Rocky Mountain High

Rocky Mountain High

By

Jamey O’Donnell

Camping in the Rocky Mountains is always an awesome experience, even when it’s raining. There’s nothing better than sleeping under the stars, even if you are technically separated by canvas or vinyl inside of a tent. The sleep is better and the memories seem to stay with you throughout your life.

Barry Youngfield and his girlfriend Soozi Tanner were on their first camping trip together, and pitched their tent in Estes Park, just inside of the Rocky Mountain National Forest.

Unlike Wyoming, where there was grizzlies, the only bears in the woods were Black Bear, but you did have to keep your edibles and smellables hoisted up into a bear bag at night or put away in your vehicle, otherwise your campsite would be raided by marauding bears looking for a Yogi style picnic basket, and depending on the attitude of the bears, it could be a terrifying experience to hear a bear outside the corner of your tent eating your girlfriend’s award winning potato salad.

Barry and Soozi were accompanied by two other couples, Jeff and Jan Daniels, and Jim and Sandy Bartles, both married and well experienced in the art of car camping in Colorado.

After everyone had arrived at the campsite, pitched their tents, and started a fire for dinner, the men began to settle in around the fire in their state-of-the-art camp chairs drinking beers while the women prepped dinner, with T-Bone steaks about to go on the camp grill placed over the fire.

Upon checking with the forest ranger, they were all warned that bears had been raiding some of the campsites the last few nights, specifically campers that had failed to put everything back in their vehicles before going to bed.

These were experienced bears with human activity and they all knew when to pounce when they smelled food in the air.

Once the steaks were placed on the grill, the aroma brought everyone into the same frame of mind, chowing down on steak, potato salad, and ears of corn boiling in a large camp pot over the fire next to the grill.

One thing no one thought to bring up with them was a firearm, which was a natural oversight because the bears wouldn’t be attacking you if they got to your food, and they wouldn’t be in your campsite if you put it away in the first place.

“Damn I’m starving. Steaks should be done here in a couple minutes” said Jeff.

“Everyone, when you are done eating, throw your bones and your ears of corn in the brown paper box sitting behind the picnic table over here, and we’ll throw it in one of the cars with the rest of the food when we go to bed.” said Sandy Bartles.

The dinner was superb, and everyone had seconds of Jan’s potato salad, which was always the case whenever the Daniels came camping and she brought it up. The men were sure to also bring plenty of beer up with them, and there was no chance they would be running out anytime soon, even though they were pounding them back like there was no tomorrow.

Camping was one of the few times you could drink to your hearts content, because the only place you’d be going afterward is to pass out in your tent, and the three men were taking full advantage of the situation.

Not long after dinner, the women decided they would retire to their tents and hit the hay, whereas the men were just getting busy trying to outdrink each other, and the men agreed to put all the food and trash in the vehicles before going to bed.

It must have been close to 1 in the morning before they had enough to drink, with the three ready to pass out in their chairs had they not gone to bed, so they drunkenly packed the coolers and the rest of the food in the 3 vehicles they had come up in, along with the grill they had cooked on, but the cardboard box with the steak bones and the other food trash got forgotten, as it was sitting on the ground just under the end of the picnic table.

It was a mistake they would regret.

It was about 3 in the morning when Sandy heard growling outside of the tent, then gnawing on bones, followed by the sound of dogs fighting each other for the trash the men had forgot to put away.

She shook Jim several times, trying to wake him, but he was out like a light in a drunken stupor.

“Jim. Jim. Wake up.” She said to him, but there was no response.

She was pissed those other campers in the area had left their dogs out to run wild throughout the night, raiding other campsites.

After a few minutes, the sounds of the dogs went away, and she had to pee something fierce, so she grabbed her flashlight, unzipped the tent, and made her way the 50 yards to the pit toilet on the other side of the campground.

When she got there, you could hear the door shut behind her, and then the woods were silent again.

A couple minutes later, you could hear the door open as she headed back for her tent, but then there was the sound of vicious growling from more than one dog, and then you could hear Sandy scream the most blood curdling scream ever, cutting through the silence of the woods, awakening the other campers.

