WELCOME TO RED'S, WHERE THE TRAIL BOSS IS OLD SCHOOL : `GOOD OLD BOY' TANNER SUCCEEDS AT MARRYING PAST AND PRESENT.

Byline: Brett Pauly Outdoors Editor

``He's one of the good old boys, an original.''

Spend as little as five minutes with pack-station operator Bob Tanner and you realize the comment from an admirer can't be far off the mark.

From his Western shirt and white cowboy hat to the fashion faux pas that is his red suspenders and belt to his ``bum wheel'' - an old football injury from his Navy days, Tanner fairly defines horse packing, stock animals, freight and the West itself. Heck, the dictionary even suggests his last name means ``one that tans hides.''

Tanner is the proprietor of Red's Meadow Pack Station and Resort, nestled in its namesake meadow in Madera County on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He owns and operate the cabins, store and restaurant here and at neighboring Agnew Meadows, and also manages the area's campgrounds for the U.S. Forest Service. The resort - situated just west of Mammoth Lakes and adjacent to Devils Postpile National Monument - opened in 1934; Tanner took charge in 1960, and has been a fixture in the Eastern Sierra every since.

He is one of those endearing, unassuming, amiable characters who makes it tough to believe he has any enemies. Certainly there must be detractors, but good luck finding them; nobody should have to work that hard.

``He's a true, loyal friend to all his packers, and he tries to get along with all of them. He tries to appease them all,'' said Laura Storm, a backcountry cook in Tanner's employ.

If you really want to get to know Tanner, sit with him in the back room of his cafe, when the morning coffee and work assignments are being doled out to the pack crew. ``That's where it's all about,'' said Stacy Corless, an associate curator for the Mammoth Museum who recently interviewed Tanner for the museum and a local newspaper. She was promised a photo for her archives of him fishing in Red's Meadow as a boy.

The image of Tanner connotes a link to the recent past, as evidenced by the very nature of his facility.

``Red's Meadow is a place that does not change,'' Corless said. ``It's rustic and traditional and gives you a sense of life in one of the earliest summer resorts in the area. There are no condos down and there never will be. He works to preserve that feeling.''

It's no easy thing, no inexpensive endeavor trying to salvage the past while making it viable - and profitable - in the present. Tanner believes packers worth their weight in freight must have a mighty passion for the backcountry, because, as much as any recreational business - and probably more so - this is a labor of love.

``Nobody gets rich, including the owner,'' Tanner said. ``It's a challenge. It's a throwback in life to hundreds of years ago. Same system, you can't make it any different. Maybe you have a different material for rope or a pack cover, but the system of putting stuff on the animal is still very much the same as it was. They've changed the pack saddles a little bit. They packed heavier in the 1800s, when they were freighting with animals. But it's still the same system. We know what they did and we know how they did it, and we could duplicate it if that's really what we wanted to do.''

But to ensure the health and longevity of the stock, their loads now are lighter for recreational purposes than back in the days when ``freighting'' by animal was big money and operators were paid by the pound.

Today it's still a business, but the job is to provide fun for customers. And Tanner is king when it comes to packing clients into the backcountry.

Though he'll be ``70 at the end of this packing season,'' little escapes him when coordinating trips.

``I don't know how he keeps it all straight,'' Storm said. ``You can get there in the morning and he can have 10 pack trips going out. He knows when he gets in the coffee shop that morning where every person is going, and what every person is doing. Not only that, he knows the name of each horse and where each horse is going.'' All 85 head.

``There have been some great ones,'' Tanner said of his stable, many or which have appeared in the Rose Parade. ``Spider. He was really quick, an Appaloosa. Very athletic. He kept you awake. He was really alert. And Butch. He took blind people on pack trips back in the '60s. He wouldn't do anything wrong; he took care of the rider. He was foolproof.''

Indeed, it's the stock that is the stable commodity here. ``Good help is the biggest challenge,'' Tanner explained. ``You can buy good horses; good help is just hard to come by.''

And if there's no one to shoe a horse, Tanner does the chore himself. The old man has a sharp eye and can tell from 50 paces the breed of a horse. ``You can tell what bloodline it is to a certain extent,'' said Tanner, a 1951 graduate of Redlands University who resides in Bishop during the off-season.

One outsider who understands Tanner and his love affair with the High Sierra is Bill Bramlette, deputy supervisor of the Inyo National Forest, the agency that issues use permits for Tanner's pack station and resort. The two have been working acquaintances for more than 20 years.

``He's a very easy guy to get to know. Very civil,'' Bramlette said. ``Even though we often may not see the issue the same, the important thing is that we've always maintained a good, healthy, respectful relationship, and that says a lot for the guy.''

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PHOTO (color) Bob Tanner, a fixture at his Red's Meadow Pack Station and Resort, has strived to keep the past alive and viable in the Eastern Sierra.

Brett Pauly/Staff Photographer