Ferret Legging and Bushwhacking

That ferret-legging is a sport says much about what we’re willing to consider sport. Practiced for centuries, the legging of ferrets had something of a heyday in the 1970s, thanks to its embrace by British coal miners in Yorkshire. To refresh your recollection of the rules, a ferret-legging competitor stuffs two live ferrets down his or her trousers. No underwear is worn, allowing the ferrets free reign to move from leg to leg, and the pants are tied at the ankles and belted snug at the waist, so the critters can’t escape. Competitive ferret-legging ferrets have been described as having “claws like hypodermic needles and teeth like number sixteen carpet tacks,” and former world champion Reg Mellor was known for wearing trademark white pants, the better to show the blood. The winner is whoever lasts longest.

I think about ferret-legging often when I’m bushwhacking, and I bushwhack a lot. A decade or so ago, I learned of the Sierra Club Hundred Peaks Section, a 1941 list of the hundred most notable Southern California mountains. Today, there are approximately two hundred and eighty summits on the list, all of them scrambleable, and for me, that’s like saying to a Labrador, “Fetch stick.” Some of these peaks have well-worn paths to the top, but many are obscure and forgotten by all but those who can’t resist a good list, and these latter peaks are almost always girded by skirts of trackless chaparral. A deviously soft-sounding word, chaparral in no way hints at the nightmares waiting for you in the manzanita, chamise, ceanothus, mountain mahogany, yucca, and scrub oak, where branches are stiff and woody (no bending here) and leaves are often waxy, rigid, and sharp.

Especially after a wet winter, untrodden chaparral grows thick and merciless. On one desert peak not far from the border with Mexico, it took me longer to get through the last two-tenths of a mile to the summit than the previous three miles from the trailhead. The vegetation grew well over my head. Summiters from years past had built “cairns” by placing rocks on top of stumps or in the crooks of manzanita branches. Even so, what seemed like channels through the brush often ended in menacing walls, requiring me to retrace my thrash in search of a better way. Of course, when I made the summit and began the descent, everything looked completely different, and the struggle down was as hard as the struggle up.

One of these days I will learn to dress for the brush and not the heat. Instead of wearing heavy-duty canvas from head to toe, I invariably march out in shorts and a t-shirt and return home looking as if I’ve been flagellated with a crown of thorns. Once, carrying my mountain bike uphill through coastal scrub, a spear of black sage punctured my shin and broke off under the skin; it was there for years, until my body eventually absorbed its woody tissues. Another time, exhausted and barely twenty yards from a dirt road, I got so frustrated backtracking from dead ends, I gave up and stomped straight through a waist-high, needled gauntlet. Not recommended.

Ah, type two fun. There is no enjoying bushwhacking, not really, and that’s what I love about it. So much of what we call adventure favors the strong, the fit, the flexible, or the bold. But bushwhacking is a great leveler. It tests patience, creativity, and perseverance. (My friend Aaron almost abandoned his cherished mountain bike on a particularly heinous bushwhack; his cousin actually did.) It clarifies your goals and your commitment. It asks who you are, then reveals it. And best of all, while nobody cares about your summits, really nobody cares about your bushwhack. It is yours and yours alone, and that’s a beautiful thing.

In 1972, the record for ferret-legging was forty seconds. A few years later, it was pushed to a minute. Then ninety minutes. In 1981, Reg Mellor set a world record of five hours and twenty-six minutes. Five years later, at an exhibition, he attempted to beat what he called the “magic six-hour mark—the four-minute mile of ferret-legging.” After five hours, though, spectators grew bored and wandered away; workmen dismantled the stage while Mellor protested. Shortly thereafter, he retired from ferret-legging for good. Perhaps some records aren’t meant to be broken. Or perhaps some records are just meant to be kept for oneself.