We woke to fog on the lake and frost on grass and logs in open areas, although it was quite a bit warmer in our sheltered spot under trees. Leaving on a trail with very minor changes in elevation, we passed the last thermal area and said good-bye Yellowstone; hello dry-and-dusty trail.
“A strange hobby for someone who liked to be clean”
The trail wasn’t too eventful, although there was always something to admire. Obsidian was mixed with something bright and made the rocks under our feet and beside the trail sparkle. A bright and shiny caramel-colored rock mixed with the obsidian for contrast. The forest, mostly lodgepole pine, also had spruce, looking like Christmas trees. Leaving the National Park, we walked on old roadbed.
The only problem with this section was the lack of water. We had left Summit Lake with a full load of water, except my full load was nearly a liter short since I had to fold the top of my platy to prevent it from leaking.
We met lots of SOBO hikers on the trail: Stephen, Cullen from the UK, Orbit, and Tick Tock, Wiseman, Simple Soul, Susie and Michael from Australia. The trail is an amazing place to meet amazing people from anywhere and everywhere, and I loved the endless invention of trail names.
I was dirty from the dusty trail, but in that notoriously dry section, all water was reserved for drinking. I didn’t like going to bed dirty. RockStar said I had “a strange hobby for someone who liked to be clean.”
We walked with minimal water to find our first water cache, and the trail consisted of old roadbeds followed by Black Canyon Loop Road, a few views of Black Canyon, Taylor Peak, and the peak above Henry's Lake. Flowers were few, but all the more appreciated. We liked the fluffy look of barberry ground cover beneath the trees and met no hikers as most thrus went to Mac's Inn, while we were headed to Targhee Pass.
From our second cache, we loaded the water we’d need until mid-morning the next day, and I used left over water for a quick bath. It felt heavenly. My fingernails came clean, and I put on my clean bra, Yay. It felt so good to be clean. The night before I’d used hand sanitizer three times, but I was just sterilizing dirt and moving it around. I’d even used sanitizer on a bandana to wipe off my dusty feet. Water worked much better. Being clean improved my attitude immensely. I even had a wet bandana around my neck the last four miles, comfortable under my umbrella in the sun as I sang my way down the trail, and RockStar listened to her iPod as we covered the miles.
The first order of the next day was a road walk to the ridge and our second water cache, only 6 ½ miles from the first one. We had used the only two points we could access by road to place water. Loading up for a day and a night, I washed my socks in the leftovers and put soggy wet bandanas in Ziploc bags for the night’s cleanup. Folks in a passing ATV agreed to take our empty water jugs so we didn't have to hang them on the outside of our packs.
Shortly after lunch, we met SOBO hikers Bubbles and Holden. They were surprised to find the reports of waterless walking to be true. We told them where there was supposedly water off trail not far from where we had camped, though we had not checked out the veracity of that source. They’d been counting on waypoints marked for water on Bear Creek maps. Unfortunately, all of those except the one we didn’t check had been dry. I hoped they would find water, but they were young and strong enough to deal with their situation.
In the afternoon we looked down on West Yellowstone and saw smoke rising from a fire 20 miles north of town. RockStar said she liked the views a lot. She just didn't like the climbing up to see them. She may have had difficulty going uphill, but, as usual, I had a hard time keeping up with her on downhills.
We passed some areas with columbine and lupine long past blooming, leaving their signature leaves. Calling it a day at 5:00 with four miles to go in the morning, it seemed early to stop, but RockStar liked to stop when planned, helping me not push rashly past our limits.
Eager to reach the car the next morning, I reveled in carrying only one bottle of water and virtually no food. We rewarded ourselves with brunch in West Yellowstone. I had a Grizzly Bear Omelet with lots of yummy extras added. Then it was off to drive through Yellowstone to get RockStar's car, which we had left at the Heart Lake trailhead. We finally drove back to West Yellowstone and saw elk and buffalo from the road. RockStar thought she saw a wolf. We rarely saw wildlife while hiking, but Yellowstone roads were good for wildlife. Cars move faster than feet, and wildlife doesn’t have time to move away. After dinner in West Yellowstone, I played Grandma buying shirts for my nine grandchildren, since I had a car to put them in.
