STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Bob Jonas and Sarah Michael have carried thousands of pounds on their back during a lifetime of hiking through Alaska, Idaho and other rugged wilderness areas.

But last summer the couple decided to give themselves a break and let others do the backbreaking work. The others were llamas named McShane and O’Reilly, who ferried their tents, personal items and food on a seven-day 50-mile trek from Trail Creek Summit through the Pioneer Mountains saving some of the wear and tear on their aging 75- and 71-year-old knees.

It worked out so well that the Ketchum couple decided to do another walkabout this summer—a more ambitious trek covering 500 miles and six mountain ranges over 81 days.

The trip, which went through the Smoky, Sawtooth, Salmon River, Boulder, White Cloud and Pioneer mountain ranges, was so ambitious that even Sawtooth Wilderness Ranger Ed Cannady called it “a trip of a lifetime.”

“This is a walkabout, not your classic Sun Valley trek,” said Jonas, who estimated they’d be knocking off 10 to 20 miles a day. “But what an experience! How could anyone say, ‘No!?’ We live here—this is something we couldn’t pass up.”

Jonas, who resembles Abraham Lincoln with his gaunt face, beard and gentle smile, asked people to make pledges for each mile, with the money going towards Wild Gift, an organization he started years ago to develop young entrepreneurs’ problem solving and brainstorming skills as they trekked through Idaho’s wilderness.

And he used the know-how he had accumulated during careers as a fishery biologist, mountain guide and ski outfitter to construct an itinerary and 10 food resupplies, including two that would be airlifted into the Middle Fork of the Salmon River country.

The day following Fourth of July Jonas and Michael met up with llama packer Dennis Duenas, a lean muscled man with a raven’s mop of unruly hair and a Tom Selleck mustache, near Richardson Summit in the backcountry west of Hailey.

 Duenas would accompany them for the first 10 days, testing the llamas to see which ones would best hold up on the rugged trek and take out the others.

“Everyone wants to know whether the llamas will spit,” he said. “Llamas will spit to show dominance over other llamas when feeding or jockeying for a position in line. They’ll discipline juveniles by spitting at them. They’ll turn away the advances of a male, if they’re not interested. And they will spit when threatened by a predator.”

They have three different spits, he added. They will blow a simple mist of saliva if mildly irked. If someone’s honing in on their food, they might spit out the food in their mouth as if to say, “Mouth off!” And, if they’re really irritated they will heave a glob of regurgitated bile—a thick, stinky, rancid green gunk.

They can spit up to 10 feet away.

Llamas have exceptional hearing and vision, enabling them to detect a deer, coyote or bear way before humans, he added. When threatened, they’ll sound an alarm call—a “hoohoohoo.” And, put to the test, they’ll   defend themselves by kicking, charging or rearing in the air and coming down on top of their adversary, attempting to crush it under their sternum.

“I’ve seen them get snakes, foxes and porcupines underneath their chest and crush them to death with their ribcage,” he added.

As Duenas readied the llamas, Michael and Jonas weighed bags containing Tasty Bites pesto pasta and salmon, seven grain rice, an organic hot flax oatmeal and Endangered Species dark chocolate bars with mint and orange peel flavoring that they slung over the llamas.

They stuffed several items concocted by Wild Gift Fellows, including Play Hard Give Back trail mixes and energy bars, Kuli Kuli bars featuring the super food Moringa and Green Mountain Tea harvested from the mountains of India. And they stuffed plenty of ibuprofen into their day packs.

Duenas showed them how to clip the llamas’ nails, putting his shoulder into the llamas’ chests as he held up the hooves. He showed them how to check the llamas’ temperature and to inject a muscle and joint pain relief and ibuprofen by needle should the llamas fall and injure a shoulder or encounter cactus or porcupine quills. And he showed them a medical kit containing antibiotics in case the llamas were to cut their pads, along with oil to dress wounds.

The horsefly ointment could be life saving, he stressed.

“Llamas will kick so this protects you from an accident,” he told Jonas and Michael.

As Jonas and Michael finished packing, Duenas brushed out the llamas’ wool, pulling out clumps the size of softballs.

“I’ve got an apartment garage that I insulated with this,” he said.

The llamas’ double coats and hollow fibers help insulate them in both cold and heat, he said. In camp, he added, the llamas cool themselves by lifting up their bodies on their back legs while sitting to create a wind tunnel underneath their body.

As the trio slung packs over the llamas backs, Bob Jonas’s daughter Nina, her husband Andreas Heaphy and his parents pulled up, a dust cloud behind them.

“They’re beautiful creatures,” said Andreas’ mother Katie Heaphy as she surveyed the llamas. “They look so elegant.”

