Chapter Five: Alpha Male

For the rest of the afternoon, the ladies worked at making the hut more habitable. They arranged sleeping bags and packs to make nice beds and pillows, used some charcoal we hauled with us to start a small fire in the grill attached to the back of the hut, and fixed a nice meal, including some soup made using boiled lake water, and generally got comfortable.

Once it was clear that the settling in would go smoothly, I felt like playing Alpha Male again. I walked out the door, breathed deeply, and pounded my chest like a gorilla.

I didn't have do that, but it just felt right!

I looked around... nearby Melene, Beth and Cindy were working on some kind of food prep -- Cindy was facing away from me.... I walked up and put my hand around the back of her neck and used my fingers and thumb to stroke it gently.

This wasn't the first time I'd done this to one of the girls; they knew what was coming next. Cindy quickly and quietly handed off what she was doing, stood up, and leaned gently into me. She also shifted her shoulders around to more behind her, and arched her back. Unless I miss my guess, her eyes were half-closed. I didn't have to guess about her nipples popping. As my right hand stayed on her neck, my left touched her left elbow. Without a word her hands went up behind her back; she was ready to be double armlocked, and with my left hand I did just that.

Then came something new. Up until now I would then lead an armlocked girl off -- guiding her with my hold on her neck and arms -- to a bed or a couch, and do some kissing and hugging. This time I fondled her nipples and breasts for a few seconds and kissed her neck, right in front of the other girls, before we moved off. She didn't mind at all. I got the most delightful moan when she realized we were going to stand there for a bit. And the other girls didn't mind, either. They noticed, but they didn't stare or say something sappy like, "Get a room!"

After a minute, or so, I lead her to the back of the hut and we lay down on a sleeping bag there. I kissed and fondled her for another ten minutes, with our clothes on. I got off on her, and then we lay hugging for a while longer. Finally, I slapped her on the butt, and had her go back to her housemaking. While she did that, I picked out Soo-Min to be Alpha Male with next. Yeah, life can be sweet.

By the time I'd done Suzanne and Young-gay as well, the girls were helping out. I didn't have to go out and find them, they came in and kneeled at the bedside. They waited patiently, two at a time, and watched, with their hands tied behind them. Yeah, life can get even sweeter!

When the sun went down, we gathered in the hut. There was a cold wind on the mountain that night. I guessed there might be some snow by morning, but it was still early enough in the season that it shouldn't stick. During the night we slept... and didn't. Each time I woke up, I found a different woman snuggled beside me. She was usually waiting awake. I would hug her and kiss her for a while, then I would drift off to sleep again. My gosh! How good could being an Alpha Male get?

But the party did not last forever. When dawn came, it was stinking cold, and there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground. Getting started for the day was first a matter of getting warmed up. We all walked around for a while, waving and beating our arms to get some heat into our organs. It was, in fact, damnably unpleasant! But, we helped each other, and that was the whole point of making this hard journey. We were using overcoming adversity for bond building. Finally, we got about packing up. Finally, we got about walking further down our trail. By the time we were on the trail, the sun was high, and the snow was melting. The air was still freezing, but the sun was warming it fast, and it was hot enough by itself to make things feel much warmer.

Even better, once we topped the nearby ridge, the next leg of the journey took us through a wide bowl in the mountain range. We walked down for a while, on a slope flooded with morning light, and we were soon below the snow line. Things got pleasant again. About ten o'clock we came upon a remote picnic area, we stopped for a leisurely brunch.

"How much further?" Beth asked as we munched on sandwiches.

"At the base of the next bowl." I said, "It's a really nice place. Fifty years ago high quality marble was found there. Ten years later the best of the marble was gone, so it was shut down and abandoned.

"Ewww... we're going to be living in a dark, creepy mine? I've seen those in western movies. That doesn't sound any fun at all." said Shazeri.

"The mines you saw were gold and silver mines, and not good examples of those, by the way. This is more of a quarry, and the walls and floor are white, not dark. It looks very different, and I think you'll like what you see." I said.