Yellowstone reservations now used, it was time to set up another section of hiking. Fires had eliminated our plans for Wyoming, so we headed to the site of the first crossing of the Continental Divide by Lewis and Clark at Lemhi Pass to drop my car. Back down the dusty road we hopped into Dillon, one of our favorite Montana towns, for a late lunch, a trip to Safeway to purchase food for dinner, a stop at Starbucks for RockStar and Dairy Queen for me. I’d found a hot fudge sundae every time we went through West Yellowstone, as well as one in Dillon. Lucky me.
Off again, we drove north to Jackson and down the dusty road to Miner Lake. Checking out the nearly three miles of jeep road after Miner Lake Campground toward the CDT, we verified that we could meet there in three days within .2 mile of the trail. We found five other vehicles at the trailhead, but the road definitely demanded high clearance and four-wheel drive. I was glad RockStar had such a car and drove such roads well. That confirmed, it was out to the highway again past Wisdom and up Gibbonsville Road to Big Hole Pass. After all-day driving, we reached the pass at 7:30, set up tents and ate our Safeway dinners of salads, fried chicken, and watermelon.
Big Hole Pass to Lemhi Pass
RockStar had decided to sit out the next three days, a good decision for her. I would begin at 7,050 feet, go up to 7,200 feet, down to 5,700 feet, up to 8,800 feet, and drop to 8,600 feet to camp, a very up and down day.
As the jeep road dropped precipitously into Bradley Gulch, I saw a trail paralleling the road at a much more reasonable grade. There were no signs, but not liking the looks of the extremely steep and rocky road, I chose the trail. Checking my GPS and Guthook, the road was the correct path. But I was feeling perverse, and the trail looked recently made. Maybe maps on electronic aids hadn’t been updated.
It turned out to be a good choice, adding about half a mile but saving what was left of my knees. It appeared to be made solely to avoid the road's steep descent, but signs would have been nice. A SOBO could take a chance on it like I did, but I a NOBO would likely miss it entirely as it connected perpendicularly to the trail in bushes, again without a sign.
Once in Bradley Gulch, I continued downhill beside the creek lined with sweet and tasty Thimbleberries. Eventually I passed a cabin and forded the creek. After that it was uphill. The Wolf book said it climbed, sometimes steeply. Edit: for the first 600 feet up it was very, very steep, and my replacement knee developed an audible click. Pretty certain that wasn’t a good thing, I stopped for lunch, relieved the click didn’t return again.
Beside running water all day, I took short rests to fill a bottle and to mix my dinner. Two cedar waxwing in a tree beside me provided entertainment when my aching knees needed another rest. Four hikers, youngish dudes, Soju, Bambi, Buttercup and Maverick, all guys, passed me NOBO. At the top of a big switchback, a group of 13 mountain bikers stopped, waiting for two more. They had to have come on a different trail than the one I went up. I asked them what they were doing in the middle of nowhere. Laughing, they asked me the same thing.
I ate my dinner at a little creek and pushed on, slowly chewing up elevation. As shadows lengthened, I wondered if I would make it to my stopping point before dark. I did, but not with a lot of time to spare. It was after 8:30 before I had the tent up and the bear rope ready. After clean up, I hung my food bag with the last rays of light and walked back to my tent by headlamp.
The next day was my reward for all the climbing of the day before. With water f
rom the little creek flowing from a spring, whose banks were lined with pink monkey flower, I had a short climb to the other side of the Divide, where the trail entered a high bowl. My trail stayed high, just below cliffs and talus slopes, as I traversed the bowl. The peaks around me were amazing; the views across the bowl and the high meadows equally so. I could even see the broad valley of Big Hole proper.
Passing a few lakes and high tarns on the other side of the bowl, I went up and over the Divide again to another high valley with Squaw Mountain dead ahead. Through the notch between Squaw Mountain and the Divide, yet another vista lay before me, this time revealing Lower Slag-a-Melt Lake and peaks still splotched with snow. Upper Slag-a-Melt Lake was tucked below a high peak with snow patches on its side. Lena Lake was only a mile distant from Upper Slag-a-Melt for crows, but it was a long three miles around a mountain for me. It rained lightly half the way there, but the view walking into Lena Lake was magnificent: jagged peaks all in a row with snow in the gullies.