Sarah Michael stuffed her cell phone and a solar recharger for the phone into the 25-pound pack she was carrying. And, with that, the trio set off through the sagebrush-covered hills into the Smoky Mountains.

Eight llamas, including McShane, Johnny, Timber, Apple, Granite and Milton, plodded behind at one to 1.5 miles an hour.

When Jonas planned the trip, he could not have foreseen the record snowfall that would dump 28 feet of snow on Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain and even more snow to the north, causing dangerous river crossings and neck deep snow on the trails they planned to hike in July.

Nor could he have forseen record high temperatures that would begin plaguing them on Day One.

The trio wasn’t 90 minutes into their trek before two of the llamas overheated, forcing the group to stop for three hours in the only shady spot next to water. Milton wilted under the heat. And McShane, who had been their sure-footed companion through mountain scree the summer before, couldn’t handle the heat, either.

“Llama suffering, human suffering and only day one with 80 more days,” said Michael, a former Blaine County commissioner.

The trip didn’t get any easier. A friend who joined them for a few days succumbed to altitude sickness and had to hike out with Duenas when they arrived at Apollo Lake 10 days later. Michael hiked out, as well, to rest a sore knee, leaving Jonas to figure out a new route through the Sawtooths, which still boasted 12 feet of snow on mountain passes.

“I was concerned about crossing a snow bridge with pack animals,” he said. “I had a friend taken under water when he attempted that. Besides, we would have been post-holing in deep snow.”

The llamas, which the couple rented from Wilderness Ridge Trail Llamas in Idaho Falls, were business-like, standing like statues while being packed. Each llama carried 70 pounds stashed in two bags hanging from their A-frame saddles. They had no qualms about going up and down loose rock on 45-degree slopes, over downed trees, plowing through chest-deep water or traversing snow fields.

Timber was trail-wise and adaptable. Hot Johnny Llama, reliable and sweet. But Granite liked to crowd people and llamas, which led to a lot of spitting.

“The llamas really dictate the pace,” noted Ketchum resident Louise Noyes, who joined the trekkers for a week as they made their way east of the Boulder Mountains. “They need rest and you spend a lot of time brushing them and packing them. But we went through some long beautiful valleys I had never seen before.”

As the difficulties mounted, tempers frayed among the two-legged trekkers, as well. Michael became angry with her mate for choosing such an ambitious trek that involved off-trail travel, as well as hiking on trails.

“It’s one thing to take an arduous wilderness trip with someone at age 50 when the relationship is fresh and you’re still in love,” she said, recalling the two-year sojourn she and Jonas spent in Alaska. “But now, with all the wear and tear of routine and habit, I find that the relationship easily fragments into impatience, not listening and frustration, which is exacerbated by excess fatigue from days of hiking that are too long, too hot and too hard.”

With rest, however, she changed her tune, realizing she and Bob needed to help one another get through each day.

Still 90-degree temperatures persisted even in the high elevations of the Sawtooth Mountains. The couple soaked shirts, hats and kerchiefs at every creek only to have them dry within minutes.

Jonas found his brain hazing and his body overheating if he missed just one liter of the six to eight liters of water he needed every day. And his aging knees felt as tight as a rubber band after days made longer  by the need to get over and around downed timber.

“The biggest challenge was knowing that the next day would be even harder as my aging body began to break down,” he said.

That Jonas was even out there was remarkable. Diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma at 30, he underwent what he called a rigorous “cut, burn and poison” regiment involving surgery, a month of radiation and year of chemotherapy.

Fortunately, he said, he was working in Denmark on a salmon aquaculture project at the time and doctors there were doing cutting edge work with lymphatic cancer.

“But they wouldn’t give me a prognosis of two years. They performed surgery to cut off a tumor the size of a fist on my neck, gave me a chemical cocktail of 35 drugs and injected mustard gas into my veins. My daughter Nina was just an infant. I’m so glad I got to see her become a woman,” he said, tearing up.

Still, Jonas’ treatment left him with a degenerative spine exacerbated by carrying heavy packs on his 137-pound, 5-foot-8 frame. He has to prop up his head as he walks. And he needed stem cell therapy and two braces to steady an arthritic bone-on-bone knee.

In the Sawtooths the couple encountered so many fallen trees that it took hours to go five miles. Only an hour-long logging effort by nephew-in-law John Benson and others cleared enough trees to allow them to cross a particularly gnarly stream crossing. There was a moment’s scare when Johnny’s load got hooked on an overhanging tree.

