The previous day to the current day(7/15/12)…..
Well, here it is. We went on our backpacking trip and it was
adventurous to say the least. The hike out wasn’t a huge deal except that it
was probably close to 90 degrees and the mosquitos and horse flies were awful (I
still have big nasty red spots from the flies on my arms). We both got pretty
whipped on the hike out so that wasn’t fun but we toughed it out and made it.
4.7 miles from our car to the camp site. One of the only negatives about living
up here is that it’s so dry its really easy to get dehydrated even if you think
you’re drinking enough water you totally aren’t. That’s what happened to me
once we got to camp.
Once we actually made it to our camp we started to set everything
up like our tent and the ever essential hammocks. We filtered some water out of
the river and went to relax in our hammocks. As I finished tying mine to the
trees we had chosen and began to sit in it the rope stretched and what was 2 ½ feet
off the ground became 4 inches off the ground. Then it happened, snap, the
stupid rope broke and I landed right smack on the point of a rock that was
sticking out of the ground, it hurt. We then decided it was time to eat some
dinner so we went to our designated dining facility, a rock underneath some
trees about 115 yards away from our tent (I stepped it off just for giggles).
Our culinary masterpiece consisted of greasy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
and a banana. Jess forced herself to eat all of hers and I only had a couple
bites of mine.
By this time it had begun to cool off considerably so I went and
laid in our tent while Jess went back to her hammock with its ever so reliable
mosquito net. A side effect of dehydration is lack of appetite while yet
another is a pounding headache. I was experiencing both of these at this time.
I made it my personal goal to drink as much water as I could but not to overdo
it. I ended up drinking around 3 liters of water that night. After a while Jess
came and joined me in the tent and we read our scriptures on my phone and we
decided to see if we could stay up and watch some of the stars since it would
be a perfect night for it. Of course Jess fell right asleep while I stayed
awake for a large majority of the night, it was awful. In the little amount of
sleep I got I kept having dreams of female animals, Elk, Bison, Grizzly Bears
and the absolute worse, a Mountain Lion kept peeking into our tent just to look
at us. I have no idea why it completely freaked me out but it did and I didn’t
sleep…..this made for a wonderful day Tuesday.
Sunday night while Jess was
typing up our previous blog post I was busy packing our bags and organizing our
stuff. In a kind of bonehead move I didn’t really think about packing the bags
too efficiently, that was a bad idea. On the hike out Jess’s pack was packed
rather unevenly and it produced some sweet bruises on her hips and shoulders.
So Tuesday morning I completely changed the way her bag was packed and it made
a huge difference to her. So we ate our lovely breakfast and packed up our camp
and hit the trail.
We made really good progress doing about 2 miles in somewhere
around 40 minutes. We took about a 15 minute break then got back up and hit the
trail. After about 200 yards I stopped in the middle of the trail and asked
Jess “what is that in the trail?” she responds “what is it a whistle pig?” (a whistle
pig is a small ground squirrel that is all over the place here). Of course it wasn’t
and I pointed to a specific area on the trail and said “no, THAT!” she responds
“is that a bear?!” Sure enough it was a Black bear that was red in color (they
call them cinnamon black bears). At this point the bear was about 100 yards
away and it totally knew we were there and was watching us very intently. We
started yelling at the bear so we moved off the trail and pushed our way up the
ridgeline to our left. Once we got to the top of the ridge the bear was closer
than it was before, maybe 60 yards now and it was headed our way. Luckily we
had our bear spray and advanced brains on our sides. We were at the top of the
ridge and by means beyond our own the bear decided we weren’t fit to eat. So we
pushed on over the ridge and made our way back to the trailhead.
On the hike up
I was looking ahead on the trail and step on an unsteady rock and twisted my
ankle, hooray. I fought through and we eventually made it back to the
trailhead. Out by our campsite some Park Rangers were working on a wood bridge
that crossed the Hellroaring Creek. They apparently finished the work on the
bridge after we passed them Tuesday morning and headed back to the trailhead as
well. They had a team of horses and mules to carry the equipment and supplies
out. The stock team passed us as we finished our climb and were ½ a mile from
the parking lot. No big deal right…until we got to the parking lot. Apparently
one of the mules got spooked and we don’t know if it kicked or just flat out
ran into our car but either way our passenger side mirror got broke and the passenger
side door has a couple small dents in it at the bottom. Luckily the park
service said they would pay for repairs. It’s not a huge deal but it was just
one more thing to add to the list.
As we got loaded up and headed back to the
main road to go back to Mammoth we saw people standing in the road and sitting
on the roadside having a picnic, this is not normal. As we later found out
there was traffic over 2 miles long backed up in both directions because
someone drove a truck pulling a horse trailer into a ditch…great. From what we
saw all the horses looked fine. After that last obstacle we finally made it
back to Mammoth and showered and napped. It was glorious.
Other than our adventures from Monday and Tuesday not a
whole lot happened other than hanging out with some of our friends and eating
some delicious food. Life is good up here in Yellowstone and despite all the
negatives from our camping trip in hindsight it was a blast and made for a
great story that we’ll be able to tell for years to come. Hope you enjoyed
reading and good luck with your stuff and things.
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| Chester the Chipmunk wanted us to tell you guys hi. (Jess finally got a shot of a REAL chipmunk) |
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