7/18-7/22: Backcountry Yellowstone

We got to Yellowstone on the 20th I think. Went to Old Faithful, briefly, then went looking for a campsite for the night. None to be had, so we drove to Timber Camp, a USFS no fee campground, which is about a 20 min drive up a dirt road outside of Jardine, just far enough off the beaten path to afford us a campsite. In fact, an entire campground to ourselves. It was great, save for the bugs. We made enchiladas of the tastiest kind: black beans, artichoke hearts, shrooms and hatch green chili sauce (plus of course, cheese and flour tortillas). We haven't been feeling too well gastrointestinally speaking; there is much speculation about a possible case of giardiasis, but that is impossible to confirm as of yet. Regardless, it didn't slow us down tonight and we ate all seven giant enchiladas. The only other notable at this camp was the fact that someone barricaded the road in two places, effectively shrinking the campground to three sites and providing ample room for their project...a cabin it seems. There is a grid of posts, just cabin sized. Also, there are two skinny trees lashed horizontally to two living trees, making a frame for a tarp shelter. It's a pretty good idea, one which we will certainly steal. We eventually got neighbors, late in the night, probably had our luck at finding a campsite.

In the morning, we drove around to all the nearby campgrounds, hunting the ever elusive campsite. We happened to pull in to Pebble Creek, just as the host was talking to another couple. He motioned for us to wait; we were turning around because we saw the sign behind him..."we really are full." alas, they were not "really" full, there was an unexpected vacancy and we were in luck for once. I don't want to get started on the subject, because I might not get off it for a while, but front country camping in yellowstone is annoying enough to make you not want to return. 

Also, driving anywhere takes twice as long as it should do to the slowing and stopping to look at wildlife. Not to say I didn't enjoy seeing the bears, elk, buffalo, geese, etc., but when there is one mangy buffalo 500 yds away, show some self-control and don't stop - the herd is probably around the corner! Two amusing incidents with tourists and wildlife: one. We were slowed to a stop on a road, looking about for the hold up and I see a horde of, not animals, but people! fleeing some unseen terror. Kids, adults, cameras flying. It is one of my favorite images from the park. Eventually, the buffalo from which they were fleeing crested the hill and crossed the road, but this was truly secondary to the sight of the tourists running as fast as their corpulent bodies could take them, never mind the children that were forced to fend for themselves! Two. We saw a grizzly bear. He was doing bear things, just far enough off to not mind the onlookers and just close enough to afford some great onlooking. He eventually swam the Lamar River and crossed the road, scared into a lope by the park ranger.

Back to our day. We went looking for a backcountry office to pick a hike and get a permit. It took a while to choose a hike because you have to reserve each campsite along the way and only one group is allowed to stay at each site. We had a nice, 35 mile thru-hike picked out when a notice came over the CB indicating that part of our proposed route was closed. There was a carcass with seven grizzlies feeding on it, not far off the trail. Yikes. So like the adventurous hikers that we are, we simply reversed our route to give the grizzlies a few days' head start! This means though that our last day of hiking would be 11 miles through thick grizzly country, a bear management area in fact, where travel is restricted to 9am-7pm, giving the bears free foraging time morning and night. We planned five days, four nights, our longest trip yet and we were quite excited to leave the all the people clogging the front country. As the ranger put it, "you won't see anyone in the back country;  you have to walk there."

Oh - we spent 3.25 each on the best shower yet. Unlimited water, you control the temperature, in short, amazing. We just had to wait for the slushy rain storm to cease so we could fish out our towels and keep them dry on the way into the building.  

For dinner we were going to make pizza, but the recipe was contained on a website on my pad, which no longer had service and has this awesome feature of reloading websites every time you try to view them. No pizza. Instead, we cut up all of our fresh veggies made a salad and a lovely curry. We used a new paste that just required added water, very backpackable, which is exciting.
 
First day, we had to vacate our hard earned campsite so a new set of lucky ones could take it. We moved to the trailhead to pack. This was the first time I packed with my new bag, so I was very excited. We also got a spring scale so we would know for sure how heavy our bags were. Shortly, we were on the trail for a five mile hike to our first campsite. We actually saw a fair number of people, all fishermen, going to fish the Lamar, which we hike up to its headwaters. The ford of the Lamar was a little challenging because the water was cold and the river wide, but nothing we couldn't handle. Then we scurried down the trail because the sky was darkening for the daily four o'clock rain shower.
 
We found our campsite in a clearing by the river, down a fairly steep hill from the trail. We barely had enough time to set up our tent and start a fire when the rain hit. It wasn't exactly a light shower either. We huddled under some trees in our rain jackets, wishing we had bought rain pants as well, the first of many times this sentiment will be echoed. We thought it was clearing off when another storm rolled in from the opposite direction. Very strange. This one had crazy strong winds, too, knocking down two trees just that we watched in our campsite area. Note to self, check for dead trees before pitching the tent. Dinner was gruel and then to bed. 

