Sept. 1

While Larry and Sara stayed focused on weighing loads for seven mules, Mike, Al and I set out to catch the hard-to-catch mule, which we never succeeded in doing. Mules hate being alone and they really love their feed, so it was only a matter of time when we managed to “lead” her with a bucket of feed, back to the corral.

After considerable time trying horse-whispering techniques, which usually work on mules, we gave up and made the game change. We would take the other two mules, but leave the hard-to-catch mule behind. It turned out to be a very wise choice.

About mules

Mules are half hor

se and half donkey. Most mules have a horse mother and a donkey father, though it can be the other way around. Because most mules start out following their horse mother, they prefer a horse leader to follow. That’s why most packers lead their mules with a horse. A mule will rarely leave the horse.

People have asked us why mules were being used to bring in equipment on the chalet trip when helicopters were available. The Wilderness Act of 1964 states that the agencies must use the minimum and least disturbing method of tools to carry out work in the wilderness.

In 2004, the Olympic Park Associates, Wilderness Watch and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed and won a lawsuit against Olympic National Park for its plans to utilize helicopters to fly in two replacement shelters.

Mules still are considered to be an acceptable “tool” for wilderness shelter maintenance. Olympic National Park has its own string of around 20 mules near the Elwha Ranger Station at Whiskey Bend. Three seasonal mule packers work all summer packing tools and equipment for the park’s seasonal trail crews who keep trails open and maintained all summer long.

Some people wonder why we pack mules instead of horses. Generally speaking, mules are tougher than horses. They rarely have soundness issues when working on steep mountain trails.

The more they work, the tougher they get, whereas horses often will develop tendon and ligament problems. Mules are self-preservationists and rarely stumble or fall off the trail. Three of our mules have been packing for us for over 15 years and none of them has ever been lame or unsound. Mules live longer than horses, commonly into their late 30s.

Larry’s lead horse Tramp is a big American Quarterhorse and is a big, strong lead horse. Mules have a reputation of being “stubborn as a mule.” They really aren’t stubborn, but they are very smart and don’t want to go anywhere that they expect to have a problem. Once they’ve had a bad experience, they rarely forget it.

Back to packing up for the Quinault Enchanted Valley Trip …

We use a packer scale to weigh each load. Bear-resistant pack boxes are required for food in the park. Pack boxes weigh around 70 pounds loaded. Miscellaneous gear such as sleeping bags, pads and other bulky items are wrapped in canvas manties and tied on top with ropes. Our mules were carrying about 175 pounds each, considerably less than the average person riding a saddled horse.

However, packs are dead weight, so having packs balanced on the mule is very important. Scott Montgomery’s draft-type mules were carrying more than 200 pounds, mostly feed for our stock.

The Quinault trail has some steep rocky places, so animals and people have to be in condition to get to the chalet. Our mules already had been on mountain trails helping us do trail maintenance earlier in the summer.

They worked incredibly hard every day, packing their own feed and ours. Not one came up lame or injured and Larry rode and packed them 15 miles all but one of the 14 days he was moving our stuff in and out. All told, mules hauled more than 5,000 pounds of gear and put over 200 miles on their shoes.

Hazards on the trail:

Trail riding has its hazards; hikers and bees are often to blame. Many of the people we meet on the trail have no clue about livestock. It’s extremely difficult for a packer leading a long string of mules to back up or turn around.

The rules of trail etiquette are clear: Stock has the right-of-way. Some hikers think they can out-walk the mules and try to stay ahead instead of just finding a good spot to get out of the way.

Some hikers approaching a string of mules will just keep coming until the packer asks them to kindly move off the trail. These might be some of the same people we see passing on double-yellow lines on Highway 101. They just don’t know the danger they are causing because they’ve never seen a mule train wreck.

So when we encountered our first human hazard, it was something neither we, nor our mules, had ever before witnessed on any trail. Two young men were carrying several long pieces of PVC pipe and walking one behind the other up the trail. Larry asked them to get off to the side and said, “Don’t move until we get past.”

Just as Al’s two mules on the end were passing the hikers, one of them hiked up the PVC pipe and those two mules jumped straight up in the air, their breakaway strings snapping with a sound like a gunshot. They whirled around in the trail and charged toward Sara and me like they’d been shot out of a cannon.

It happened so fast that I don’t know how we managed to jump off our horses and grab hold of the mules. If that hard-to-catch mule would have been with us, she likely would have run past us and all the way back to the corrals. In time we had the mules tied back into the string and were heading up trail. I’m sure the hikers were astounded by what they had just witnessed and one mad grandma made sure they were educated about how to behave around animals next time.

Ground bees, otherwise known as bald-faced hornets and yellow jackets, get really cranky toward the end of summer. When a string of mules comes vibrating the ground, they are usually pretty stirred up by the time the fourth or fifth mule passes and that’s when the rodeo begins. Since I’m always riding drag, I get to see the rodeos.

In this situation, the front mules already were around the hairpin turn and heading down the switchbacks. The last thing Sara and I witnessed was the end mule’s hind end going straight up in the air and the clatter of horseshoes on the rocks heading downhill. When we got to the bottom of the switchback, we found the end mules had broken loose and a few packs had to be adjusted, but no humans got stung.

We were almost halfway to the chalet with only a few more similar encounters to come and thankfully none of those were as exciting. We learned from the next encounter of guys with PVC pipe that they were U of W students and the pipes were for measuring snow pack on the glaciers.

It would be nearly dark by the time we arrived with our first mule-load of gear.

With the help of the trail crew, we unloaded the mules, put up high-lines for stock containment, set up our wall tent, organized our pack boxes, put our kitchen sets together, set up a serving table, water filter bags and started supper for the crew of nine. Most of these were park trail crew workers who had been getting the trail in prime shape for mules. The house movers would hike in on Tuesday.

Since it was so late, we decided to cook up our Bear Creek minestrone soup and add Sara’s home-raised hamburger to it. By the time dishes were done, we were all ready for a night’s rest. It was misting and foggy. If this weather lasted, the helicopters wouldn’t be able to fly and the whole project would be dead in the water. To be continued …