Weather on the Continental Divide Trail

Disclaimer: NOBO Bias

Weather conditions are pretty important to any hike, long or short, section or thru. Weather on the CDT can be especially problematic. The high elevations, general lack of tree cover and remoteness of the trail makes many weather events more challenging than they would otherwise be, and they will "be"........meaning that you are definitely going to catch some weather at one point or another (read: many points), it's pretty much guaranteed.

You have to handle whatever Mother Nature is gonna throw at you, and you need to be able to handle it with what's on your back and what's in your brain. Be ready for anything; sometimes you're expecting a curveball and get chin music instead.

SNOWPACK

You're gonna hit snow in Colorado. There's not a whole lot you can do about it. If you think you can't handle it, you can flip-flop up to the border and southbound from there if Montana had a low snow year.  You can also put on some neoprene socks, toss a few extra jars of Nutella in your food bag and saddle up. If there's one skill everybody should learn from thruhiking, it's to correctly assess personal risk-benefit tradeoffs and follow through with the consequent decision. Which means make up your own mind about stuff and then see it through, no matter what anybody else thinks about it. It's your hike, it's your vacation, do what you want.

Having said all that, there are many difficulties associated with trying to thruhike in snowpack. Mileage will suffer. Feet will be gross. Pictures will be overexposed. Sunglasses will be lost. You will wander around off-trail, sometimes unintentionally. You'll also run into obstacles that will take some extra finagling to handle.

Self Arrest- You should have the ability to slow your roll in snowy, alpine environments. I have always used my trekking poles as self-arrest/climbing assist devices. If you are going to use your trekking poles in a mountaineering-esque situation, remove the snow-baskets from the tips, all they do is limit the pole's penetration. If you use an ice axe, use it. It does you no good attached to your backpack (Although it does make you look like a professional grade hiker) and it can be tricky to anticipate when you are going to start slipping down a steep, snowy incline.

Traction Control- Many people use snowshoes or crampons, depending on conditions. Many hikers swore by their snowshoes in 2015. I hated mine, and just postholed through the snowy sections. I also hit the snow much later in the season than most hikers did. Crampons could be in order depending on conditions. I usually try to hit steep climbs/passes in the afternoon, as the snow will be softer and the ensuing climb and descent will be less technical.

Foot Care This is one of the trickiest parts of hiking in the snow. Your feet are basically cold and wet all day. I find that wearing neoprene socks in my normal trail runners works the best (I do size up in the trail runners) for keeping your feet warm. As for dry, I take several breaks a day to air my feet out, but there's really no way to fight the wetness. I used Goretex footwear and Goretex gaitors for about half the snow I faced on the CDT, I found that the waterproofness was not compromised under normal use. It became compromised when I stepped into rivers or had to take my gaitors off due to overheating. Once the waterproofness becomes compromised, the shoe takes longer to dry than a nonwaterproof version would. I went back to my neoprene socks and normal trail runners happily.

I developed deep, painful cracks on the soles of my feet during the snowy sections, and found that carrying a small tub of O'Keefe's handcream helped replenish the oils that the constant dampness robs from you.

Sun Protection You can really go snowblind quickly and snowburns hurt worse than regular sunburn for some reason. I use longsleeves rather than sunscreen and am constantly checking to make sure I haven't lost my sunglasses. If you do lose your sunglasses, you can make a pair of Inuit snow goggles out of duct tape or something.

Firemaking I make small cooking fires on the majority of my trips. I find them extremely useful in snowpack environments. Not only do they provide a secondary source of heat for drying and being cozy, they lend the campsite a welcoming, civilized air and make you feel like you have a handle on things. There's techniques for having open fires in the backcountry safely, I've written about them in a separate blog post that I'll link to here when I'm done. In a nutshell, make them small and put them hour several hours before you leave the area.

RIVER CROSSINGS

This section won't read smoothly because of this next piece of advice and I don't care. It comes first because it's important.

