For the last fifteen years, Steve Galchutt has been hiking Colorado’s highest peaks with his pack goats in order to send ham radio signals from the summits. Steve is an active member of Summits On The Air (SOTA), an international network of folks who participate in an amateur radio-sport that combines mountaineering and ham radio. Folks called activators hike to a summit and send out a signal, and people called chasers listen for it, either from the comfort of their own home or from a local hilltop. Steve’s signals, sent from many of the major peaks on Colorado’s Front Range, are picked up across the United States as well as Europe, South America, Asia, and New Zealand. Sometimes it even makes it to such far-flung places as Ukraine.
As you might imagine, hauling portable radio equipment with heavy batteries and antennas plus your food, water, and high-altitude survival gear to mountain summits ten to thirteen thousand feet above sea level is no easy task, which is why Steve is also a goat packer. Steve notes that “recent battery technology and the shrinking size of electronic devices has lightened our load significantly; in fact, the need for goats has diminished other than they are now—more importantly—my best trail buddies!”
Fifteen years ago, Steve bought a Sable-Saanen from a dairy and named him Rooster. He also adopted a meat goat from a family commune in the San Luis Valley and named him Peanut.
“I know that even though I thought I was ‘rescuing’ him from the butcher,” Steve likes to say, “I know he rescued me in many ways from myself—’cause those sweet, kind, never-quit-attitude animals do that to humans!”
Steve likes to tell the story of a hike in 1998 up Bison Peak in the Tarryall’s that he took with a few friends and Peanut: “On reaching the summit, we found a rock-walled basin to sit in to get out of the wind to enjoy our lunch and the views. I pulled out my PB&J sandwich and all of a sudden, Peanut is leaning over my shoulder as if to say ‘So, you gonna share the sandwich we me, right?’”
Steve refused his goat’s request and thought that was the end of it until Peanut climbed up on the rock wall and begun to pee. The wind caught it, which resulted in Steve—and his sandwich, mind you—being lightly misted with goat urine.
Needless to say, Peanut ended up enjoying that entire sandwich. Steve always wondered if maybe Peanut had known what he was doing all along. Those goats are pretty smart creatures, after all.
Peanut was joined soon thereafter by Rooster, and the two packgoats spent many years on the trail with Steve and his friends and family, both on SOTA adventures and on family backcountry trips. The goats would ride to the trailhead in the back of his Tacoma pickup truck, in a customized cap that Steve calls The Goatwagon.
Rooster and Peanut have both been survived by Boo Goat, whom Steve got four years ago when the goat was about three. Boo Goat and Steve are still learning to be trail buddies, as one of the drawbacks to getting an older goat is that the goat doesn’t bond to his owner as well. Boo Goat has a tendency, when around lots of other people, to leave with the wrong herd sometimes.
Steve is the type of man who can easily switch between a discussion of ionospheric fluctuations and one about Colorado wildflowers. At seventy-six years old, Steve estimates he’s spent about 10% of his life above treeline and he admits he feels more at home in the woods than in town. His packgoats, while instrumental in helping him achieve that feat, are so much more than that.
Recently, Steve’s hiking buddy Peanut reached the end of his long life. Arthritis had rendered the goat virtually immobile. He had lost most of his teeth and was unable to chew any food, so Steve made the hard decision to put him down.
“It was so dang hard,” Steve said, a catch in his throat, “Saying goodbye to your faithful friend who has stood by you through thick and thin.”