension to balance the tripod or provide a better hand hold, and I would very regularly swap hands to mitigate overuse injuries.  A 30,000 step day hike was not uncommon.

 

“Rock face climbs and scrambling were a little more adventurous.  I would either climb with one hand, swapping as needed, or I would take a good step up the rock face and set the tripod up on the next ledge and climb up to it.  Alternately, Jay or I would go up first while the other handed the equipment up.  We also purchased a backpack that could carry the tripod and free up both hands.  While sometimes very helpful, this approach had the drawback of increasing gear weight and raising the tripod up high.  The high-mounted tripod had the tendency of hitting the rock as you leaned in, or pulling you off the mountain if you stood up straight, so your climbing form was a little different than the rest of the crew.”

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By the time they had finished climbing the 12ers,  the Mule had bestowed on each tripod a name. There was Big Bertha, the heaviest tripod, who did well in winds, and gave the heavy camera the stability it needed.

And then there was Bernice. “Bernice was the naughty one. She was a thinner, long-legged tripod, nice to look at, but she was tall, and didn’t collapse very well. If you put her on her back, she would grab the branches and pull you backwards and try to knock you down. She was a menace. She also had a chronic screw loose, and she spread her legs too easily. She was high maintenance, and we all knew her reputation. The newest tripod, Betty, was much lighter than the others and had some carbon fiber in her structure.”

 

As the cameras got lighter, the tripods got lighter, but for financial reasons the station was in no hurry to purchase the lighter cameras. Jay felt the same way. He wanted the best possible depth of field in a camera. Even though it would make things much easier, he wasn’t interested in shooting with a cell phone or a smaller camera at that time. That pickiness paid off.

“Everyone involved in the struggle up the peaks was always happy with the results," noted Terry. "The images we brought back almost rivalled what you could see from the top of Idaho’s most majestic mountains. But unfortunately,  the video always made the climbs look easier than they were.”

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The mule’s kick can sometimes hit home. In our discussions after we had both retired, Terry and I  occasionally sat down with a beer and discussed his five years as The Mule, what it meant to him, to me, and to the Outdoor Idaho crew. 

 

“Even though I was the volunteer for everyone, I knew I was Jay’s mule. Jay was not always communicative, and so I had to learn what he wanted. Jay wouldn’t always articulate what shots he wanted, but he knew when he saw it. It was a fundamental requirement to be there with the tripod, and not five minutes behind on the trail somewhere. I recall a time ascending into the Sawtooths and Jay set a blistering pace.  After about an hour, I looked at my gps and determined that we were moving uphill with camera gear at a 4 mph pace.  I asked “Why?”  It turns out that Jay wanted to intercept the outfitter’s horses at an intersection, which we successfully did.  

 

 “To be a good Mule, in addition to the physical labor, there’s a fair amount of waiting around. Jay would sometimes spend 20 or 30 minutes getting a bunch of different angles of something he wanted to use in the edit bay. The end result was always phenomenal.

“I didn’t realize how much video is shot for one show. That was enlightening. You guys will only use maybe five percent of the video you shoot.  I’m getting depressed thinking about it. It’s like Rudolph with the Island of Misfit Toys. There’s an island of misfit videos lying around for their chance to shine. But, in this case, it probably will never happen, because each videographer wants to plow new ground with new shows.

 

“Jay had a style. I could always tell if Jay was shooting the video in different show segments. It’s kind of like Carlos Santana. He’s got his own sound. You know who he is. Jay’s the same way with his video. He’s got his own signature. His videography is artistic, complex, and capitalizes on the lighting.

“The Outdoor Idaho creative process is different from the engineering creative process. It’s a different side of the brain. The way an engineer approaches something is, we’ve got this list, and we do it, and then check it off. It’s just very organized and logical and there’s money involved. There’s no room for serendipity.

“You people like to talk about doing work. We never like to talk about that. In production meetings, you’re more random and go off on tangents because someone finds something interesting. It’s more like a scavenger hunt. But I have to say, I can’t disagree with the final outcome. It’s pretty special. But I’m pretty sure you would have been fired from Micron.

 

“One of the pleasant surprises was the quality of the people we met. They were all amazing and very interesting. Outdoor Idaho is loved in the small towns and everyone was eager to help us out. We spent several nights camping on the lawns of our viewers. Sometimes we would enter a mini-mart unnoticed, but then Bruce would speak, and our cover was blown. Everyone knows that voice. 

 

“I liked the shows with climbing in it, but I really liked the shows that had other elements too. One of my favorites is “Land of the Lost River Range,” because it also had a segment on ranching and cheese and the Braun Brothers with their concert in Challis. I also liked “Into the Pioneers” and ‘Pend Oreille Country,” for the same reason. And then there’s some shows before I got there. Big, sweeping shows, like ‘Idaho’s Centennial Trail’ and ‘Eyes of the Forest.’ I still enjoy watching those.

 

“Jay had some bad experiences with people volunteering. Sometimes he would find himself carrying both the camera and the tripod and the batteries and everything else up the steep parts. It was difficult and put him in danger. I don’t think Jay would have wanted to do aggressive shows like the 12ers at that point in his career, without knowing that someone would be there to help him out, someone he could trust.

 

“I’m kind of surprised that no one got seriously injured or even died during the last several decades. Like the time a boulder came careening down on us. One of our climbers above us stepped on it and inadvertently dispatched it. It wasn’t a stone, it was a boulder! I happened to be near a large rock to duck behind, but Jay was out in the open and stood there like a deer in the headlights, waiting on a decisive direction from the bounding boulder. I waited for his fate, and fortunately the boulder veered off at the last moment."

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Speaking for myself, it's always nice when something far exceeds expectations. For my money, the Mule definitely deserves a few extra apples. I always appreciated his Engineer brain. He looked at things differently, which is always nice to have on adventures. He helped ground some of us who needed grounding. I'm sure he kept Jay from going crazy on some of those six hour drives into places we shouldn't have taken a rig. Granted, Jay could be a bit stand-offish, but the two of them seemed to really appreciate the skill and stamina of the other. I'm pretty sure the climbing of 12,000-foot mountains would not have happened without the Mule.  They had each other's back. And to think, we got all this for free.  .

 

“After Jay and several more retired, I figured my days of being someone else’s Mule became a thing of the past," said Terry. "It’s a new game plan now. I do miss the camaraderie, and how friendly and helpful everyone was, and that’s something I will keep with me. I’m pretty sure I contributed something to Outdoor Idaho, a show that provides enrichment for others. I’ll always be thankful for that.”

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