Origins of the Nit Wits

Jimi and Dave and I went backpacking in the Wind River Range in Wyoming about 15 years ago. We entered the Popo Agie Wilderness from Dickinson Creek campground with a plan to walk a roughly 40 mile loop and come out on the next drainage to the north. A typical trip for us since we didn’t like covering the same ground twice.

We walked in the first day and camped early enough to catch a few stunted trouties for supper. The next day we walked further in to a beautiful area called the Cirque of the Towers which is a famous rock and ice climbing destination. We set up camp and strolled over a divide to a place south of the Cirque where we could view Arrowhead Lake. One of the photos of Jimi in short pants in a snow field posted on this site was taken there.

That afternoon the weather took a dramatic turn for the worse. Storm clouds rolled in from the west and the temperature dropped from the 70’s into the 30’s in about an hour. It began to rain and hail and then snow. We dived into our shelters as it got even colder. Lane and me into my Moss and Jimi into his new, single-pole, teepee-style tent with no floor. The tents were close enough together that we could yell between them and we did so for an hour or so before we noticed that Jimi was being quiet.

We shouted over the storm and got a groggy response from Jim. He said he was cold and had lighted his Svea stove to heat his shelter. He mumbled some other things that were incoherent and I asked him what color his fingernails were. He responded, ‘Blue.’ Dave and I realized that the Svea was poising him with carbon monoxide gas. We went and got him and his gear out of his tent and he moved into ours.

The three of us spent the next 30 hours in my two man tent through the worst spell of weather I’ve ever camped in. During rare and brief lulls in the storm, we’d climb out, scrape the snow and ice off the Moss, drink some whiskey, eat some food and then dive back in for another few hours. Imagine the Three Stooges episode where they are all sleeping in a narrow bed. It was like that in the tent. If one of us turned over, we all had to turn over. If somebody snored too loudly, it woke the others up, and so on. There’s a photo on this site of Lane peeking out of the Moss during one of the lulls in the storm.

The bad weather delayed our progress by a day and a half and we considered taking an apparent shortcut across the toe of a glacier to get to our next destination, Dutch Oven Lake, several miles to the north. I talked them out of this arguing that we weren’t equipped for the detour. We instead kept to our original plan and slugged our way up, onto, and across a 10,000+ foot high plateau covered with knee deep snow. (Years later I asked an ice climber who knows the Cirque area well if we could have made the glacier traverse without ropes and crampons and he simply said, ‘You would have died.’)

Jimi was out in front walking across the plateau, then Lane, and I brought up the rear. I lost sight of them early and didn’t see them again until reaching Dutch Oven. On the way down the drainage that passed by the lake, I noticed tracks that lead close to the lip of a snow cornice on the south side of the creek. The cornice was probably 200 feet above the valley floor. When I got to the lake, I asked which of the guys had walked out onto the cornice and Jim said it was him, that he was looking for a shortcut.

We camped that night and ate all our remaining food and a few fat Brook Trout and drank all the booze we had left. The next morning we headed back toward Dickinson campground. Jimi in front, then Lane, then me. When I passed the cornice I could tell that some of it had collapsed. Jimi’s tracks lead to the edge where there was now a vertical face of snow.

I got to the trail head a couple of hours after the boys and expected them to be there with the car, waiting for me to straggle in. They were nowhere to be seen. I carried my pack the two miles to where we’d left the car and it was gone.

I started cussing and kicking rocks around and a nice couple pulled up to ask if I was having trouble. I explained the situation and they offered to give me a ride back to the trailhead. I climbed in their pickup and continued cussing and harshing on the boys. As we were pulling up at the trailhead, I could see my car coming up the hill from the opposite direction. I said, ‘There’s the NitWits,’ and the lady said, ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve called them since you got in the truck!’

I mentioned to the couple that they’d likely gone into town to get some beer and the guy said that he was a local sheriff and he hoped they hadn’t been drinking and driving. I thought for a second and told him, honestly, that I was sure they had not – that they would have saved the first cold beers off the trail until we could enjoy them together.

Sure enough, when they pulled up, Dave held up a full 6-pack of beer and said, ‘A man could die of thirst out here.’ The sheriff laughed.

The next time we got together I had made a hand-lettered sign that read ‘Mr. Nit and Mr. Wit’. They were flying into Billings and I was picking them up at the airport for another trip into the woods. I held it up in the baggage claim area as though I were a limousine driver waiting for a customer. Several people commented on the sign.

I’ve carried it with me and used it as a greeting for the NitWits every time we’ve been together since then.

Bob J.