Unbuckle your hipbelt and sternum strap when crossing rivers. Loosen your backpack straps as well. If you fall in with your belt still buckled, your pack will act as a buoy and try to float. The hipbelt will cantilever your center of gravity so that you will be facedown in the water, struggling to remove your straps. It has happened to me and isn't exactly a bundle of laughs. In addition to this, if you were to be swept downstream, you could hit a strainer and have webbing or fabric hook onto the obstacle. It's better to be able to just let the pack float away than be attached to it underwater. Back to the rest of the post.

In 2015, river crossings were a big challenge for Northbounders on the CDT, due to the uncharacteristic amount of snowpack and fast melting conditions. My main technique for dealing with crossings is largely comprised of avoiding them altogether when possible. Many hikers took Jonathan Ley's "low" routes through the San Juans to avoid hairy conditions at elevation, but at the same time subjecting themselves to more frequent and dangerous fords. The high routes were not easy, but I find that I always prefer the drier route, especially during spring thaws. I've been in far more dangerous situations in water than I ever have on mountains. At least you won't drown up there.

If you must cross a river or stream, don't get all attached to the trail. Sure it's comforting to know where you are, but the intersection between trail and water is not necessarily the best place to cross the stream. For instance, if the trail is doubletrack, off road vehicles can really wallow out a crossing. I always scout a few hundred feet upstream and downstream of the crossing if the water level is dangerous. You would be surprised at some of the problems I've avoided by simply looking for alternatives. As a rule of thumb, the further upstream you go, the narrow the bed gets and you get a higher chance of being able to rockhop or shimmy across a log to the opposite bank. You will also run into more whitewater. Downstream, the bank can widen out and give you a much more relaxed crossing, but it's typically a deeper trek.

If a river crossing still looks like bad news, check your watch. Snowmelt flow hits an apex at the hottest part of the day and takes a big hit during the cool night. That means that if a crossing looks bad at 5pm, set up camp and wait till 6 the next morning, the crossing might well look alot easier then.

I usually swim rivers that are too high or dangerous looking to wade across. Remember the classic PC game Oregon Trail? You can either ford or caulk the wagons and float when you hit a river. I take several precautions when I cross water that may be deep, fast moving or both.

1. Scout out the route.
2. Move upstream of my intended landing point so that I can just ferry across without going too far down the current.
3. Waterproof all essential items (sleeping bag, clothing, firestarter etc. Seriously, trashbag-nation, not just a catchy blog name.) Empty waterbottles and screw cap back on to add to buoyancy.
4. Remove pack. I typically hold onto it with one hand and let it bob next to me as I do my thing. Because I know that I might have to let the pack go in an emergency, typically I put a waterproof firestarter on my person along with a knife.
5. Remove clothing. Nothing keeps you warm when it's saturated, unless it's neoprene. I try to keep my clothes dry so the only thing my body has to dry off is skin and once I reach the other side, I can just redress and get moving to warm up again.
6. Get after her. A stick is a good thing to have, but by far the most important part of swimming a river or creek is keeping your toes above the water level. If you drag your feet along the bottom of the bed, you drastically improve your chances of entrapment, a situation that drastically improves your chances of drowning or suffering severe injury. Keep those little piggies sticking out of the water.

Your MMV. Again, do what you think is safe for you.

LIGHTNING

Lightning was a real hassle in Colorado in 2015. Several hikers in the state actually died, and I personally know a few thruhikers who had an uncomfortably close encounter early in the season.

This is one of those times that constantly paying attention to CDT will pay off. Try to notice the weather before it hits you. Anticipation is really the best way to deal with electrical situations.

Having said that, there's really nothing you can do if an electrical storm pops up and catches you above treeline. My advice is to bail out or take cover. One nice thing about the CDT is that there are plenty of "bad weather" routes and usually there's a way to descend to safety, safely.

