Upper Geyser Basin

I have to admit that I was a little intimidated by the huge crowds of tourists in Yellowstone. Once you learned the rhythm of the place it wasn’t so bad though. Beyond the heart of the Geyser Basins and outside a couple miles of any trailhead, you really didn’t see hardly anyone. Even around the Old Faithful Village, if you wanted to go into the shops or get something to eat, you just timed going with the projected eruptions of Old Faithful and the shops and restaurants would be close to empty. After getting my permits though, retrieving my package from the Post Office, doing quick resupply, and visiting my neighbors Jonathan, Amy, and Julian for a couple hours, I made a beeline back into the backcountry. Seven miles later, I had a nice quiet campsite all to myself with no one else in sight.

It was a treat seeing my neighbors Jonathan, Julian, and Amy

The Yellowstone that the CDT runs through is surprisingly free of any animals. Besides a few squirrels, chipmunks, and a few birds, I didn’t really see anything. There were, however, clouds of mosquitoes. The Geyser Basin is basically a big swamp filled with geothermally warmed soupy water. Perfect mosquito habitat. Where there weren’t mosquitoes, the gap was filled by biting flies which were worse. Mosquitoes would at least respond to a healthy coating of DEET. The flies only responded to a quick swat. The problem was that there seemed to be a bottomless supply of biting flies. The only defence seemed to be to keep moving.  Often this was tricky as large stretches of the trail passed through mucky bogs that seemed to want to suck the shoes off your feet. On the  positive side, I was starting to meet up with some trail family that I had last seen in New Mexico. I met up with Armstrong, Bobber, Mighty Mouse, and Montana. It was really great catching up and they gave me some great beta on a thermal stream before my next camp at Beaver Creek above Heart Lake. The thermal stream was a stream with water that was running at about 102F and right next to the trail. I probably spend an hour in there floating as the rapids worked over my shoulders and washed all my clothes (didn’t bother stripping).

Soaking in a thermal stream

Doing laundry on hot cycle.

At Beaver Creek Campsite, I met back up with the posse and in the morning said my final goodbyes. Meredith, Southie, and Chip’n were headed to the Teton Crest Trail and Wilder was bolting south to Lander and then back home to be with his girlfriend. We didn’t expect to see each other again.

More easy walking south of Yellowstone

The next few days were quiet and I spent most of the time by myself hardly seeing anyone except Toy Story on a few occasions. The most interesting place I visited was Two Ocean where a stream split in two with the left fork going to the Atlantic Ocean and the right fork winding its way to the Pacific.

Two Oceans campsite

Water to the left fork goes to the Atlantic Ocean and water to the right fork winds it’s way to the Pacific

One of these mornings, I had to do my daily constitutional. Now my typical pattern is that I find a section of non switchback trail that is easy to find again (in this case a forest service road) then go a couple hundred feet off trail behind some cover. In this case, I had to climb down and over two gullies and over a bunch of deadfall to find my private spot behind a pine tree. There I was, pants around my ankles, in the process of filling my little cat hole when I hear voices in the distance getting steadily louder. These are the first human voices that I’ve heard in almost a day. They voices just got louder and louder and they were whinging about how hard the trail was to follow. Somehow, in the middle of all that wilderness, this middle aged section hiker couple had gotten lost off the forest service road and found my poop spot in the middle of bloody nowhere. Seriously, what is the probability of this happening. They literally passed withing 5 feet on the other side of the tree I was squatting behind then turned around and looked right at me. I pointed to the forest service road that was clearly visible from that spot and told them that was the trail they were looking for. The dude seemed to want to have a conversation and kept turning around and opening and closing his mouth. I mean, Cheezits Lites man, can I have some privacy? They finally wandered off in the direction of the trail and I could finish my business. On the plus side, I was down to using only 4 squares of TP a day. Afterwards, I felt a little sorry for them. If they could get lost on a forest service road, their CDT was going to be long and frustrating.

How do you get lost off of this trail?

Now that’s a fancy pit toilet (Brook’s Lake)

My main objective during this time was to make it to Brooks Lake Lodge which is where I sent my next resupply box. The problem was, when I got there, my box was missing. My UPS tracking number said that it had been delivered but it was not there. Now, it turns out that there was a fire in the building housing the packages and that some of the packages were water damaged but the manager in charge was convinced that no packages were actually destroyed. In any event, whether destroyed or taken, the 4 days of food that I needed to get to Pinedale was not there and my schedule did not allow me to burn a day hitching into town to resupply. My only choice was to raid the hiker box. To augment what little food I had in my bag (there was a day and a half food left over as I was moving faster than planned) the hiker box had a pile of PowerBar Protein Bars, a partial box of very stale Cheezits, a bag of Goldfish of unknown age, and some ramen packets. Smooth just happened to come in while I was sorting through the food and I was able to barter fixing his leaky water filter for a Clif Bar and a Granola Bar, score!!!!!

Four days of snacks abandoned in hiker box

Over the next few days I discovered why someone had abandoned that big pile of PowerBar Protein Bars. Between overdosing on stale cheesy salty junk food and eating several of these abandoned protein bars each day, it was a bit of a digestive disaster. Lets just say that I was going through more than 4 sheets of TP a day and felt like my insides were about to explode at any second.

Weather moving in followed by hail

Boomers coming this way

While hiking over Gunsight Pass, I met Bartender and a couple of other hikers who told me about a hiker wedding that was going to happen later that day in the Green River Campground and that if you were Hiker Trash, you were invited. Woohooo! That was just where I was headed then. Not long before the turnoff, Chip’n had showed up. It turned out that they had blitzed the Teton Crest Trail and had gotten a ride back to the CDT from a Trail Angel. Meredith, and Southie were not too far behind him. A lot of other folks had also heard about this wedding and were coming in from all over. Pinestake, Blackfoot, and Cow Bell showed up who I had last seen in New Mexico as was Twig and Relentless. Wilder also somehow showed up so the posse was back together again. It was a crazy, joyous reunion without a protein bar in sight. The couple, Trail Wife and Copenhagen, were awesome and the ceremony touching. It was another bit of trail magic outside of the realm of normal life. At sunset I packed up and hiked into the night and into the Northern Wind River Range to make up time.

“Hiker Trash” wedding reception

Thru Hiker wedding at Green River Campground