In 1984 my brother and I plus 4 other guys headed to our elk camp in CO. Back then we hunted an area around Hightower Mountain which is south of Silt, CO. This is one of those areas with only 1 way in through public land. It has a couple of private ranches around it and the next nearest public road in was about 15 miles away. This was a great area for elk since few people hunted it and the elk would leave the pressured areas and head there. By the 2nd or 3rd day of the rifle season it would be full of elk.

The main problem with hunting it was the road in was spooky rough and you couldn't get a full size pickup in. We used Jeeps and the original Ford Bronco to get in. This was before the days of ATVs. Normally we would take 2 pickups and 2 smaller rigs and make a couple of trips in with the smaller rigs to transfer gear from the pickups. Back then CO had a separate deer and elk season and we would set up 2 or 3 wall tents and have a camp set up for both seasons. Deer season was first and elk season was later.

We got settled in for elk season and on opening morning a friend of my brother shot a good bull and while we were packing it back to camp it began to snow. Not a big deal since snow is pretty common in CO during elk season. However, this storm was different because it didn't quit. It snowed harder and harder. We hunkered down in the wall tents and waited it out. 3 days later it stopped and the snow was even with the bottom of the headlights on my 1976 Jeep Renegade. Since we were more than 10 miles from the main road, we were in serious trouble.

We packed up as soon as the snow stopped and began to try and get out. This was one of those cases of shovel, drive, shovel, drive, shovel, drive etc... It ended up taking us 9 days to get out and we abandoned about $20K worth of gear since we had to make it out in one trip. That was the last time I hunted the Hightower Mountain Area. Found out later the state of CO had to airlift out over 400 hunters that season.