Snowbound

by Ladd Hamilton

Overview

Riding five horses and leading five more, three young New York men, their guide, and a camp cook entered the untamed vastness of the Bitteroot Mountains. They expected the trip to be the adventure of a lifetime, but it was already September. As the hunters made their way up the Lolo Trail in 1893, they were unaware of the coming record snows that would trigger a cruel, controversial decision.

Snowbound is the true story of the Carlin party, whose ill luck and bad judgment drove decent men to an ethical dilemma that intrigued the nation and can still raise an argument wherever people rub shoulders with wilderness. This gripping narrative is the story of a desperate struggle to get out of the mountains with a sick man and of the heroic efforts of various army units to rescue them.

Ladd Hamilton has brought rich narrative detail and crackling tension to an intriguing episode in Northwest history. Hamilton gives flesh and bone to his characters, setting the reader down among them as they battle the elements and their own failures, caught between the imprisoning mountains and an unforgiving river.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636820637
Publisher:	Washington State University Press
Publication date:	07/13/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Following his retirement in 1987 as senior editor and columnist of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, Ladd Hamilton taught journalism at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Table of Contents

Contents

Author’s Note

Snowbound

Epilogue
Appendix A: Young Mr. Carlin’s Book
Appendix B: Ben Keeley’s Narrative
Appendix C: The Case for the Defense
Appendix D: Accounts and Expenditures
Sources

Editorial Reviews

A detailed, well-paced re-creation of the Carlin hunting party fiasco of 1893 by Hamilton (This Bloody Deed, not reviewed).

By all portents, the winter season looked to arrive early and mean as a group of three New York gentlemen, plus two camp personnel, headed out from Kendrick, Idaho, for the Bitterroot Range, on the hunting trip of a lifetime. Also from the start, it was clear that camp cook George Colegate was in ill health. He claimed it was stomach cramps, but as the group pushed deeper into remote Idaho, his conditioned worsened, as did the weather and trail conditions. Culling from official military reports, diaries, a published book by one of the participants, and newspaper coverage, Hamilton imaginatively re-creates their days in the wild, centering the story on Colegate's final admission to his charges that he had knowingly left behind the catheters necessary to drain his prostate-enlarged bladder: They hurt him, and he thought he could make it unaided. Not so. The remaining guide urged retreat, but the sports continued until Colegate could no longer mount his horse, his kidneys now turning his body to a putrifying mass. The others cut and run, abandoning Colegate to his fate. They thrashed their way down the cruel, rapids-infested Lochsa River, freezing and starving, and were rescued at the eleventh hour. Back in civilization, they found a storm of criticism, not least from the Colegate family, who wondered why dad was left when a handful of men might have aided him—back when expedition mates looked out for one another.

No one emerges unscathed here, except Hamilton, whose yarn- spinning reconstruction is a pleasure.

Kirkus Reviews

"A detailed, well-paced re-creation…[Hamilton's] yarn-spinning reconstruction is a pleasure."

—Kirkus Reviews

"Hamilton's descriptions of the Lolo Trail and the Lochsa River make it seem as if he were there."

—Associated Press

"Even if you know the story and its tragic outcome, Ladd Hamilton handles it with such finesse that the book is difficult to put down."

—Montana Magazine

"A powerful recreation of a Northwest wilderness saga that outraged the nation in 1893."

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Hamilton weaves the documented facts into a captivating re-creation of the harrowing story."

—Spokesman Review

From the Publisher