In revealing this, I was cooperating with the girls. I was not being mysterious. I was not saying, "That is for me to know, and you to never find out!" and then giving a wicked cackle, or some such. Little by little, day by day, we were becoming a group. Working together to overcome the difficulties of this long hike would help this bonding continue.

We rested after brunch. It was nice to sit around in the warm sun. I sang a bit, and the girls liked that.

Then we started on the trail again. We started up. We had another high ridge to cross before we got into our destination bowl. By three o'clock, some of the girls were still going strong, but some were tired. I checked feet: no blisters, but some were getting red and raw. I scanned the skies and checked the weather. The temperature was nice now, and there was a wonderful warm breeze blowing out of the valley, but there was a spectacular cirrostratus formation in the sky, and there were large cumulous clouds building over the ridges. I made a choice.

"Ladies, we camp on this side of the ridge today."

"We still have half the day." said Shazeri, "I'd like to get where we're going. I didn't like waking up cold."

"I agree. But those are thunderstorms building over the ridges, and we have ladies with worn out feet. Much as we don't want to, we must stop." I looked at my map.

"There's an abandoned mine about thirty minutes up the trail from here. We will stop there for the night."

That night we got to find out what a real abandoned silver mine was like. It was dark, creepy and filthy! But, it had previously been wintered over in, so there were some partly cleaned up living quarters not too far from the entrance. It could have been a lot worse.

Sadly, the weather could not have been worse. It was a darn good thing we held off on ridge walking. About 5PM, there was a thunderstorm, and we stood in the mine entrance watching as sheets of rain came down. The rain continued that night, and morning broke foggy, cold and overcast. Rats! This was a major storm.

"Ladies," I reported, "We have to wait. The ridge will have snow today."

We waited. It was not pleasant being cooped up in a mine for twenty four hours, so we all wandered in and out of the entrance, and watched the day progress. Sometimes it was sunny and warm, and it looked like I'd made a mistake in having us wait. Then clouds and showers could come quickly, and the air would fill with chill fog, and my choice looked pretty good.

Waiting in the mine was deadly boring. Running out of food would be just plain deadly, so, I called for half rations. Not only were we bored, we couldn't eat our way through it. The whole day was such a pain! I did Alpha Male once in a while, but it just didn't feel as right as it had on that sunny lakeside yesterday.

The next day dawned chill and clear. One of the nice things about being in a mine is that it doesn't get really cold at night. We were warm as we packed and readied to move on.

All morning there was ice on the trail. We had to be really careful. Fortunately, the trail was in the bowl, not on some steep cliff face. By midmorning the ice was melting, and when we got to the steep wall of the bowl the trail was clear. All we had to worry about then was rocks tumbling down on us from above. It was a real worry. At this altitude rocks fell all the time, anyway, but with the freeze-and-thaw action from last night's storm, it was a lot worse.

The trail took us over a pass with a spectacular view. We stopped at the top for lunch, and I took some pictures. We were two hours down the far side when I lead us off the main trail.

"Be careful. But we have only an hour of this and we are home." I said.

Well, I guess I didn't say the "be careful" part loud enough. Young-Gai and Cindy were teasing, and Young-Gai slipped and fell. She twisted her ankle. We waited, and after a few minutes she tried walking and it still hurt. I got to carry her. Ah well.... Actually, Suzanne and I got to carry her. We traded off, and the other girls carried our packs. The good news was, after an hour Young-gai started walking on it, a bit, too. She would walk, I would carry, Suzanne would carry, she would walk. It sobered us all up: we were a long way from a doctor.

Thank goodness the trail was downhill. But even so, we all had tired legs and aching backs, and we stopped often. The girls chattered a lot. I was strong and silent. I wasn't particularly putting on a show, I'm a man, the extra stress just made me feel like being that way. The slow journey and aches were bad things, but the good part was, it was more bonding experience. Thanks to Young-Gai, the sun was down and light fading fast when we finally got to our new home.