One of the hikers I met that day was John, a NOBO in his 50s. He told me he was trying for a record. He’d already done both the AT and the PCT that year, each in 60-something days, and he planned to finish the CDT in about 78 days. Yes, some hikers on these trails are near superhuman.
Leaving Lena Lake in the morning, I headed down the trail, which turned into up trail on a very beautiful, high-country day, with every stream lined with pink monkey flower, yellow daisies and a variety of other flowers. I went over three high points in the day, the last at 9,200 feet. Each ridge or Divide revealed new views of ruggedly grand peaks, as well as the distant Big Hole Valley. The peaks, some with snow lingering, usually had rocky cliffs on the northwest side and were smooth and barren on the southeast side.
The meadows were green, and the streams coursing down the mountains were lovely as I passed many lakes and tarns. Photo opportunities provided excuses for many short rests. A few elephant heads still bloomed, and one last bunch of pink heather. Bright-yellow alpine St John's wort grew thickly on stream banks along with monkey flower on a joyfully dazzling day. In the talus before the last climb, four furry marmots shrilled at me and posed for pictures.
The afternoon was a very long downhill past Rock Island Lakes all the way to Miner Creek to meet RockStar. She brought Subways for dinner. Charging my cell phone and Steripen with her car charger, we decided to add another day to our plan to Lemhi Pass. The three days from Big Hole Pass to Miner Creek had required walking late. RockStar couldn’t have covered the distance I did in three days, and we would both be happier if we didn't push so hard to Lemhi Pass.
We started out with a thousand-foot climb walking through pine forests and a few scattered firs in the cool morning with distant views of the Divide and a few flowers. Tattu Jo and All Good passed us headed NOBO. We chatted with them and took pictures, one of the advantages of hopping around on different parts of the trail.
Flat tent space was at a premium that night, only one log separating our tents. I took my Ziploc bath standing naked on a one-foot square of grass not far from my tent. The rushing creek made soothing white noise as we relaxed well before hiker midnight.
After a good night's sleep, I didn’t feel so trail-worn, and knowing we had a short day, we took a leisurely lunch with a bit of shut-eye. In the afternoon we crossed paths with several NOBOs: Thermometer, a Korean hiker, Sketchy, Stop and Go, Veg, Hiker Box, and Zorro. Zorro, from Barcelona, Spain, wasn’t feeling well and hoped to see a Doc in Anaconda or Hamilton, both quite a number of miles ahead. Thru hikers are made of very stout stuff and keep on walking, whatever the need.
The last of the climb was hard on RockStar. I insisted we go to Lake Janke, another high-mountain gem a half mile and 100-feet up from the trail. Flowers appeared again: daisies, paintbrush, lupine, monkey flower and some unusual white monkshood. We found a place to camp on a bench above the lake at the edge of a meadow filled with blue bog gentian. The sunset over the lake from my tent was worth the climb and shaded the hills and water a delicate pink. Rain sounded on the tents as we snuggled in for sleep.
Leaving Janke Lake, we met Early Bird and Squirrel, young NOBOs who had already come more distance that morning than we would go in the whole day. Ah, youth. They both carried small stuffed animals. Squirrel's was deep in his pack as he was afraid of losing it. Early bird's was an owl tucked in her backpack pocket with beak and eyes sticking out. She said, “Alfred keeps a watch on things as we walk.”
Very cute.
Crossing a ridge, we descended a little, circled a bowl above a small lake and crested the Divide again before lunchtime. Then it was up and down with nice views of the Divide looking north, a peek at Big Hole, a look at the Salmon Valley, and ahead to Goldstone Mountain. We also looked down on Darkhorse and Cowbone Lakes, former routes of the CDT with very steep climbs back up to the Divide, glad we were not on them.
There was no water at Goldstone Pass. Our choices were to go down nearly half a mile to Goldstone Lake or a quarter of a mile on the west side of the Divide to a spring, the start of Pratt Creek. We set up tents, hung our food and walked to the creek, finding it a challenge to get water from a spreading, shallow flow through marshy ground. After dinner we watched the pink sunset as the birds became quiet, and stillness descended with the dark.
