Montana Highway Patrolman Glen Stevens made the first probe up the Madison Valley after the quake. In response to a request for help from Madison County Sheriff Lloyd Brooks in Virginia City, Stevens and Deputy Sheriff “Dutch” Buhl wheeled down to Ennis, arriving at about 2:30 o’clock. The telephone lines were out. It seemed important to warn people farther up the valley of the danger they were in. Some of the folks had already fled. One ranch family was still in bed. There were three groups of sleeping campers. They didn’t argue or waste time. When Stevens suggested they get out, they just left. As Stevens and Buhl proceeded up the valley, they radioed in at frequent intervals that everything seemed normal. They reported rock on the road at various intervals from 26-mile hill on south to the place above Hutchins Bridge, where boulders tumbling from a rock cliff made the road impassable. Cabin camp operator Otto Kirby had got his people out, but there were two house trailers parked farther up, near the river. Stevens warned the occupants, and got them started out. They gassed up at Kirby’s ranch. It was cloudy and dark. At 3:15 o’clock Stevens radioed in that the water was muddy but otherwise seemed OK, and that he planned to cross the bridge and drive up along the river on an old road on the south side. Sheriff Brooks tried to discourage them, shouting via radio—“Don’t do it, you crazy bastards, the dam’s broke, and you’ll get killed too. Come back!” It was this message which, picked up on other radios, and relayed to Helena, sparked CD director Hugh Potter to order the evacuation of Ennis. With Sheriff Brooks’s warning fresh in mind, Stevens says, “Every turn we got off that bench, I thought we were going to meet swimming water.” [Illustration: These huge boulders crashed down onto Cliff Lake Campground killing the Lloyd Strykers of San Mateo, California, without disturbing the food on their campsite table. (U. S. Forest Service)] As they moved up the valley, they got the message that a couple of people had been killed in the campground at Cliff Lake, to the south of the Madison, so when they hit the Raynolds Pass road, they headed that way. They got there at daybreak, about 4:45 A. M. They found that a rock cliff had fallen across the road which ran along the lake, marooning the campers.