Yellowstone Hike - Day 3

Day 3 was loooooong! If you would have told me that I would begin my day on the Bechler River Trail and end it at home with a long, hot shower; I'm certain I would have laughed in your face. Strange enough, that's what happened.

Try to picture a hammock with a blue cocoon inside it strung between those 2 trees. I'm still amazed Clair slept that way each night.

 I had it in my head that Day 3 was going to hurt a whole lot worse than Day 1, but strangely enough it didn't. I still have a hard time believing it too, after seeing the state of my feet when it was all done. I'll spare you the blistery details! I do have my brothers to thank for their help. They each took a couple things from my pack to lighten my load. I'm sure it made all the difference.

The two river crossings from the day before was all it took to fully wake up for the day. So COLD! Even though Clair and I got an earlier start than James and Logan, they easily caught up to us by the time we reached the second crossing. I knew their younger, fitter legs would be able to make it to our last campsite ahead of my pace, and they were also entertaining a return trip to Mr. Bubbles, so Clair and I split up from them for most of the day.

Considering my great love for squirrels I guess I shouldn't be terribly surprised that a pair of them are the only ground animals we saw the entire time. We did however see two birds of prey, probably a golden eagle and a hawk. I like to picture the squirrels as those birds' meals. :)

We may not have seen any bears or such, but we did see the signs they left behind.

I wanted to take the opportunity to photograph all the different varieties of wildflowers on the return hike, and ask my brother Eric to help me name them all, but unfortunately my camera quit working. I was happy to get the last few shots that I did, and hopefully I can add some photos later on from the batch James took.

I was able to keep a steady pace, and I had much better control over my breathing on the way back. I enjoyed some great conversation with Clair, and by the time we had reached our campsite from Day 1, we were both thinking the same thing. We had made great time up until then and knew we could probably hike all the way out and skip our last night on the trail. I think the thought of avoiding another day of blistered feet in boots, eating a hot meal, and sleeping on a soft surface in a warm home was all the motivation I needed to keep up the pace.

By the time we reached what was supposed to be our last campsite, we took a break and were about to leave a note for James and Logan when they showed up. They decided to hike out too, and took a break while we got started again.

As we made our way back to the Lone Star Geyser, we saw a large group of people hanging out and knew the geyser was about to go off. We couldn't have had better timing. Clair and I anxiously watched the trail hoping James and Logan would arrive in time before it went off. They made it just in time, and it was a perfect ending to our backpacking trip. It's an impressive geyser, and I enjoyed it more than Old Faithful. After we hiked the rest of the way to trail head, we all drove out of the park via the West Entrance and stopped in West Yellowstone for the popular post backpacking meal of burgers and fries.

I ended the day and started the next with that long, hot shower and hobbled to bed. As nice as it was to wake up warm and comfortable in the morning, I still missed the trail and that incredible forest smell.

My body will heal, I'll forget the hellish first day, get new hiking boots that are kind to my feet, and look forward to next year's hike. Who's in?

Yellowstone Hike - Day 2

My body was really angry with me on the morning of Day 2. My face felt/looked like a jet-puff marshmallow, and my air mattress had sprung a leak, and I basically had no cushion between my body and the hard ground. Did I mention it was cold!? I checked the weather ahead of time and was prepared for cold nights (upper 30s, low 40s), but even with warm gear I was still really cold.

Breakfast lifted my spirits considerably. James is a perfect companion to hike with. He keeps things light and funny, and watching him interact with Logan was very entertaining. He's like the younger brother James never had. Our entertainment was watching the two of them prepare their elaborate breakfast of pancakes. I guess they forgot the non-stick skillet and spatula, because their first flap-jack attempt looked more like scrambled eggs. They resorted to option 2, which was to boil their batter in Ziploc bags. Mmmm.... Yeah, I was more than happy to eat my instant oatmeal.

We had another long day of hiking ahead of us, with a planned detour, but even though we got packed up later than we wanted, we were able to squeeze everything in. After hiking up to an elevation over 8,000 feet the day before, I was more than happy to have our hike drop us down a couple hundred feet in elevation.

