UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Originally I planned to spend July of 2024 on a
family camping trip in Wyoming. Christy
hadn’t been “out west” since 2020, and we were looking forward to taking our
son, Jackson, out there for the first time.
He was 18 months old in July, so still small enough that I could carry
him on hikes. We planned to do some car
camping and dayhiking, as well as a couple of relatively easy backpacking
trips.
Unfortunately,
circumstances forced us to postpone our trip.
First, Christy had knee replacement surgery in late March. At the time, she thought that she would be
fully recovered by July. However, by
early June that seemed unlikely. Also,
we took Jackson on his first backpacking trip in May. It was just a simple overnight trip in Panthertown Valley.
The campsite I picked was only a mile in, but Christy couldn’t carry
much. Ultimately
I had to make two trips – one with Christy while carrying Jackson, and another
to haul the gear and food and everything else.
That
was our plan for backpacking in Wyoming, too, except that our destinations
would be more ambitious. We would hike
in and basecamp, but the places that I wanted to go were generally 5-6 miles
from the trailhead. That meant that I
would do 15-18 miles on the first and last day.
It also meant that Christy would have to entertain Jackson while I made
a full round trip to get the gear. Could
we pull it off? I thought so, but the honest truth is that it would have been a lot of work. For
that matter, our little overnight trip had been a lot of work. Would it be worth it? Vacation is supposed to be fun and maybe a
little relaxing. And while I really
wanted to take Jackson to Wyoming, did it really matter at 18 months? He loves hiking, but honestly
he would be just as happy walking in the woods behind our house.
After
a long talk, we decided to wait a year.
Christy is having her other knee replaced in November, but she should be
fully recovered by July, 2025. That would make the trip a lot more
manageable.
We
were already committed to taking a trip to Iowa in mid-July to visit Jackson’s
birth parents. I expressed some interest
in continuing on from Iowa to Wyoming solo. Christy, a 2-time wife of the year nominee,
agreed to let me go. That meant that I
would have about 2 weeks for a serious adventure.
I
decided to do one monster backpacking trip in the
Teton and Washakie Wilderness Areas southeast of Yellowstone National
Park. I had first
explored that area in July, 2022 and fell in
love with it. It is a vast wilderness
though, so I had only scratched the surface on that first trip. There were several places that I wanted to
return to, and many more that I wanted to explore. Finally, there were a few places that I had
planned to visit on that first trip that fell by the wayside. I wanted to see Ferry Lake and the waterfalls
downstream, and I hoped to make another attempt at climbing Younts Peak. Also, I was eager to return to the headwaters
of the North Fork Buffalo, as there are some waterfalls there that I missed on
my first visit. Including those areas in
my trip was a top priority. Ultimately I planned the following route:
Day
1 – Boulder Basin Trailhead (S Fork Work Center) to Needle Creek.
Day
2 – Needle Creek to S Fork Shoshone River at Bliss Meadows.
Day
3 – Layover. Dayhike
from Bliss Meadows to Pierpont Pass and Hidden Basin.
Day
4 – Bliss Meadows to alpine lake at the head of Crescent Creek.
Day
5 - Off trail along the Continental Divide to an alpine lake in the Bliss Creek
headwaters.
Day
6 – Off trail along the Continental Divide Lake to Lost Creek and on to Ferry
Lake.
Day
7 – Layover. Explore waterfalls
downstream from Ferry Lake.
Day
8 - Off trail
along the Continental Divide north towards Yellowstone Point.
Day
9 - Off trail
along the Continental Divide back south to the North Fork Buffalo headwaters.
Day
10 – Off trail to the Marston Pass Trail and on to the headwaters of the South
Fork of the Yellowstone River.
Day
11 – AM climb of Younts Peak. Afternoon
hike to Marston Pass and down to Marston Creek.
Day
12 – Marston Creek Trail to the S Fork Shoshone River. Hike downstream as far as possible.
Day
13 – S Fork Shoshone River Trail back to the trailhead.
That
was the plan. Of course, what I actually did was pretty different.
The
South Fork of the Shoshone River would be new territory, as would the Continental
Divide north of Ferry Lake. Hiking the
divide from Lost Creek to Brooks Lake had been the highlight of my previous
trip. I was looking forward to
revisiting some of that stretch as well.
I
invited several friends, but for some reason, most people aren’t enthusiastic
about carrying 13 days worth of food and gear on a
single backpacking trip. Ultimately my
friend David decided to join me for the first 3 days of the trip, but he would
head back from there. I’d be solo from
that point on.
My
training for this trip mainly consisted of carrying Jackson up and down
mountains in Western North Carolina. It
was effective. A moderately easy dayhike with Jackson on my back was still harder than any
part of my 13 day backpacking trip, believe it or not.
