Day 14
0 miles
We zeroed today. I basically laid in bed and ate chips. I had made the mistake several days ago of allowing Stargate to take my picture with an axe I found at a campsite-now he won’t stop making memes of me with the axe.
Day 15
0 miles
We had our second zero. I had a lovely morning of breakfast at Persephone bakery then called my mom. In the afternoon we went to the boulder park and just relaxed under the trees for hours, no schedule-we hung out with friend Chris, and Larry Boy. Then in the evening Alex Gaber, the creator of the route, met us and we went to dinner. That was a lot of fun because we were able to talk about the route in detail with him and get to know him a little bit. Then afterwards Alex drove us to the trailhead. We had a few beers together and then cowboy-camped together under the stars, sleeping all
bundled together on ground sheets in our sleeping bags like a slumber party. There is an intimacy to thru-hiking that is very difficult to explain to outsiders. There is something about the physical closeness juxtaposed with the extreme solitude of hiking, the sharing of intense and beautiful experiences, that promotes a comfort and togetherness that few see and that I believe few adults experience in any other area of life outside of their families or relationship. But it’s the thing that hikers often miss when we go off trail.
Day 16
16.6 miles
We started from the Cole Creek trailhead at about 7:45 am, saying goodbye to Larry Boy and Alex. We started up the long, long uphill under impossibly heavy packs with 8.5 days of food. The forest soon gave way to beautiful alpine meadows and the temperature rose. I moved very, very slowly, which was frustrating, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. We climbed higher and higher and eventually came to Marian Lake, which was an incredibly beautiful alpine lake. Just beyond this was the Teton National Park boundary, which we camped just on the other side of (lots of tent neighbors…I guess we weren’t the only ones with that bright idea. You don’t need Park permits if you camp outside the boundary.). We were now on the Teton Crest Trail, and the huge mountains were on every side. Beautiful place to camp. We passed out exhausted in our tents at 9 pm.
Day 17
15.5 miles
We started hiking at 7:30. The Teton Crest Trail first traversed the Death Canyon Shelf-spectacularly beautiful, I’d like to come back here with some delicious camping food, a hammock, and a chair. The trail then went up and over to Sunset Lake and then made its way up to Hurricane Pass. From here we left the Teton Crest Trail and traversed the ridge towards Table Mountain. This section had mind blowing views of all three summits of the Grand Teton range. We looked at the scramble up to Table Mountain and thought it looked a little steep-so we made our way down the talus-filled gully next to it and bushwhacked extremely steeply up to the broad ridge leading up to Table Mountain. This took a long time. Then we got on trails and made our way down along the north fork of Teton Creek. We camped at 7:20 pm. Tomorrow, Stargate plans to set off a little faster-his pace is considerably faster than mine, and he’d like to do more miles per day.
Day 18
17.8 miles
Stargate left a little earlier than us today-we got going around 7:30 am. It was around 4500 feet of gain today, all told. I was slowly hiking up the first mountain, and saw a pack train with maybe 3 men and 5 horses way up the mountain. “That’s funny”, I thought, “they’re stopped. I hope they aren’t concerned that I’ll scare their horses.” But then, they started coming down the mountain, and the first one shouted to me, “hey! Your friend took a shot of our whiskey and took a picture of it with her phone, but she said you’d be too scared to do it!” They wanted to chat with me, asked me lots of questions about our route, our group dynamics-and they let me pet one of the horses, which was a beautiful mustang. They were 3 cowboys from Dubois out scouting for a later mountain goat hunting trip they had been hired to take a group on and they pretty much made my morning with all of their jokes and one-liners. I left them after 20 minutes or so and continued climbing. Later in the day, I had a little cell service, and Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles called and offered me a job! Staff night shift, labor and delivery, starting October 12. I was so happy. Then in the evening Jukebox and I finally descended to Badger creek, and as the sun was setting she said “look! A tent!” It was Stargate! We woke him up with out chatter about the cowboys and the job. We settled down and made dinner by headlamp, then passed out, a little later than usual, 10 pm-well past hiker midnight.
