“That’s a bitch.”
Ken Keffer, a Wyoming native fresh from a month of hiking the Bighorn Mountains, tossed a respectful gaze up a steep pitch into a crease where our trail disappeared into the raveling slopes of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Admitted point-of-factly, the words didn’t bode well for my never-West, oxygen-guzzling lungs. In fact, most trails in Montana start higher than the ground-bound can geographically get in my native Virginia, and we were headed near to the top.