Day two: slow wake up, short hike to a place where we could river swim/shower without soap. It was nice and deep, but the water was so cold it took a lot of galumphing to get into it. Robert went first with lots of manly grunting. It took me longer because I am delicate. Eventually, we were rinsed and felt much better. I was drying in the sun...a naked noodie...when I saw a nice looking old man walking by! He smiled, I shrugged and smiled back. If he got skunked by the fish, he was certainly rewarded with a show. I thought we were alone. Oh well, the swim was great.

Along this stretch of trail we saw bear prints. It sounds like nothing special now, but at the time, I was pretty excited. In the light you could see the prints stretch out ahead of us one after the other. We don't know the difference between blacks and browns, so I'm not sure which it was, but at the time we decided on brown. He was on the trail for some time so we stepped up our clapping and shouting. I'm fond of: "hey there bear" because it rhymes, but anything will do and they all make you feel like an idiot, calling out and talking to the ether. Calling out is supposed to be more effective than a bear bell, so that's what we went with. 90% of bear attacks are because people surprise bears on the trail, so it is pretty important to make your presence known.

We had a bit of difficulty finding our next campsite because the marker was gone. We got to the next site and had to back track to the place where we had seen a bear system, but no marker and called that our camp. We were practically in the middle of a swamp so the bugs were horrendous, another continuing theme. We decided to cook and all that by the river because the bugs seemed to be better there. Dinner was more gruel. The food on this trip was terrible all around and there wasn't enough of it so we were hungry most of the trip. 

We saw our first bits of wildlife on this day. I was headed to the river from camp at one point and surprised a deer coming up the trail. It was startling for both of us, but the deer didn't run far. We thought it was worthy of a picture, so we turned on the camera momentarily. I don't think I have mentioned it, but the camera batteries were awfully low so we decided to save them for the last day and the possibility of seeing bears. 

The other bit of wildlife we heard more than saw. We put our tent up in a stand of trees, near the middle of the swamp, normally where horses are hobbled and buffalo wallow it seemed judging from the dung. Early in the morning I heard a noise, instinctively I poked Robert in the ribs. The noise repeated regularly and frequently. Finally we spotted the elk. She was across the swamp, looking around and bleeting/honking/barking. We don't know elk sounds, I was just excited to be hearing an elk period, but then we wondered who it was talking to. Robert speculated that it might be calling it's calf, but no calf appeared. Then we thought that perhaps its baby had been eaten by a bear or wolves. Then it was really sad hearing her calling and calling. She kept it up for about twenty minutes before getting far enough away so that we couldn't hear her anymore.

Day three: We got out of that campsite and the bugs as quickly as possible. Our next campsite was fairly close so we knew we didn't have much to do. We knocked it out before lunch, surprising ourselves with how quickly we have covered the ground. The only outstanding bit was the buffalo we found wallowing by the river. As soon as he saw us, he freaked. He started bucking and stamping. We stopped and waited for him to make the next move. We were Sade in a stand of trees, but our trail went right next to him, cut on one side by the river and on the other by a steep hillside. He realized we weren't a threat quickly enough though, put his head down to graze, and eventually laid down to rest. At that point we felt comfortable enough going around him as best we could. He just lazily watched us pass, but we saw a little bit of why there are so many warning signs about buffaloes. Supposedly, more tourists get gored than hurt by anything else in Yellowstone. 

Since we made it to camp so quickly, we decided to go for a swim. The river did a delta sort of meandering thing by our camp so there was plenty to explore. We waded in a bit, but couldn't find a deep enough spot for proper swimming. We cooked lunch on the rocky beach, surprising a very cute sandpiper baby in the process. This lunch was actually palatable - coconut Ginger noodles from a yellow to go box. Then we went exploring again and found a deep spot where we could wade in over our heads. This was great swimming, but still too cold to stay in for long. Then we scouted the trail we would take the next day. It crossed the river at quite a difficult spot, if you ask me. We tried a w other crossing spot nearby and decided on one that we liked a little better. It was deep and fast,  but shorter across with better footholds. I was not looking forward to it. Dinner and chased into the tent by the bugs once again.

Day four: the next day broke cloudy and unfriendly. We made it across the river without incident and filled up water on the far side so our packs were lighter going across. The hike was steady, only short ups and downs, but the terrain began to change fairly drastically. We were now following a tributary of the Lamar up to Mist Creek Pass, which we wouldn't reach until tomorrow. 

We pushed to get to our campsite quickly because it was coldish and threatened rain. Our campsite was up a substantial hill across the now minuscule tributary. We lamented that there wasn't much flat space besides the cooking and bear bag hanging area. Then we took a shortcut and pitched our tent between the bear bag and cooking area. (A mistake I don't plan on repeating.) we ate lunch and then crawled into the tent at about four in the afternoon. Each spot we camped, the bugs got continually worse it seemed. The cold and drizzle only furthered our desire to hole up in the tent.

