Musings from a porter
Article by Noah Stephens Art by Claud Garcia
I can hear the five Jetboil canisters of fuel clanking around in my backpack. Every other step, one of the two fifty-meter ropes slides from one side to the other, shifting the weight from my left hip to my right shoulder. I’m hungry and can almost smell the 18 backcountry freeze-dried meals sitting in one of the three Ursacks. I’m tired and still can’t see camp.
It was my fourth day working as a porter in the backcountry of Wyoming. At that point, I had been in Wyoming for three months, working for the NOLS Rocky Mountain branch in Lander as a cook. Initially, I had felt that even though it wasn’t the best money to make, it would get me out of my job in the kitchen and give me a good break. “Forty pounds of gear, and whatever you need,” the head of the company told me I would carry a few days before the trip. I have carried heavier packs, so, on the day I met with the guides to organize and distribute gear, I eagerly offered to take more than what I was asked to.
On the morning the trip started, the guides and I drove up to the Crowheart Trading Post and met the clients, three middle-aged men from Alabama. I got into the back of a pickup truck with one other guide. As we bumped along a decrepit Jeep trail, ice axes shoving into us marked the beginning of the trek.
Within a few miles, the Wyoming landscape can go from desert to steep, mountainous terrain with high jagged granite peaks and lush green valleys below. Rivers meander between towering mountains, and all sorts of wildlife wander within.
Typically, a porter who is just carrying gear for a climb can travel alone, at their own pace, for multiple days only to deposit the gear at the final campsite. In my case, I was also carrying the group’s food, so I had to walk with them. I hiked in the back and didn’t talk much. I wore a sun hoodie and dark sunglasses to blend into the background. At camp, I unloaded the food and filled the water dromedaries for the clients. One of the clients asked me if I usually did this kind of work, and I told him that I had worked full-time at the NOLS base, cooking for students. By chance, it turned out that he had taken a NOLS course in the 90s and went on to ask me, “How’d you get out of scrambling eggs to come carry our stuff?” He said it with a smirk on his face and a soft laugh, and though I wanted to snap back at him, I understood that this was the job, and I must act professionally. So, with my hoodie and glasses on, I calmed myself and laughed at his joke with him. It was then I came to understand that, though my pack was heavy, the clients I would be traveling with for the next five days would impose their own weight as well.
The hikes were not hard; we sauntered, and though the weight wasn’t comfortable, it was manageable. Despite my underlying issues with the clients I was traveling with, I found new excitement in my other companions: the guides. Each night, after the clients had gone to sleep, we sat down together as they evaluated how each day was and how it could have been better. They went over the plan for the following day and what different situations could occur. Over the five nights I spent with them, I learned countless skills about safety and professionalism in the mountains. They told me about their past experiences as they became guides: learning from various mentors they had and stories about good and bad times with different clients.
During my job as a porter, the money I earned ended up becoming less valuable to me in comparison to the mentorship I gained from my newfound friends. As the guides I worked with had been mentored in the past, now I was being mentored by them.
Friendships are found in peculiar places and at times when you least expect it. Saying yes to unfamiliar opportunities can lead to both good and bad experiences that, in my case, provided me with both a new set of teachers to learn from and friends to count on. Now, I feel excited to return to Wyoming next summer, knowing that the work I get to do is educational to me, useful to others, and just a great time out in the woods.