Let’s Make A Deal

Kearsarge Pass, John Muir Wilderness, CA – 1971

My seasons as a wilderness ranger in the Mt. Whitney Ranger District were filled with incomparable scenery, extreme physical conditioning from steep trails and high altitudes, meeting a variety of interesting and for the most part, friendly wilderness users, and multiple surprises.  But the wilderness, with man’s help, can also drum up it’s own form of theatrical performances.

During the 1971 season that I rangered in the Cottonwood Lakes Basin, my boss Ernie DeGraff, decided to send me into the Kearsarge Pass area near Onion Valley for a five day tour. It was a high use area as it contained several lakes, accessed the John Muir Trail, and was fairly moderate in difficulty. The Onion Valley trailhead was already at 9,600 feet and the pass was only 11,700 feet; only a 2,100 feet elevation gain in it’s eight mile length.

Ernie told me to get all my food supplies ready and he would horse-pack my gear to my base camp at Flower Lake. I would carry my personal gear and backpack in with a light load and then meet up with him.

I hiked the trail in while doing some light maintenance; cleaning and repairing waterbars. Anytime now I thought Ernie would pass me on the trail. I finished up and hiked on in to the lake and picked a spot for my camp. I hadn’t had lunch yet and was getting hungry. Ernie should have been here before me with my food. I waited and waited and waited. No sign of Ernie or the horses. Late in the afternoon I decided I’d better hike back to Onion Valley. Just then Ernie rode in along with two pack mules.

After tying up the pack animals Ernie told me why he was so late.

“Both mules must have puffed up when I was tightening their cinch straps,” he said. “As I got up the trail both loads slid under the bellies of the mules and they started kicking. I had to find a place to tie them up, re-attach the pack saddles, collect all your gear that was scattered all over, and repack them.”

Ernie was in a hurry to head back down to Onion Valley as it was getting late so I erected my tent and set up camp my myself. He didn’t even stay to eat a late lunch. I was starved. I opened a package of creme-filled cookies and took a bite. “Blah!” I spit out the cookie. They were saturated in Coleman fuel.

With the load turned upside down on the mules, and supplies scattered along the trail, the fuel must have leaked out and into my gear. Cookies, bread, instant oatmeal packets; all were tainted and ruined. Only my can goods were edible.

So much for lunch. So my dog Smokii and I did a short patrol to check on some of the fishers and backpacker campers around Gilbert and Matlock Lakes. We returned to our camp at dusk.

First I fed Smokii her dry dog food. Smart dog. She wore a dog pack and carried her own food. So none of hers was fuel soaked. I began to prepare my dinner.

DeGraff had packed in a two burner Coleman stove which used white gas. I pulled it out of the wood box along with a Coleman two-mantled lantern and set them both on top the box. It was now dark so I pumped up the lantern to build up the pressure. Set the settings to pre-light. Lit a match. Started to hold it close to the mantles as I turned on the valve. WHOOF!

Up went the lantern in flames from the pressurized fuel. Simultaneously, my tent caught on fire. The floor-less tent, an old dark green, Army surplus canvas type, had a single pole in the center with the outside corners held down with metal stakes. The tent was just about high enough to stand up in – barely.

Smokii was terrified. You could see it in her eyes and the way she was crouched down as low as she could be on the ground. I grabbed her by the dog collar and her rear end and literally flung her out the open flap of the tent. Then picking up a hand towel, I grabbed the flaming lantern and flung it outside. I had selected an impacted campsite that was mostly hard pack dirt, so it was just burning fuel on bare soil. My tent, however, was still on fire.

I began scooping dirt and throwing it on the flames. Just as I almost had the fire out I flung on some more dirt. Instead the fire intensified. I had accidentally used dirt that was soaked in Coleman fuel from the now leaking lantern. So I grabbed my shovel while outside, made sure I had “clean” dirt, and smothered out the last of the flames.

I turned on my flashlight and surveyed the carnage. Most importantly, Smokii was fine. Scratch one Coleman lantern. As it turned out, the only significant damage was the tent flap. It was pretty well charred and useless.

A middle aged couple who were camped nearby came right over at the end of the conflagration. We tried to figure out what caused the lantern to catch on fire.

Then it hit me. I checked the Coleman fuel can. The lid was tight. I checked the broken lantern. The fuel cap was loose. It had been the lantern that had leaked fuel onto my food supplies. When I pumped up the lantern not knowing the cap was loose, it built up pressure in the tank, let gas escape, and when I held up the lighted match; WHOOF!

So other than my dignity, all was well. That next day, under sunlight and well away from my tent, I performed maintenance on the lantern. The glass was cracked. I replaced both mantles. I cleaned all the dirt off. But most important, after checking there was still white gas in the tank, I made sure the fuel cap was snug and tight. I went through all the normal lighting processes, lite the lantern, and all worked fine.

My foot patrol that day and most of the next was uneventful. That changed the moment I arrived back at my camp in early afternoon and saw a horse tied to a tree. Walking around my tent was Ernie.

“What happened?” Ernie asked. Before he let me answer he continued, “A couple of backpackers came to the office yesterday and said your tent burnt up. At Onion Valley some other people told me that several trees were burned up here at the lake. So I came up to see.”

“Ernie,” I answered. “remember the pack load you brought in and the problems you had?”

I then told him about the fuel soaked food and let him smell my package of ruined cookies. Unbeknownst to me I explained, “I didn’t realize the Coleman lantern’s fuel cap had loosened.”

Ernie was quiet and I could tell he was thinking. He then offered to make a deal with me. He would tell everyone there was no fire and it was just a mistaken report by someone seeing a large campfire. In return, I would not tell anyone about his mistake in failing to tighten the cinch straps on the mules.

That was over forty years ago. Ernie’s retired from the Forest Service and I’m retired from the Bureau of Land Management. So since I now confessed to the fire, I feel I can finally tell the rest of the story.

Moral of the story; tighten cinch straps and tighten fuel caps.