10 April, 2025

I have a knack for making things more complicated than they need to be. My primary method for torpedoing myself is by trying to do too much at once by layering on activities, or giving unrealistic time estimates on how long each task will take on a multi-task adventure. Most notably, my justification to ‘why not climb a second summit since I’m already out there..?’ Why? Because it will cause me to abandon my family for a whole day of wilderness wandering and come home completely exhausted. I’ve mostly learned my lesson about double summit days but last week that muse of frustration came back, whispering something in my ear about, “Why not go do a little SOTA summit? While you are at it, take your two tiny dogs, that don’t leave the house or the yard much, on the hike with you. It will be fun!”

Two Dog Everest

Sign me up for some of that. So off we went. The two small dogs crawling on my lap to fight for the best position to stare out the window as we drove the twenty minutes to the pseudo trailhead along the Missouri River. These two ladies are really just manly cats of the canine variety. Lucy is a little six-pound Chuaweinie. Lola, the twenty-pound Weiner-beagle mix, is about a year-and-a-half and her coat bares the resemlance of a white and black cow. What a site to behold. A guy hiking in the rugged Montana mountains with his two wee dogs. At least I don’t think anyone saw me.

The route to hike up to Bend Benchmark is near the upper end of Hauser Lake, just before the bridge that crosses the lack and winds up into the Big Belt Mountains to the lovely hamlet of York, northeast of Helena, Montana. The trail is distinguishable but it is not frequently used. Kind of a hint of a trail that is probably used by deer as much as people. From the parking lot the trail meanders up into a draw and slightly corkscrews clockwise to a ridge that gets you up on top relatively easily. Easy that is if it weren’t for the two small dogs, whose combined leg length is about six inches. This one-point summit was about to be their own Everest to conquer. We were about five minutes into the hike when I noticed there were a lot of cacti. It was everywhere. A very low-growing variety but nonetheless spiky cacti. Their green pokie pads were easy to spot because the surrounding grass was still brown from winter. Somehow they negotiated up and around them all. About half way up Lucy decided I would be her sherpa. I ended up carrying her most of the way from there. Lola ‘the mighty’ hiked the whole way. We stopped once for a water break. Once on top Lola embodied her inner cow and began grazing on an all-you-can-eat grass buffet. I took that as a bad sign. She scarfed down the dog food I brought up in a sandwich bag, sipped a little water, and went back to grazing I assume in an attempt to equalize the calorie deficit she just endured.

Ticks

I was right on schedule, antenna ready, radio on, and then I saw it. Lucy, a lover of laps, wasted no time to sneak a nap on my lap as soon as I sat down. Right on her back I spied with my eye a giant tick crawling across her fur. I have not had the previous fortune of dealing with ticks. I have heard they are very prevalent in the Rocky Mountains, I just had never seen one up close and personal. To say I took it a little personally that this blood sucker was free-loading a ride on my beloved Lucy would be an understatement. Heck, she doesn’t have much blood to spare in her little frame to begin with. Tick flicked, I jumped up to look over the dogs, myself, and the surroundings. I found one more scoundrel crawling on my pant leg. This was not going well and I realized there was no way I would be able to relax and enjoy time on the radio knowing the summit was a tick haven.

I made a few contacts on two meters, called and landed a few twenty meter contacts including a summit-to-summit with K7GUD in Arizona, and called it quits. I rarely get under ten contacts on a SOTA outing but this was the day to do it. I expedited the teardown and headed downhill on a slightly different path than the way I went up and managed to find the motherload of cacti along the ridge before dropping down into the draw. By then I was Lucy’s sherpa again. Lola wasn’t doing much better and incessantly stopped to try and eat grass. My fun-meter was pegged so I put Lucy on top of my backpack and lifted the larger Lola up to carry her down. I don’t think Lucy was enjoying the view from her pirate’s parrot perch on my shoulder and slid off when my weight shifted unexpectedly. I managed to catch her mid-back with my right arm just in time. With a dog in both arms I hustled the remaining ten minute hike back to the truck.

Bumper Radio

With my arms exhausted I placed the dogs in the bed of the truck and got them some water. It was a warm spring day, with the temperature about seventy degrees and no breeze. I placed my handheld radio on my bumper as I tried to get my pack off. “Don’t leave that there, Allen,” I told myself. I went off to unlock the truck and get ready to leave. I could tell the dogs were happy to be done with that adventure as we left the parking lot and headed for home. Both dogs were asleep on the seat in minutes and that allowed me time to reflect on how things went that day. I reflected all the way home and when I pulled into the driveway, turned off the truck, I reflected on where my handheld radio was for about a solid three seconds.

Not the first time I’ve left this radio behind. I bought my Kenwood TH-D72 back in 2013 for its APRS function as I got started in SOTA and living in Hawai’i. The previous most memorable forgotten radio moment was when I lived in Colorado and sat the radio next to my car after a long hike, then drove an hour-and-a-half home, and then back, to retrieve the radio in the isolated wilderness. This time however I figured my odds of finding the radio was about twenty percent, and in working order would be about five percent. Who knows how long the little guy hung on to the bumper before a buck from the sun cracked pavement sent it to its demise, to be abandoned and alone in some tumbleweed-filled ditch along the road. I did go look for it but I found no trace of it near the parking lot. Let’s have a moment of silence for that trusty Kenwood that accompanied me for many mountainous adventures. Darn it. I guess I will have to buy a new model…

On a somber note, this adventure with my two pups was missing something, namely our old, trusty labrador, Rex. While I was home we had to make the painful decision that it was his time to go. He could no longer get up or down any steps and barely could walk when I got home from Wake. Born in Alaska, Rex traveled with us on our assignments to Hawai’i, Colorado, and Utah before we settled in Montana. Fourteen-and-a-half great years and constant companionship. He was a great family dog and will be deeply missed, but that is life for better or worse.

Have you had a SOTA misadventure—or brought pets along for a summit? Share your story in the comments below!