This
trip wouldn’t have been possible without my wife’s homemade, dehydrated
meals. I brought 12 dinners, which
weighed a little over 4 pounds.
Breakfast consisted of 2 packets of instant oatmeal and instant coffee for each morning.
The only real challenge, as always, was lunch and snacks. My staple was one packet of trail butter and
a piece of pita bread for each day. Other snacks consisted of jerky, granola
bars, dried fruit, trail mix, and of course one bag of Fritos. I did a much better job planning my lunches
and snacks than usual, as I finished the trip with only a few granola bars left
over.
My
trip featured some complicated logistics.
I was on a tight budget, so I needed to get from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to
Wyoming and then back home to western NC as cheaply as possible. My best option was to rent a car at the Cedar Rapids airport and drive all the way to Cody,
Wyoming and on to the trailhead. I would
drive back to Cedar Rapids afterwards, and then fly home from there. The rental car would cost $630, and I found a
flight home that was $99, plus $35 to check a bag. The whole trip would cost less than $800, not
counting gas and food.
We
enjoyed our trip to Iowa. We spent most
of a week in a cabin at Palisades-Kepler State
Park. The cabin was small
and beds were horribly uncomfortable, but it was a good place to spend time
with Jackson’s birth parents, Tuesday and Cam, and Tuesday’s children. I did a little hiking in the park, but the
trails weren’t great for hiking with Jackson, and the mosquitoes were
horrific. Instead, we spent several days
at Lake MacBride State Park, which features trails, a beach, and paddleboard
and kayak rentals. The heat and humidity
were terrible for the first few days, but then a cold front came through with
violent storms. For the last 3 days, we
enjoyed cool crisp days with high temperatures in the 70’s.
Christy
dropped me off at the Cedar Rapids airport a bit
before noon on Thursday, July 18th.
I drove all the way to Wall, South Dakota that afternoon. I made it to a scenic, convenient, and free
place to car camp in the Buffalo Gap National
Grassland just north of Badlands National Park.
I arrived at dusk, made dinner, and crawled into the tent. I left the fly off the tent, because it was pretty warm, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and there was
less than a 10% chance of rain.
That
was almost a terrible mistake. I woke after midnight to a lightning show on the southern
horizon. I checked the radar on my phone
and saw that it was just an isolated storm way down in northwest Nebraska. It wasn’t a threat, so I enjoyed the show for
a few minutes before I went back to sleep.
I
woke a couple of hours later to more lightning, this
time off to the west. I checked the
radar again. This storm was a little
closer, but it was moving south. There
wasn’t anything to worry about. I went
back to sleep.
I
woke an hour later with lightning flashing all around me. The sky was completely overcast, and the
radar showed that I was completely surrounded by
storms. I may have grumbled a bit while
I retrieved the tent fly from the car. I
put it on and secured the tent a few minutes before the world nearly
ended. It was a violent storm, with
nearly constant lightning and heavy rain.
I rode it out in the tent because I didn’t have much choice at that
point. I did regret that I didn’t just
get in the car, which would have been safer.
Oh, and did I mention that my tent was brand new? It was my first night in it. What a maiden voyage.
I
survived the night and woke to a beautiful
morning. I packed up quickly and began
the long drive through the Black Hills and on to Cody, Wyoming. I ran a few last minute
errands there. I picked up sunglasses at
the Dollar Tree for $1.50, but ultimately I didn’t
need them. From there I drove another
hour south to the Deer Creek Campground.
I met David there and spent the evening catching up with him. Deer Creek is a small, primitive campground
that is now free. It was pretty quiet there, with pleasant scenery. There were some mosquitoes, but they weren’t
terrible. David shared salmon for
dinner, and I also finished the leftovers from the meal that I had started the
previous night.
I
managed to pack most of my gear that evening, as we were hoping to get a fairly early start on Saturday morning to beat the
heat. I weighed my pack the next morning
using David’s luggage scale. It came out
at 44 pounds, which seemed too good to be true.
That included a little over a quart of water, 20 ounces of fuel, bear
spray, and even my camp chair. I was,
and still am, a little skeptical. My
trip the previous year was one day shorter, and my pack was 51 pounds with
mostly the same gear. That was weighed with a different scale.
Plus, I didn’t even bring the chair (one pound) last year. I felt like did a
better job planning my lunches and snacks this time, but how could I have
dropped 8 pounds? Did I cut back too far
on the food? My guess is that the scale
was a little off, but honestly the pack never felt overly heavy during the
hike.
Back to Wyoming
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Please remember to Leave No Trace!