I have way more horrific packout stories than I'd care to remember. However, as time goes by, the misery tends to fade away, leaving only the good parts etched in my memories. In the early days of our elk hunting career my brother and I possessed more fitness than brains, with no self-restraint whatsoever. If a legal elk presented itself, it was going down, regardless of the location.
Among the numerous experiences I would prefer not to repeat, one particularly stands out. Fortunately, we were all around 19-20 years old at the time and close to bulletproof.
My brother and a friend had drawn a first rifle tag in CO in a notorious very high-elevation unit, I was guiding in a different unit so I couldn't join them for the hunt, they let me know roughly where they were in case I wrapped up early and wanted to join them, as it happened my hunters killed on day one and two so I was free early, sitting around the lodge the third night after packing out the second elk the news was entirely weather reporters predicting 3-4 feet of snow in the high country and urging hunters to pack it up and get out ahead of the storm, I figured that my brother and friend had no idea what was coming as they had been at camp for 7 or 8 days at that point so I should probably go warn them and help them pack up camp...
I rolled out early the following day from the lodge where I was guiding and drove straight through to where they were supposed to be camped, in an area I had never set foot in, it took me until close to noon to locate their camp, passing pretty much every other camp in the area headed out..our friend was sleeping in his popup camper after getting worked packing his elk out the previous day, my brother was out chasing a bull they had spotted the day before... as the storm was supposed to be arriving that evening we decided we should pack up their camp and get the trailer, truck, and everything but their ATV back over the pass and down to where we would be able to get out then drive back up and park my truck at the pass and go back to get my brother on the ATV, hoping that he saw the enormous black cloud rolling in and decided that it wasn't the day to be shooting an elk...
However, just as we were approaching their camp, we managed to make radio contact with my brother. All we could make out was, "Got one!" We found him sitting on the side of the road further in, rather surprised to discover the camp had vanished and to see me there. He had managed to shoot what appeared to be the last remaining elk in the unit, located a mere 40 feet from the summit of a 13,000-foot peak. Anticipating a leisurely couple of days to complete the packout, he had quartered the elk but left the meat behind, intending to return the next morning with his frame pack and some backup. At this point, the weather was beautiful, with no signs of the impending storm. However, we could observe a massive wall of black clouds rapidly approaching, causing a sense of unease. After some discussion we decided that we needed to pack out the bull that evening; otherwise, we might not have another opportunity. throwing minimal gear in our packs, we headed up the mountain—my fourth consecutive day of elk packing, and their third. We climbed approximately 3,000 feet over a distance of 3 miles to reach the elk. Throughout the ascent, we kept a watchful eye on the advancing wall of clouds. Just as we reached the carcass, the wall engulfed us, reducing visibility to just a few feet.
We set what is still probably my record for boning out a whole elk, while the rack wasn't all that impressive this was one of the largest bodied elk I have ever seen, we were loaded heavy and it was getting dark as we started down. in the time we had taken to bone out the elk and get it stuffed into packs there was already close to a foot of snow on the ground, things were going ok until my brother, having had nothing to eat in 10 hours, passed out midstride, getting run over by his pack and sliding uncomfortably close to a cliff, we got him up and going, fed him all the food we had, which wasn't much, and made sure he was in the middle, at this point it was completely dark and the storm had intensified, visibility was maybe 10' and lightning was now flashing through the snow every 20-30 seconds, we were still well above treeline on a hillside that cliffed out in most places, and the snow was getting deep enough we were kicking off loose avalanches everywhere... we finally reached a gully we thought we recognized as one that went through the majority of the cliffs and decided to go straight down, almost immediately all three of us were losing our footing and taking 5-15' tumbles into the deep snow, quickly realizing that just sliding off the small cliffs was way faster and easier than trying to downclimb, if we could see the bottom of the cliff in the headlamp off it we went, moving pretty well until we were below timberline battling the downed timber just headed downhill with no idea where we were and my brother almost passed out again, sitting down and mumbling about wanting to stop for the night...
We got him going again, finishing the last calories we could find in our packs, blindly bushwhacking and by pure luck hit the road 50' from the ATV, now almost seat deep in the new snow... we loaded all of us and the entire elk and took turns pushing to get the ATV the couple miles back up to the pass, where we threw the elk in the truck and spent a couple minutes warming up, all at least mildly hypothermic at this point and soaked to the bone, we then embarked on probably the scariest drive I have ever done, plowing snow with the truck bumper and occasionally having it come up over the headlights while going down a ridiculously exposed mountain pass road that at some points is maybe 3' wider than the truck with 1,200' of exposure on the outside... we rolled into town just as it was getting light the following morning, totally and completely worked, in all honesty probably the most dangerous day in the mountains I've had, we got lucky at many turns, it could have gone badly, as it was all we ended up some minor frostbite and a couple broken fingers was all we had to show for it...