We laid there for hours, literally. When it was dark again we forced ourselves to cook a better than expected wild rice dinner from packlite foods. Then we went back to sleep! Well...one of us did. As soon as robert begins to breath deeply in sleep, I was convinced a bear was just outside our tent! I slept very very little. 

At about five, the lightning flashed and the thunder cracked. It was even more terrifying than the thought of a bear. The whole tent lit up and the thunder followed close behind, only two, maybe three, miles off. The hardest rain only lasted about fifteen minutes, but it drizzled a good bit more. At last I went to sleep though, convinced a bear wouldn't be curious enough to investigate our tent in the rain. 

Day five: this was the longest day. We awoke as early as we could to be on the trail as soon as we were allowed (9am). The tent floor was an astonishing puddle, but we had to push on and worry about that later; we had eleven miles to cover and only could be on the trail until seven pm. The first part of the hike was up, a lot, because we were cresting a pass into the next valley. This was prime bear territory so we hiked with the camera out and bear spray at the ready. The terrain was unburned, thick forest and we saw lots of bear tracks. My favorite were the muddy ones where a bear had walked through the mud and then had to climb over a log, leaving nice tracks. 

We clapped and shouted our way into the valley, where the trees backed up and prairie abounded. We found a little pool of water, complete with gurgling bubbles and green slime (we must have been back in or close to the caldera) and a mess of ducks with lots of babies too. Near this spot, our trail turned into a game trail. We knew we were actually off trail when our path dead ended in a stream that was too deep to cross with a pack on. We broke out the map and found some way finder points. We had a pretty good idea of where a trail was, not ours per se, but one that would get us home.

 After a few false starts and more game trails leading us astray, we found a decent trail leading in the correct direction. Then Robert found a black spec. It was a bear, a grizzly we are pretty sure. We took this time  to eat lunch to see if bear friend would venture a little closer in his foraging. He did not, but lunch was super tasty! Hummus, triscuiits, olives and provolone. At this point, many things would have tasted good, but the olives were divine. Robert even let me have one of ins olives because he is a sweetheart. 

We kept up a good pace and eventually, long after the feet hurt and the back, we found our way out of the wilderness into a parking area. At one point I stopped short and Robert thought we had surprised a bear, but i just wanted to take a picture of a really cute squirrel/fox thing that still needs to be identified. 

We thought we were done, but our day continued. We needed to get back to our car and find a place to camp. According to Robert, precisely the seventh car picked us up...we needed to hitch hike to get back to our car btw. Two ancient men in long white robes picked us up. As soon as they had made room for us in the back of their purple minivan and we eagerly climbed in. When i asked where they were from they said, "god," and I knew we were in for it. They described their beliefs that I will only summarize for you here by giving you what they called the three keys to heaven: no sex, no materialism and no killing. They were members of a group called the Christian Family, followers of Lightning Amen, supposedly Christ returned in a human form. It only got stranger, but in short they had to give us a ride because they were blessed with this wonderful vehicle and they had to share it. They had liquified everything and were traveling around the country. They were very fond of buffalo and stopped at every opportunity to put down their windows, extend a hand and say,"hey mr. Buffalo, how is your day? Aren't you a big fella?" they were wonderfully cute old men, with perhaps less than ordinary beliefs, but they got us all the way back to our car and we were exceedingly grateful.

Now we just needed showers and food and a place to stay. We headed for a village where we could get food and showers and near the rangers house. (I missed relaying this story. When we realized that we would run into trouble finding a place to stay when we got of the back country, the ranger offered to let us stay in her front yard! We were a little apprehensive, but without other options, we were going to give it a try.) We decided on food first and headed towards the place where you can get hot vegetables...the cafeteria. It was horrible, but we are picky I guess. I had toe-fuu spinach pie that needed a lot of things, some overcooked mixed and frozen veggies and some mashed taters that I dipped in BBQ sauce to make palatable. Robert had prime rib with cold fried potatoes, mixed veggies, a salad (green on top, white iceberg underneath!). We both had a biscuit, which was the highlight of the meal when combined with two butter and two honey packets a piece. 

It was getting late so we decided to skip showering and head to Ranger Sarah's for the night. We called. No answer. We called again, no answer. Curses. We drove by, no lights on. Feeling uncomfortable setting up camp without her blessing,  we had no choice but to start driving. We headed for showers, but they had just closed. On we drove, out of the park, away from everyone. We stopped at multiple, multiple campsites along the way, full, full full. Now it was truly getting late. We opted to start trying for hotels even, all full. One place gave us a giant list of places to call, all full. At that point we decided to head on into Billings, MT, our next stopover. We got there around four thirty and crashed in the first hotel bed of the trip, after a quick shower in our private, luxury shower! 

See, it was a very long day.