A snowy forest. Two huge bonfires. A big waterfall raging below us. Right in the middle of it all was a party full of half-dressed, fully drunk or stoned people.
The site itself was one of those "hidden from the tourists" spots that only the locals who worked in the national park even knew existed.
The party was one of those that you only even knew about if you were one of the few chosen to be party-hearty enough to attend.
My wife and I had earned this honor when we had spent the night having sex with another couple who had worked in the national park for ages and were well known for their party-ability.
Before the party was over, I'd watch my wife do things I hadn't imagined in my wildest dreams.
But, I get ahead of myself. A little background to bring readers up to speed...
It was the late 70's and my wife and I had moved to a national park in California because I had a job with the big concessionaire that was running the hotels, restaurants and shops there. It was actually a pretty good opportunity, and getting a job was hard back then as the economy sucked.
My wife was from Los Angeles and I was from a small town in the Midwest β we weren't mountain people. I was an business major and she was, well, cute and sexy and the light of my life.. but not very well versed in anything that would pay the bills. We hadn't really fit in at first.
Eventually, Sherry (my wife) had gotten a job in a little shop at a hotel in the park, and there she had met Terry β and when Terry invited us to her home to meet her husband, we hit if off pretty well. So well that it ended up being the first time that I saw my wife having sex with another man (his name was Ed), and I ended up having sex with Terry.
Ed and Terry, it turned out, were pretty engrained in the community up in the forest β a community that consisted of (mostly women) service workers who were employed at the hotels, shops and restaurants in the park or park rangers, forestry workers and the type of guys that fought forest fires and trapped bears and such. It was a pretty wild bunch β and somehow our evening with Ed and Terry was our invitation to join in their adventures.
We quickly found after our night with them that our status changed and we got invited to be part of a wilder, sexier circle of park workers.
So back to the story...
Getting to the party had not been easy. It was a few miles of fairly gnarly uphill slog with about 20" of snow on the ground. That got us to the bottom of the falls. The final leg was an absolute diaper filling final 400 yards on an ice-coated cliffside trail that went to the top of a waterfall. It was not for the meek.
Sherry and I probably would have been dead meat rotting at the bottom of the falls had we tried to get there without Ed blazing the trail. He had provided the ice axes and crampons, and the ropes we used that made us feel safe enough to even try to get up that last part of the trail.
We had started the hike well before sun up β and it was around 10:30 when we got to the destination. We were positively amazed when we were met by perhaps 40 partiers who seemed to take the snow and 20 degree weather as a bit of a minor inconvenience and were busy smoking dope, drinking beer and basically being happy people.
Two really big fires were raging β so big that they threw out a ton of heat but actually evaporated snow flakes as they entered the area and had melted a circle in the snow big enough that we could all stand or even sit on the rocks that were abundant in the area.
Most of the revelers had shed the snow suits and other winter gear they had worn on the trail. The wet stuff was hanging from sticks to dry but most of it was just in piles here and there on rocks and hanging from trees. Everyone was pretty much in underwear or less, lending a uniquely sexy feel to the whole place.
Girls being girls, Sherry and Terry had to pee when we got there and left together to go find a tree. Ed helped me off with my pack and outer layers before digging into his own pack and pulling out a few cold ones to drink. A few friends of Ed's pretty much immediately surrounded us and there were some introductions all around.
It was probably not even 10 in the morning, but people were hitting the dope and booze pretty hard. There were already some pretty partied people hanging around the fire. I couldn't imagine that being safe β we would all have to go back down that ice covered trail to get back to our cars later β and said so. That's when Ed gave me "the rules" which were pretty easy to follow.
First was that we should do your drinking and doping early and cut yourself off by about 1 in the afternoon. By 5PM you'd want to be sober and sound to make the descent back into the valley and be ready to do that bottom part of the trail in the dark using just your Tac lamps. (I had to ask β that's what they called the little flashlights that you strapped to your forehead or climbing helmet.)
Also, you had to stay far away from the edge of the waterfall or headwater as it was slippery as a whore's pussy. No one had ever survived a trip over those falls ever.
Finally, don't walk away too far from the fires β a rule they didn't need to tell me twice. Getting lost in the forest was a death sentence this time of year. If they didn't find you by midnight, you were dead for sure from expsoure, but you didn't have to worry about that as a wolf would get you or you'd stumble over a cliff as soon as it got dark.