Dirt Work by Christine Byl

scrambled a scree pile in the Sierra as a college student, snowshoed low summits in the White Mountains, seconded a six-pitch classic in Yosemite. But I hadn’t been alone in the mountains much, not enough to trust my judgment. What was too steep? Which way was best? Where was the danger?
    From Lincoln Peak you can see Gunsight Mountain farther up the ridge, at 9,000 feet, and across Comeau Pass from Gunsight, Mount Edwards at 8,900 feet, and massive Jackson, visible to the southeast, one of the five 10,000-footers in Glacier. I would climb those three several times each over the course of my hitches in the district, but few summits in the park are as memorable as my short hike up Lincoln. A windy evening, a little rain spitting. Reba below in the cabin eating dinner, tourists at the chalet milling about, Gabe up the divide at Granite Park, and me, alone on that tiny bump, part tentative, part brave, squelching my vertigo, daring myself against the wind to tiptoe along that unfamiliar skein of sky.
    Reba gave me my first trails nickname: #2 , like the pencil. Lanky with a fuzzy blond eraser on top, I was second on the crew, so it fit, the slight mockery ensuring I’d remember that I was not #1. (As if I’d had the slightest delusion.) Mitch called me Half Scoop , a riff on Laura Ingalls, earned one hot afternoon in a rocky fill pit where I could hardly fill my shovel. CB was common, suggesting a trucker’s handle. That girl, the packers’ favorite. Later, Stretch , for my long stride, Throttle , for my tendency to gun lagging diesel engines on a cold start, peeling out like a teenage boy. Snick was bestowed upon me by backcountry skiing pals, for the Snickers I ate whenever we were out longer than ten minutes. Trouble , because, supposedly, I was always asking for it.
    The Sperry crew spent at least one hitch per season at Lake Ellen Wilson, a turquoise tarn so cold you’d shout when swimming even on torrid August days. Once Cassie and I paddled to work in an inflated one-man fishing raft we’d hidden in a manty load—two of us and our daypacks and rock tools jammed in between the rubber gunnels. We moored the raft under a cliff band, scrabbled up scree to the job site, and relished the coolest commute in the world. By 5:30, though, the up-valley winds kicked in, and like a freeway at rush hour, the evening trip took more than two hours, our rock-work-weary arms hardly able to paddle against the gusts. I watched ospreys and golden eagles coasting on the drafts above, the same wind that stopped us short boosting their flight to acrobatic levels. After that, the raft stayed at camp. Instead, we’d hike the twenty minutes home from work and take turns drifting out in the lake, Cassie in a bikini with the straps pushed down to counteract her farmer’s tan, and me in a sports bra and the worn-out Carhartts I’d chopped the legs off of with a pulaski, having forgotten shorts.
    The storms off Lake Ellen Wilson were intense. One hitch, it poured for seven of eight days. Cassie stayed high and dry on an air mattress so thick she’d wedged it inside her tent half-inflated and blown it up the rest of the way from inside, but Bernadette, the newest laborer, had a puddle on her floor that soaked her sleeping bag and she worked the last two days with borderline hypothermia. Ellen Wilson could be such a bitch.
    On day eight, we’d break camp: lower the coolers from the bear pole (wilted bits of lettuce, limp string cheese, a slice of iridescent roast beef afloat in melted ice), flatten the tents, secure the tools in their special boxes. While waiting for the packers to inch down the long, steep descent into our camp, we’d take a dip in the lake in preparation for the scorching nine miles between us and the truck at the trailhead. On the hike out, the string of mules not far behind, the trail passed a tiny kettle pond much nearer the Sperry cabin, nicknamed Lake Willie Nelson. Coming