Part Thirty Eight

     August 14th                           West Yellowstone                        (Go to Pt 1)
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Back in West Yellowstone we still had grocery shopping to do and I thought about running my saddle-worn shorts through the laundry but then thought ‘why bother’.  We got a motel room where we could stage our packing then sat down to review the maps for Yellowstone.

The first thing we had to do was figure out how to get to Old Faithful.  Earlier in the summer my mother had floated the idea of my younger brother, Dave, coming out and hiking a stretch of the Divide with me and Craig.  
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At the time, both Dave and I thought that would be a swell thing to do and picked Yellowstone as a good stretch for some outdoor, brotherly bonding time.  Now, in just two days, Dave and his friend, Murry, would be standing in the Old Faithful parking lot looking for us.

As we studied the maps spread out on the floor in the motel, we didn’t find  

any marked routes or trails leading across from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful, so we traced out a cross-country route over a long, forested plateau to get there.  The next morning, we took a gravel road heading south out of town that led us up to the alien woods of this massive plateau.

Eventually parting with the road, we ventured out into some of the most featureless, indistinct terrain we’d hiked through yet and immediately the map and compass became our only eyes for crossing this tree-quilled, whale-back of a plateau. As we trampled off into the woods, I got a sense that this forest was oddly different from other pine forests we’d been in and not in an inviting way.

The trees of this forest appeared to be losing a protracted struggle of chronic dehydration. The forest itself seemed more brownish than green; thin, spindly and relatively open with every tree limb haggard and brittle, dropping branches, twigs and needles in stacks. It was like these trees had been zombienized.
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The elevation was slowly gaining but it was impossible tell, everything appeared flat with zero terrain features and all of it eerily the same.  Same trees, same branches on the ground, same crunch underfoot, mile after mile.  

At some point we hiked into the blackened, skeletal remains of a forest fire, turning the already lifeless forest into a dead maze of charcoal sticks. Everything just felt strange up on this plateau and I didn’t much like it. All day I was anxious about our bearing until late in the afternoon when we finally came out, right on the mark, to Buffalo Meadows.

We crossed the dried-out meadows looking for cold water which we eventually found lulling its way through the reeds near the outlet and made camp.  Tomorrow we would hike out to Old Faithful and, supposedly, meet up with Dave and Murry.

Ah yes, Dave and Murry.  In a land before cell phones, booking on-line, googling a destination or GPS, this is how Dave, barely 16 years old, and Murry, still only 15, planned on getting to Yellowstone:  

From St. Louis they were going to ride to Denver in the cargo bed of a pick-up truck driven by a ‘fairly’ trustworthy guy that I used to work with but who was nearly 12 years their senior and someone they barely knew.

If the MO, KS and CO State Highway Patrol didn’t take notice of these truck-bed stowaways and send them back home then, Matt (the friend), was going to drop them off at the Denver, inner-city bus station before heading off to the strip clubs.

After arriving in the glare and chaos of the bus station and purchasing tickets, these two, naïve, lily-white boys from the mid-west, looking all of about 12 years old, in shorts and hiking boots, with their brand-new, Kelty backpacks all packed-up and ready for the trail, would attempt to look as inconspicuous as possible (not possible) amongst the confusion of weary bus travelers, vagrants, prostitutes, and hustlers as they waited for a bus to take them to Jackson Hole, WY.

Twelve hours and 6 stops later they would arrive in Jackson Hole where they would have to find another bus to take them on to the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone.  Then, provided everything thus far had come off without a hitch, they would de-bus in the Old Faithful parking lot where Craig and I would magically appear from out of the woods and we would all be on our merry way.
So, that was their plan and that’s what they did; these two, never-been-on-the-road-alone juveniles went traveling for 3 days, via marginal means, with no possible way for anyone to contact them and, of course, with no ‘plan B’ if something messed-up.
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I have no idea where their parents were during all of this, but I guess it was typical of suburban parenting in the ‘70s to turn a couple of sheltered minors out on the road to fend for themselves with some chocolate-chip cookies and a note to call home. (I’m still amazed those two weren’t abducted by UFOs - or something.)

That night in Buffalo Meadows I started to think about how many ways this plan could go haywire.  What were we supposed to do if they didn’t show up?  How long were we willing to wait around for them? And if they did show up what were we going to do with them, then?  

​Craig and I were on a hard schedule and we needed to move fast through Yellowstone, but how many miles a day would these two greensticks be able to do?  Not nearly enough, that I knew for sure.  I went to sleep wondering why this had all sounded like such a great idea a few weeks ago.

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Go to Part 39

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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.

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