Part Twenty Three

     July 11 – July 15                            Salmon, ID                                 (Go to Pt 1)
​
From 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. it was a real cowboy show out there but somehow the tent survived and we stayed dry.  From then on I knew that old tent could withstand a serious thrashing and be okay – as long as it got all of its stakes.

The next morning we bashed our way out of the valley jungle up to the logging road and headed south, following muddy ruts through a dark forest.  By early afternoon the logging road had brought us out to Highway 43 where we stopped to eat lunch and examine the now visible topography. 

​After piecing the terrain features together with our map, we were somewhat shocked to see that we had practically walked ourselves right out of the mountains.  We were a good twenty miles east from the very appropriately named Lost Trail Pass, which is where we’d be now had we not lost the trail on the way to the pass. Damit!

Click on Map for a larger image

Following lunch we plugged a few miles up the road until I just stopped; I had no more desire to go further “Hey, Craig” I said “I gotta stop.”  He turned and looked at me and simply nodded.  We cut through the willows bordering the roadside and pitched the tent down along Joseph Creek.

​The next morning we continued on up the road hoping we could catch a ride to the top of the pass but the few vehicles that were on the road that morning were not in a ride sharing mood and we walked most of the way up before a couple of cowboys pulled over and gave us a ride the last few miles to the top.  ​

At Lost Trail Pass Highway 43 intersected with Highway 93 which was our road out to Salmon, Idaho.  We made our final camp at Lost Trail Pass and the next morning we started the hitch-hike out to Salmon, arriving in town sometime mid-afternoon. 

The first thing we did after checking into the motel that afternoon was take a hot, soapy shower using a disinfectant , lice-soap we had picked-up at the drug store on our way in, then we shaved off our beards and went down to the local barber shop to get boot-camp haircuts.  For the past week or so we had both been feeling creepy-crawlers on our scalp and in our hair and subsequently we had walked into Salmon with a pretty good crop of lice.   

The rest of that afternoon and all the next day we did absolutely nothing but hang-out at the café, making chit-chat with the waitresses which was fun having interactions with friendly, interesting humans not named Craig.  

We tried to watch a little news on TV while lounging between meals at the café and apparently Jimmy Carter, our newly elected President, was being interviewed in his new oval-office at the White House, but “news” just suddenly seemed alien to me, I mean, we were so out of touch with current events that the news made no sense – or maybe there just wasn’t all that much sense to be made out of it anyway.

​Well, when we strolled into the café for breakfast on our third morning in town and several of the locals at the counter nodded us a good morning, we realized we were starting to get just a little too comfortable here in Salmon.  Over breakfast Craig mentioned that we’d better start getting our shit together and headed-on out of town before one of us started dating the waitress. ​

After breakfast we collected our gear, walked out to the edge of town and commenced the hitch-hike back up to Lost Trail Pass.  The return trip to the pass took the better part of the day and included an awful lot of “hike” to go along with the few rides we managed to hitch.

Getting dropped off at the pass, I was having those now familiar feelings of anxiety and insecurity that came with venturing off into the unknown.  Ambling down the hill from the highway, we dropped our packs at a level spot in the grass, sat down and stared out to the south along the ridge of the Divide. 

​We sat silent for quite some time, as though the other person wasn’t even there. At that moment I was acutely aware that no one was making us come out here and do this other than ourselves and that rallying motivation was going to be, at times, one of the challenges we’d have to face. Finally, it was a couple of somber hombres that set about pitching the tent and putting together supper that evening.

---

Go to Part 24

---

The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

---