Last wild trek for ALS sufferer

GARDINER, Mont. – Mike Yochim asked for help up from a blue chair in his living room with windows overlooking a cloud-covered Electric Peak.

The 47-year-old pushed the walker into the corner and slowly walked down the steps, using the handrails for balance.

“I’m going to be right in front of you, just in case,” said Yochim’s friend, Sean Miculka.

Yochim descended gingerly past framed photos of his many outdoor adventures – from the Grand Canyon and Tasmania to his beloved Yellowstone.

Miculka helped Yochim into the garage to the custom-built tricycle, Yochim’s main source of exercise since being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Yochim pedaled the block down a dirt road to Miculka’s house, where they met up with Josh Becker and Eric Compas. Piles of gear would soon be loaded into a kayak and a canoe.

The day before, Becker and Compas flew in from Minnesota and Wisconsin, respectively, to prepare for the group’s weeklong adventure in Yellowstone National Park.

The trip will likely be Yochim’s last into the wilderness.

Starting with the National Park Service in 1986, Yochim’s career included several summer and winter seasons giving bus and snow coach tours. In both Yellowstone and Yosemite, he worked in planning, including snowmobile issues in Yellowstone.

Yochim earned his master’s degree at the University of Montana and received his doctorate in geography at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His dissertation was turned into two books, “Yellowstone and the Snowmobile” and “Protecting Yellowstone: Science and the Politics of National Park Management.”

Yochim’s love for the outdoors is insatiable. He routinely hiked more than 500 miles each year and has hiked all 1,200 miles of trails in Yellowstone and most of the trails in Grand Teton National Park, the Gallatin National Forest, the Shoshone National Forest and the northern half of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

The first ALS symptom Yochim detected was trouble with his speech in 2013.

“Only I could tell,” Yochim said. “But by the end of that month, it was obvious.”

In addition to problems speaking, Yochim’s small muscles began twitching endlessly, and he had an enhanced tendency to cry.

Last September, he was diagnosed with the disease, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Symptoms, which come in multiple forms, include muscle weakness, twitching and cramping of muscles, thick speech, shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing and walking, and weakness in hands, legs, feet or ankles, among others.

Life expectancy for those diagnosed with the disease is two to five years on average. There is no cure.

The disease has slowly but steadily progressed. As recently as March, Yochim could hike 10 miles a day with 2,000 feet of elevation gain and loss.

“Now I struggle to walk 5 feet unaided,” he said.

He uses a walker all the time and has an electric wheelchair on order.

“My speech and swallowing ability are hanging in there,” Yochim said, though he’s hard to understand.

“My fingers are so weak, I can’t pull the stems off of cherries or button my shirts,” he said.

Yochim hired a housemaid who cleans his two-story home in Gardiner, where he lives alone. Friends and family have stepped up to help since his diagnosis.

He challenged his friends to perform the Ice Bucket Challenge that’s stormed social media and raised about $100 million so far for ALS research.

“ALS is worse than almost any cancer,” Yochim said. “No hope, no effective treatment, only imprisonment in one’s own body. This is partly because there has not been much funding for research.”

Outfitted with one kayak and one canoe, Yochim and his crew plan to travel southeast along Yellowstone Lake, stopping at campsites for two nights at a time.

In January, the plan for August’s trip had been to hike. Due to Yochim’s deterioration, however, they decided this spring to change it to a horseback trip. But Yochim’s neck couldn’t handle the motion on a horse. So then it became a boat trip.

As the crew prepared for their journey Thursday, they each talked about what the adventure means to them. All agreed on one thing.

It’s bittersweet.

“I don’t even want to say it to myself,” Compas said. “This is probably going to be the last wilderness trip I take with Mike.”

“There’s a sense of urgency that this trip happen,” Becker said.

“It’s huge on a lot of levels,” Miculka said.

As he listened to his friends talk about the importance of the journey they were to embark on the next day, Yochim quietly cried, softly wiping away tears with a tissue.

Growing up, Yochim spent time camping in national parks with his parents and three brothers. It’s where Yochim’s passion for the wilderness, for learning about it, for protecting it, for spending time in it, began.

“I wanted always to preserve and protect those attributes that I found, and still find, to be so compelling – beauty and wilderness,” Yochim said.

“And that’s in part what I hope to encounter on this trip. To soak up as much of Yellowstone’s magnificence and tranquility as I can, so that when I am confined to a wheelchair, I can close my eyes, bring that beauty and wildness to mind, and smile and relax.”