It didn’t just wake the remainder of the three couples, but also other campsites nearby, and Jim, Jeff, and Barry woke from their stupors and stumbled out of their tents, flashlights on, and what they saw next was enough to turn their hair white.

Halfway between the toilet and the campsite, they could see a pack of grey wolves eating Sandy, pulling the skin off of her face and neck with their razor sharp canine teeth, leaving her to bleed out before the men had even gotten out of their tents.

Jim, without even thinking, ran to the aid of his already dead wife, and was immediately tackled by 10 or 11 wolves, eating him alive while he was screaming for help.

Barry and Jeff saw there was nothing they could do and ran back to their tents to protect their women.

As they sat in their tents horrified at what was happening, with their women petrified and unable to speak, they began talking to each other through their tents.

“What in the hell is that? Are those wolves?” asked Barry.

“Sure looks like it” answered Jeff.

Back in 2020, some birdbrain put forth a bill to reintroduce grey wolves back into Colorado, and even more amazing, it narrowly passed in the election.

Wolves had been eradicated from Colorado since 1940, making it much safer for humans to be in the mountains, but now camping suddenly was not the safe experience it use to be, at least not for these campers.

“Did that ranger say anything about wolves? I don’t remember him saying anything to me!” yelled Barry.

The only sound that could be heard in the darkness was the wolves eating on their friends, and they were making a hell of a noise.

“We’re going to come over to your tent” said Jeff. “Quietly unzip your tent and we will run over to you. Do it now” said Jeff.

You could hear both tents unzip, then the sound of bodies moving from one tent to the other, with Barry’s tent zipping back up.

“OMG. There has to be 15 to 20 wolves out there. Since when does Colorado have wolves?” said Jeff, with Jan nodding her head in agreement.

“Since they were just reintroduced. Don’t you remember the bill we just voted on last year?” said Barry.

“What the hell are we going to do? With that many out there, they’re not going to be satisfied with those two. They’re going to come after us as soon as they finish with them.” Said Soozi.

“Do you have a knife on you? A big knife?” asked Barry, talking to Jeff.

“It’s in the tent” said Jeff.

“We can either wait for them to come over here, or we can try to make a run for it to one of the cars. My car is closest” said Jeff. “I have my keys with me. We can unlock it from here, then get out of this tent as quietly as we can, and make a run for it.”

“Do you think we can make it?” asked Barry.

“We have to. Staying here is certain death.” Jeff answered.

Jeff then unlocked the doors of his car, breaking the sounds of the wolves chomping with the horn beeping, then they resumed eating.

“We cant wait much longer. They are probably almost finished with them” said Jeff.

His saying those words cemented the horror in everyone’s head, just in case any of them thought this was just a bad dream and they would wake up from it at any moment.

Slowly and softly, Jeff began to unzip the tent after everyone decided which door of the car they would run to. Barry and Soozi would run to the back doors, whereas Jeff and Jan would enter through the front doors.

Jeff and Jan were out of the tent first, and raced to the car, opening the front doors and making it inside before the wolves were alerted, followed by Barry and Soozi, with Barry making it inside and closing the door just as a wolf had ran into it, but Soozi wasn’t so lucky. There was a large cooler sitting on the seat she was going for, so she was delayed getting inside and a wolf jumped her, biting her shoulder and ripping away her shirt and some flesh to go along with it, but she was able to pull the cooler outside and get in the door, slamming it on the wolf, then shutting it firmly behind her.

“Is everyone ok?” asked Jeff.

“Soozi got bit pretty good and she’s bleeding a lot from her shoulder” answered Barry as he began putting pressure on her shoulder to stop the bleeding.

Jeff started the car and they made their way down the dirt road toward the ranger station, but they all got a birds eye view of the two mostly eaten bodies of their friends.

Sandy’s face was completely eaten off, along with her throat.

Jim’s entrails were being eaten by two wolves, while another was in the process of pulling off his face.

This was a camping trip they would never forget, as it would be the last one for any of them.