Part Forty One

     August 19th - 21st       Yellowstone National Park                (Go to Pt 1)

​We eventually made it down to Heart Lake then skirted around the north side to make an early camp near the outlet.  It was another calm, pastel evening and after dinner, we all moseyed down to the lakeshore to make a cheery, little campfire.  Murry was cracking some pretty funny jokes and I think the boys were finally having some fun. Too bad.

During the night the temperature dropped from warm to not and early the next morning I awoke to the miserable sound of rain on the tent-fly. I poked my head outside to a cold drizzle misting its way down from dreary, low-hanging clouds. So far, Dave and Murry hadn’t exactly been fireballs out of the tent in the morning but having to face this weather first thing was going to be brutal for everybody.

Well, the first thing to be done on a morning like this was to sleep-in and give the weather another hour to piss itself out.  When, an hour later, it was

Click on the map for a larger image

still pissing outside, we all had to dig deep and pull-on on our long-johns, pack our packs inside the tent, then wiggle into our rain gear so we could go out and stand around in the wet, drippy forest.

​After the packing was mostly done, we gathered together in a pathetic, little circle for breakfast, eating cold granola in lake-water and powdered-milk without a word to say.  For Dave and Murry, the price for coming on this trip had just gone up. 

From Heart Lake, the trail took us northwest up Outlet Creek then crossed the Continental Divide at a low pass. On the far side of the pass we branched off from the trail and went cross-country up into the charred, blow-down chaos of Grouse Creek.  

By now, the drizzle had drizzled itself out and the sun had even managed to break through which helped us focus on crossing the miles of deadfall ahead without the constant distraction of lousy weather. We didn’t get far up into the valley before it narrowed and the travel became very slow; over, on and around fallen timber.  ​

With the heavy packs, Craig and I already knew how slow, tricky, and hazardous this was going to be, but Dave and Murry had yet to find out.  I prayed to our lucky stars that nobody would get injured way the hell out here in all this downed timber. 

​Craig remained in the rear, helping direct Dave and Murry through the maze while I stayed close to the group out front, trying to cypher the easiest path forward through the deadfall confusion.  In the thick of all this, it took an entire hour to go just one mile and I really had to give Dave and Murry credit for negotiating their way through the fallen timber without getting hurt or having a meltdown.

We managed to get ourselves far enough up into the valley to reach an open meadow where we called it a day a little earlier in the afternoon than we should have, but our tired, grimy, little group was worn out from the hours of gymnastic backpacking through the deadfall and everybody was damp and chilled, so we made camp. 

Dinner was a somber affair as we sat quietly in our little pow-wow eating tuna surprise.  Glumness was all around, emanating from the dismal, grey clouds overhead.  We finished our noodles and after a quick rinse of the cookpots, retreated to our own, personal tent space.

The next morning everybody was moving in slow motion and, no surprise, particularly Dave and Murry, who seemed lost in a trance as they mechanically disassembled their camp and painstakingly packed their gear – one, agonizingly slow piece at a time. Craig and I sat on our packs and watched.  ​

Their lackluster mornings aside, I was pretty confident by now in Dave and Murry’s resolve to stay with us, no matter what, and getting through all that deadfall yesterday was proof to that.  Which was good, because we had another long, rugged day out in front.

Our cross-country route continued up the Grouse Creek valley which now opened out to more meadows that bypassed much of the downed timber, until we had to change our bearing direction from southerly to easterly.  Here we got slowed again, first by the deadfall then by miles of ‘uncharted’ forest.

We crossed over a saddle of sorts then descend looking for Passage Creek where we got to wandering about trying to find the right drainage, but with no luck because we had already started up the wrong one.  So, that was costly.

In fact, everything about the day just seemed to be taking forever and even though we put in a grinding effort, it seemed our progress had been slowed by one thing or another all day, including just enough rain to slick-up everything in the forest.

​Dave and Murry cooked supper with the stove just outside their tent door while sitting inside the tent wrapped in sleeping bags as Craig and I sat in the pine needles outside their tent cooking ours.  Nobody had much to say and the gloomy forest certainly wasn’t adding to the gaiety.
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We settled for a small opening in woods to make camp and I couldn’t help but think what a crummy section of the Continental Divide most of this Yellowstone stretch had turned out to be.  Nothing but trees, and not the happy, friendly kind, either.

Demoralizing temperatures and overcast skies persisted the following morning with a dark bruise rolling along the bottom of the clouds that would eventually bring more rain.  As we started off on another, rough day, I had hoped that we would’ve already come across the Two Ocean Plateau trail by now, but instead we continued to work our way through more deadfall and scrubby forest.

At last we came across ‘a trail’ and started following it with hope and all fingers crossed that this was the one we were looking for.  We had to hike it for a while to make sure the bearing and terrain features all worked with the map which they did, so this was our track up and out to Two Ocean Plateau.

The trail was a small slice of heaven after two days of blow-down, bushwhack backpacking, but no sooner did we get comfortable on the trail than the clouds’ dark underbelly released, and it began to rain.  Well, shit.  We stopped to put on our rain gear, then messed around for another fifteen minutes getting our stuff battened down for the rainy afternoon ahead.

Sometime mid-afternoon, as we were crossing over the top of the plateau, Murry got light-headed and wobbly on his feet and had to lie down for a while. The rain had stopped, so at least that wasn’t aggravating the situation, but I was worried that maybe the cumulative effect of the past week had worn him down to a state of complete exhaustion.

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Go to Part 42

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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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