“He was a no-drama llama, but I was a nervous wreck imagining the possible calamities,” Jonas said. “I’m furious that the Forest Service has no money to hire trail crews to clear trails in Idaho’s beloved Sawtooth National Recreation Area. And I am furious that the Idaho congressional delegation’s mantra for decades has been cutting taxes and shrinking government to the detriment of those who want to enjoy our beautiful lakes and mountains.”

“We met several parties from out of state who will never spend their money in the region again,” he added, still fuming. “One couple said it took four hours to go four miles and they never reached the Trail Creek Lakes.”

There was nowhere to pitch camp that didn’t have widow makers. Jonas once saw a wilderness firefighter killed by a falling snag, and he jumped every time he heard a tree cracking and branch crashing to the ground.

The bright spot was Jonas Benson—John Benson’s 45-pound 8-year-old son. The Syringa School student joined the group for a few days, carrying a heavy backpack that was 15 percent of his body weight and happily volunteering to wade llamas across streams so the adults could stay dry crossing logs.

“I want to go for another 6,500 days,” he told the adults.

As Jonas and Michael made their way down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, they found rafters so enthralled by the llamas that they invited the couple to share lunch, sending them away with three days of food.

A trail crew had cleared the trail just ahead of them to Velvet Falls. But, after the crew left, it was like trying to navigate through pickup sticks, perhaps downed by a microburst.

By then, the Yellow Pine Fire had started, enveloping them with dense smoke and falling ash and preventing planes from bring resupplies. They backtracked to the highway where Ketchum store owner  Andy Munter gave them a ride to the headwaters of Big Creek.

There, a log jam forced a 100-yard portage.

“We had friends that will no longer go into Middle Fork because they lost a couple horses when they fell off unmaintained trail. We thought that, if we kept going, one of us or a llama was going to get hurt,” Jonas said.

When the lightning-sparked Ibex Fire blocked their intended route, they headed into the rugged Big Horn Crags, walking through miles of trees killed by fire and beetles that they dubbed “Valley of the Standing Dead.”

After spending a few days at a friend’s ranch along the East Fork of the Salmon River, where they watched the solar eclipse, they returned to the Sawtooths to cover the route they had skipped earlier.

They then trekked through the newly established White Clouds Wilderness Area and into the equally new Jerry Peak Wilderness. A crew from Idaho Public TV joined them atop Trail Creek Summit in the Pioneers to film an interview for an “Outdoor Idaho” show that will air Dec. 3.

Michael had been forced home by a pelvic injury sustained in a fall during the trek through the White Clouds. And she retreated home again following the TV shoot to rest up for a guided gourmet walking holiday through Slovenia while Jonas continued south to the Pioneer Yurt near Hyndman Peak.

Finally, exhausted by the heat and smoke, Jonas decided to head home for a few days of R&R himself. But just as he made his way down the Hyndman Basin Trail, a cold rain began falling, chilling him to the bone and signaling an early end to summer.

His body told him it wanted to veg out in the hot tub. But his drive led him out the door to scout the remainder of the trip—a six-day leg across the Copper Basin to the final stop near Craters of the Moon National Monument.

But he decided he was done after he and his brother John Jonas trekked around Blizzard Mountain near Craters of the Moon and Iron Bog Lake near Moore.

“The prospects of walking for six days in snow and rain didn’t sound very enticing. And I hadn’t known how many fences I would have had to take down to get the llamas through. It took the wind out of my sails,” he said. “Besides, I found hunting camp after hunting camp and the terrain rutted by four-wheelers. It didn’t have the wilderness I was seeking.”

Even though he wasn’t able to follow his itinerary to a T, Jonas figures he walked more than 500 miles by the time he figured in the scouting he did along the Middle Fork of the Salmon and in the Pioneers. He and Michael raised more than $12,000 for the Wild Gift program through those that pledged certain amounts per mile. And, yes, they’re planning another—much shorter—llama packing trip next summer.

“Even though the Smoky Mountains are not designated wilderness, there’s still a lot of beautiful backcountry well suited to a trip like this. And the area from the Summit Creek to Pioneer Yurt in the Pioneer Mountains really should be designated wilderness—there are no roads on top at all,” Jonas said. “I feel deep gratitude that there is still so much wilderness in an area that I explored as a child. “

“INTO THE PIONEERS” AIRS DEC. 3.

You can see the Outdoor Idaho show featuring a segment with Bob Jonas and Sarah Michael at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3, when Idaho Public TV airs “Into the Pioneers.”

The show also features geologist Paul Link and sheep rancher John Peavey. It also features Ketchum’s world champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch, who has introduced hundreds of bicyclists from across the country to the Pioneers via her Private Idaho mountain bike event.