As I delivered RockStar’s food bag to her tent in the morning, I told her the day was clear and beautiful, but I could see the valley was all fogged in. Before we finished packing, the fog engulfed us, too. Icy-cold fog accompanied us with a strong and steady 20-30 mile-an-hour wind. Brr. Even in my gloves, my hands were so cold they could hardly function.
The trail went steeply straight up Goldstone Mountain. We should have had great views, but all we saw were a billion water droplets of fog, though we could tell we were on the edge of steep drop-offs. Later on, the sun broke through, providing us views of Swift Lake and the Salmon River Valley, but we were cold all morning.
We met Fixit and Third Monty again. Fixit might have been 76-years- old, but he and Third Monty were thru hikers making at least 20 mile days, far more than I could have done in that terrain even if I’d been ten-years younger than my 75. Yay for 70+ hikers. Especially for Fix-it.
Going so slowly through the cold and windy fog over Goldstone, we were afraid we would be hiking in the dark. But after lunch, we zoomed on gentle trail. At least we did our interpretation of a zoom.
After passing Popeye and Olive, a cute couple from Belgium headed NOBO, we followed Wolf and Ley maps to Patty Creek. Most thru hikers wouldn’t go a mile off trail for water. But we couldn’t do 20+ mile days and Patty Creek met our needs. Finding a nice flowing stream through a high-meadow cow pasture, we avoided the cow pies and set up our tents.
We knew we were going to be cold in the open meadow and probably have condensation but glad to have water, we settled in before sunset. The morning turned out not to be a little cold with a little condensation. It was 27 degrees, condensation was frozen solid, as was the top inch of my platypus. I couldn't even unzip the top to pour water until sun heated it.
My knee objected to so many days without a day off. Between its complaining, the cold, and my neck and shoulder hurting, I didn’t sleep well. Packing up in the cold was the pits. However, on the trail once again, we found it easy to take the shallow gulley from the turn in the road up the short distance to catch the CDT, short barberry ground cover easy to traverse.
Twigg (NOBO) told us there was a fire north of us, which had closed the trail, and other NOBO hikers were road walking around it. He’d found an alternate way on the map to stay on a trail as long as possible. Though we had been hoping to run into Illusive (another 70+ NOBO), he was now probably road walking past us, and we would miss him.
After looking at Beaver Head Mountains and other ranges farther away, we could see all the way down to Lemhi Pass, a steep descent to which both of my knees strenuously objected. Reaching the pass, we found an annual memorial run/walk of the Shoshone Tribe from Tendoy to Lemhi Pass
, memorializing the expulsion of the Shoshone. They told us there would be a big celebration in Salmon, Idaho, with lots of dancing and food and all were welcome, including us. Unfortunately we were headed for Dillon on the east side of the Divide.
We found my car all safe and sound at Lemhi Pass and were happy to take off packs and hiking shoes, ready for a break. We read all the Sacajawea signs and stood astride the water flowing in a tiny stream, which was the source of the Missouri River. In Dillon, we dried tents, took showers, did laundry, and ate a steak dinner, as well as kibitzing with a local woman about ultra-light backpacking.
Waking up in beds was wonderful. After breakfast, we set out in my car to Jackson and up the Miner Creek Road to Miner Creek Campground. There we had to leave my non-four-wheel drive vehicle and walk up the jeep road toward RockStar's car, which we’d left six days earlier. After walking 1.5 miles we got lucky. A couple driving to the upper trailhead gave the two lady hikers a lift for the last mile or so, and we told them about long-distance hiking. Climbing into RockStar's car, we drove back to my car. Setting up for hikes and retrieving cars were part of the drill to make the CDT work for us, even if it meant an extra hike.
Montana is a big state. We drove as far as Helena that day and the next to Great Falls for another shot at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, stopped in Cutbank, the closest lodging we could find to Glacier National Park and Saint Mary, which left us a 75-mile drive before a 15-mile hike the next day.
Piegan Pass
On the road at 5:00, we left RockStar's car at Saint Mary and drove mine to Jackson Glacier Overlook. Since we couldn’t do the Wyoming section, which had been closed by fire, we decided to do the Piegan Pass section in Glacier as a day hike. RockStar booked a cabin at Swift Current and a shuttle back to Saint Mary the following day. Sweet.
Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76 Page 45