As it happened, the day I began reading the book, the mailman delivered a letter from an outfitter in northern Wyoming that has twice taken me up into high country, dropped me off and come back a week or so later. The outfitter is a family operation near Moran Junction -- between Jackson and Yellowstone. Its wranglers had insisted that I go armed, for there are many grizzly bears ranging through those mountains. There had been some serious attacks, a few fatal.
Although the science of high-intensity pepper sprays -- which I always carry -- has advanced rapidly, the aerosol cans are not universally effective, the outfitters emphasized. A .44 magnum pistol, which is what these experienced hardies carry, will kill a grizzly -- if it's used well. I had been a serious pistol shooter for many years, and had a .44 magnum, which I kept with me.
The book was Hunted: A True Story of Survival, by David Fletcher (Carroll & Graf, 212 pages, $24). It is Fletcher's stone-cold terrifying memoir of nine days climbing up and then down 12,000-foot-high Mount Hess, almost 200 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska
What makes Fletcher's tale more than a walk in the wilds is that for most of that time he was stalked, and several times attacked, by a raging grizzly, standing more than 10 feet tall, weighing probably considerably more than 1,000 pounds, with 6-inch claws and teeth to match.
Fletcher is an Englishman, who at the time of the events of the book was working as a highway foreman. He had climbed the most challenging mountains in the Alps and he'd hiked and climbed in Alaska three previous times. Climbing itself is a kind of madness, but solo climbing peaks that no man or woman has ever done before -- which Fletcher writes was locally believed to be true of Mount Hess -- is beyond obsession.
He'd been warned about grizzlies, but decided a rifle would be too heavy. He never mentions a pistol. A friend had warned him, he writes, that "A bear with cubs knows no fear, and can easily outrun the fastest man. These chilling words came flooding back to me now. My friend's parting advice had been, 'Don't ever underestimate the intelligence of a grizzly bear. They are mean, they are natural killers, but above all, they can think!' "
And that is precisely what he came to know first hand. Soon after he set out, with nothing but his backpack and climbing gear, he saw huge bear footprints in the snow. Working through dense brush, he heard a noise and turned.
A "dark black shape" is running toward him. Instinctively he raises his heavy, sharp ice axe. He brings it down -- with all his might -- on the approaching bear. Only after he's struck does he realize it's a cub. It's hit full in the face. He leaves the cub, apparently dying. He proceeds upward. After considerable time, he hears a roaring and shattering of timber below and assumes the cub is dead and the mother full of fury.
The bear arrives when he is hauling his backpack up an ice waterfall. When he sees it, he is hanging by a rope, easing himself down to bury gear for his last run up the mountain. He looks it full in its face, badly scarred by some earlier battle.
By lucky chance, the bear is buried in an avalanche of ice from the frozen waterfall. After a long struggle, as Fletcher hangs by rope, it scrambles up and out. He can smell the raging beast's breath. It sinks a claw into his left heel. He manages to climb to the top even though his heel's been cut, but not badly. He's still set on reaching Mount Hess' summit.
He describes every moment, every movement, every sound, everything that's running through his head. His language is simple and as crisp as the mountain winds that he describes with them.
The book is a textbook on the importance of meticulous care in the wilderness. Fletcher's life is at risk every time he makes a faint mistake. Each such event also drives the story along with relentless energy and tension and suspense.
I am not a climber and am no technical juryman, but Fletcher seems very adept. His climbing ability is unquestionable, as is his knowledge of snow, ice and rocks. And his enthusiasm is eloquent: "If I fall off, I will surely die, for I haven't secured myself in order to save time. You can't secure every move on a mountain. Yet I love every wonderful moment of the struggle. It is everything to me. This is the stuff that climbing dreams are made of."
His narrative is breathtaking in details that include an infinite number of tiny pebble falls, the scent of the breath of a grizzly bear at a distance, the precise flavor of bits of candy that were his last standby energy source and their brand names. How he survives the ordeal is the climax of the book -- and its suspense won't be spoiled here.
The most extraordinary thing about the book, however, is that it was in May 1980 that David Fletcher set out to climb Mount Hess -- 22 years ago. He writes that the effect of the grueling climb and the battle with the bear made it impossible for him to write the story until now. After many unsuccessful attempts, in 2002, according to the author's note at its beginning, he completed writing about it.
A reasonably skeptical reader might wonder about the specifics -- even the story itself -- after such a long time and with such amazing detail. Finally, I decided it didn't matter to me. Whether Fletcher's work is all fact -- or fact mingled with misty memories, or fact larded by fiction -- it is compelling reading. It evokes drama and suspense, though not the literary majesty, of the nature of Captain Ahab's pursuit of the white whale.
For reasons that have nothing to do with bears, I am not going to Western backcountry this year. But if I were, I would make sure my companions read Hunted, not only for its instructive value but also because it's a great yarn.