Day 2 was definitely the day I was praising President Grant, congress, anyone that had anything to do with preserving and making it possible for people like myself to enjoy such a beautiful part of our country. There were times where I'd look around at the vastness surrounding me, and it felt like my body was full of helium. It made me think back to the drive that D, the boys, and I made from AK through Canada. There were stretches of mountains so breathtaking that all you wanted was to bottle that feeling that seeing those views gave you. That big tour bus full of all my favorite people, those were the people I thought of and wanted to share Day 2 with...and it was just getting started!

Twister Falls

 

 

We only saw one sign (Twister) naming the falls along our trail, so Clair and I started making up names for them. Clair named this one Bro Hug Falls. The water shooting to one side made him think of a one-armed hug guys give each other.

I never told anyone, but lately I've been getting a little vertigo on steep areas or big drop-off sections of hikes that I've been going on. I'm happy to report I didn't once feel like I'd plummet to my death while getting closer looks at the falls on the trail.

 

 

 

There's a little side trail off Bechler that leads to a thermal area, and I'll just say this instead of trying to find enough adjectives to describe the awesomeness that greets you at its end....it's a place that should be on every one's bucket list...and they call it Mr. Bubbles.  

 

 

I am not a huge water lover, especially when horseflies are anywhere near the shore, but I've yet to encounter a more perfect water spot than Mr. B. You don't have to be a swimmer to enjoy it, it's shallow enough to kneel or sit in and, you.  will.  never.  want.  to.  get.  out.  It's nature's hot tub, but so much better!

 

 

It was the saddest part of the hike to leave Mr. Bubbles, but we still had to make it to our campsite before dark, so off we headed.  

 

 

I think we called this one Cake Layers?



  





River crossing #1.



River crossing #2...wider, deeper, faster. These crossings were no joke. I'd be frightened to see what they were like a couple weeks earlier. The trekking poles I borrowed from Carrie and Bobby literally saved my bacon.

Brothers with long legs make it look so much easier!

After our second river crossing, we made it to our camp a few minutes later. We were all pretty wiped from our long day, and after dinner we all called it a night, knowing that Day 3 would be our longest (and what we thought) our most difficult day.

Yellowstone Hike - Day 1

Clair and I were both up with the sun and packed up early and headed into Yellowstone National Park. We stopped at a Backcountry Office in Grant Village to obtain our backcountry permit and watched a delightful backcountry video. We made our way to the Lone Star Trailhead which is just south of Kepler Cascades near the Old Faithful area of the park.

James and his brother-in-law, Logan, met us at the trailhead and we started our hike! The first couple miles of the hike felt as though we were cheating. The trail was wide and paved, which was for the benefit of visitors making their way to the Lone Star Geyser. We learned upon arriving to the area of the geyser, that it only goes off every three hours. Since we had just missed the last firing, we kept moving on. There were some interesting thermal features as we gradually moved away from the geyser area, and a couple miles further we reached the site which we had reserved for the third night of our trip.

It's not very clear on my map, but I'm pretty sure our trail changed from the Lone Star Trail to the Shoshone Lake Trail a/k/a the Continental Divide Trail before we reached the trail we spent most of our time on, the Bechler River Trail. We had about 10.5 miles to our first campsite, 9D4. For nearly half that I was in hell! I grossly underestimated how difficult the first day would be, thinking that day 3 was the day to be scared of. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know ahead of time, otherwise I may have chickened out.

I'll be honest, after I got to our campsite and dropped my pack, I was certain that there was no way I was up to another 2 days of anything remotely similar to what I had just gone through. For several hours I had myself convinced that I'd be returning to the trailhead the following day. After regaining my ability to breathe normally and think somewhat more rationally, I decided that it was wrong to torture myself all day just to give up before getting to the really cool stuff on the trail.

It wasn't long after dinner, cleanup and hoisting our packs up the bear pole that it began to rain, so we all retreated to James' & Logan's tent for a few hands of Pinochle before we were all too tired to play anymore and headed to bed. Clair was extra brave and slept in the hammock we borrowed from Joy. He was in an area pretty well protected from the rain, but had a good scare when he thought a bear was trampling through camp around 4 a.m. Turns out the noise was from other hikers or park rangers checking our permit. Whoever it was, I'm pretty certain one of them went by Gary. Thanks for the scare Gary!