autoloid camp. March 21, 2000. The first day of spring and day five of our Namdor trip. It was a beautifully shitty day in the Canyon. It started raining at three am and never stopped. There was snow all the way down to the Redwall. We took the morning off because it was pouring so hard we couldn't nam. After waiting out two sucker-holes under our Jed-Clampett-goes-boating tarp system, everyone decided to go back to bed. That's when the fun started.

About an hour later, several of us woke up when Gonz came running into camp yelling, “Condor #50 just attacked me! I just got attacked by Condor #50! That ***ing thing just ripped a hole in my tent! Is it too early to start drinking?”

He was visibly upset, and rightly so. Gonz had set up his tent across the drainage from the main camp. After falling back to sleep, a scratching-type noise woke him up. When he opened his eyes he was staring right into the face of Condor #50. Talk about a rude awakening! The scavenger had ripped a hole in the bottom back side of his tent and poked his head and neck inside to have a look—about one foot away from Gonz' head! Gonz screamed, yelled, and flailed about, then got out and chased the ugly brute back to the other side of the river.

People started getting up slowly to find out what all the commotion was about and got to hear the eyewitness account. Gonz was going into about his fifteenth rendition of the tale when ol' #50 decided to revisit the scene of his crime. He (or she, I'll stick to the male interpretation here) peeled off the cliff across from camp and glided over to Gonz' tent again. Gonz screamed and we all started running up the beach, across the drainage, up the other side and stopped in our tracks. There was Condor #50 about to go back in. This was the first good look any of us had had at this monster, and now there we were, about ten feet away giving each other the “well, now what do we do” look. It was the largest, ugliest bird any of us had ever seen—truly a magnificent creature. It stood about three feet tall and had its wings halfway spread out and kind of half-cocked like it was protecting a fresh kill. He looked pretty casual. We hoped he wasn't pissed. Gonz and Steve creeped around either side of the tent then started yelling and waving their arms and the beast took off. We built a Condor fence along the tammy opening behind his tent by tying some string across the gap, and hanging a shirt, towel, and some smelly socks across it. By that time the rain had let up enough for us to go to work. After we finished namming the place in, we decided to move on down stream. When Gonz went to break down his camp, his towel was gone from the fence. Condor #50 had struck again.

Matt Kaplinski