Day 19
16.5 miles
We got moving at 7:35 am this morning. Stargate left about 10 minutes earlier, we’ll see if we end up in the same place again tonight. I climbed slowly up 1200 feet to Dead Horse Pass; Jukebox was waiting for me at the top. We made our way all the way down Bitch Creek (real name!) on Trail 008, then had an early lunch, which was about 3 servings of Lucky Charms and powdered milk. You start to get creative after awhile with backpacking food because the same stuff becomes nauseating after awhile. It was quite hot. We started climbing once again towards Camp Lake in the heat of the day. A horsepacking group passed me- “are you ALONE out here??” That question will never fail to annoy me. We went over Nord Pass, which made me think of Dutch, but I guess that would be “Noord” with two o’s. I lost the trail briefly in the meadows but then found it again quickly. After 2 miles the trail started to go up again very steeply into a forest, and this just killed me for some reason. This section is constantly up and down over the ridges and passes, because we opted not to just stay on the ridge as Alex had drawn it because of concerns about how technical it would be. We’re certainly getting our cardio workout. About halfway into the climb, the trail just completely died in a meadow, no funeral, no obituary. Jukebox was waiting for me and we cast around for awhile before giving up and just bushwhacking through waist-high plants and shrubs for 2 miles. It was exhausting. We made it down to Grizzly Creek at 8:15 pm as the sun was setting and mercifully we found the trail again on the other side of the creek, heading up towards Conant Pass, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. No sight of Stargate-I’m betting he’s camped down at the junction of the 2 trails half a mile behind, we’ll find out tomorrow. Jukebox camped under a pine tree a ways away from me and shouted to me that she could smell my “Alpine Aire” dinner, Smokehouse Chicken. Hopefully the bears don’t notice. I don’t usually eat the pre-prepared backpacking meals, because they are expensive and often not very healthy. But this food carry was so huge that I brought a bunch on this section because they are very light. The sun set and the stars came out one by one. My trekking pole, which holds my tent up on one side, started making some funny noises-then I realized I had stuck it into someone’s tunnel, probably a little gopher or field mouse, and he was biting and clawing at it and the sound was conducting up the metal trekking pole. Sorry, buddy. How rude. I pictured him shaking the pole with both paws and glaring up at me. I moved the pole a few inches to the right out of the hole and heard no more ruckus.
Day 20
20.1 miles
Jukebox got moving a little earlier than me this morning-I left at 7:50 am, a little later than usual, no good reason else than I am tired. The trail went up to Conant Pass, then over to Jackass Pass, then we took a different trail past Hominy Peak down to a dirt road. My right foot started really bothering me around noon-I noticed yesterday that there was an aggravated tendon above my right inner ankle, and it got worse today. Probably all the intense bushwhacking etc. with the heavy pack. We walked up the dirt road and finally into Yellowstone National Park. There were so. Many. People. Such a shock from what it has been, which has been only an occasional cowboy or pack train. We had to Ford two rivers, which was funny because we thought there would be bridges in the national park. We stopped early-ish at 6:45 pm next to Mountain Ash Creek, because my tendon was really acting up. Hopefully it feels better tomorrow.
Day 21
20.7 miles
Got moving at 8:30 this morning. My tendon was initially tight but relaxed within the first few miles and didn’t cause any more trouble. The trails wove through dry meadows with sparse trees-kind of monotonous. At 6 miles in we decided to take the trail through Bechler Canyon to Old Faithful, which is different from Alex’s route which stays in the far west of the park, near the CDT. This proved to be a great idea. Bechler Canyon was beautiful, although we had a few deep fords of the Bechler River-and most excitingly we got to walk by a bunch of “thermal features”-steaming geysers and hot springs in the middle of the forest with neon orange mineral deposits. We got to camp at about 7:45 pm, and there was a large group there with 7 llamas. Probably really expensive to do a trip like that.
Day 22
12 miles
We walked down from the meadow campsite to the Howard Eaton trailhead. There were a lot of small unmarked geysers on the way, which was cool. I got to Old Faithful at 12:30 pm, got a very large ice cream cone, and sent a letter to a friend from the Old Faithful post office, which is tiny. I found Jukebox and we hitchhiked to West Yellowstone with a mother-daughter couple from Minnesota who were great. They wanted to stop by several creeks and rivers along the way and we all relaxed and put our feet in the cold water. Hitchhiking is so often this amazingly fun, unpredictable experience that creates happy memories for all parties involved. We got to West Yellowstone around 5 and surprised Stargate in his motel room (now our motel room)-he wasn’t expecting us until at least tomorrow. Luckily he had gotten a room with 2 beds. We did laundry, then all went out for Mexican food and I got a massive burrito with an entire Chile relleno inside. We passed out at around 10 pm.
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