Personally I have gotten caught in a few lightning storms on the divide itself. Faced with bad bailout options, I just put my head down, made my peace with the world and crossed my fingers that if I did get hit, I'd at least develop a few superpowers. When the strikes got really close, I assumed the postion (balls of feet, heels lifted, trekking poles thrown away). until stuff petered off, then I just boogied northbound hoping that a moving target was harder for Zeus to hit. Dunno what I did to piss that guy off, but I'm sorry regardless.

RAIN/PRECIP

In my hiking experience, rain is the quickest and easiest way to get hypothermic. The water on your skin transfers heat away from your body way faster than air alone does, and dealing effectively with wet conditions, especially at high elevations, can be extremely crucial to survival. I get more nervous about rain than any other obstacle on this list, because I've been hypothermic several times in my life and the number 1 cause has been cold, wet rain. Being 12,000 plus feet in the air only complicates things.

Technique is going to trump gear as the most effective method in dealing with situations like this. If you know a storm is coming, consider pitching your shelter before the weather hits and consider avoiding exposed areas for the duration of the storm.

Generally, I hike on until my daily mileage quota has been reached or I start to get hungry/cranky. I am however, on constant high alert for hypothermia symptoms (My body seems to get hypothermic easier and quicker as I've aged, dunno why). I use a number of tests, but my go-to metric is the hand opening/closing thing.  The reason I'm so careful about this is that being hypothermic tends to mess with your head, and suddenly the quality of your decisions takes a dive. Anticipation and prevention is so much easier to deal with then trying to fix a problem after it occurs. If it starts taking me 1-2 minutes to button a button, I know I'm in trouble and have to warm up immediately.

I also use synthetic insulation (sleeping bag/jacket) because of superior warmth in wet conditions. Many hikers have no trouble keeping more delicate materials (down) dry, I find that I do. Your MMV. I have my clothing in a drysack and my sleeping bag in some sort of waterproof stuffsack or trashbag.

Gearwise, my number one tip for rain is to buy an umbrella. I began using cheap travel umbrellas to see if it would fit into my backpacking system. It made rain so much more bearable that I swore on the first day that I'd never so much as dayhike without one again. I have since switched to a nicer model from Euroschirm. You stay so much drier and, by default, so much warmer with a canopy above you. I cannot believe it took me 6  years to finally listen to everyone and get one. Of course, the main issue with umbrellas is that they are bad in the wind. This is true. If you are going to have the umbrella deployed, keep the canopy pointing into the wind. Not rocket science.

In addition to the umbrella, I used a durable rainjacket and, for the first time ever, rainpants. I used both enough times that I couldn't recommend anyone hiking without them. The CDT isn't the AT, it is not going to be 70 degrees and humid every day. The CDT isn't the PCT.  It's cold and wet and I would not step foot on the this trail without rainpants and a good rainjacket. I used Frogg Togg pants for most of the trail, switched over to a slighter more durable option later on.

Insulation-Fleece is much better insulation for wet conditions. Even synthetic puffies are not as effective in situations where you know you'll be getting wet. Fleece is hydrophobic, which means it naturally doesn't want to get saturated and even if it does, all you really have to do is wring it out once and you're back in business. Out of Helena, MT, I knew there was going to be a few days of cold rain and I picked up a light fleece layer in town before leaving to bolster my synthetic puffy. I was patting myself on the back by the end of day 2, as I huddled in a outhouse trying to warm up while a wintery mix slushed down on the roof. Wore every layer I had and could have used a few more.

WIND

High winds were a factor a few times on my CDT hike. In the section above this one, I said that my personal number 1 cause of hypothermia was cold rain. My number 2 cause is wind. I've gotten hypothermic from high winds alone 2 times to date. Once was in 60 degree weather on the PCT, once in winter in Wyoming.

Windchill is often dismissed by people because it's not the actual thermometer reading of temperature. This is true. Windchill is actually the effective thermometer reading, meaning that it's basically how cold you're going to be. Not feel. Be. Windchill is basically based on the ability of your body to retain heat. If it's 40 degrees outside and you are soaking wet, you're in trouble. Even though the temperature is not extremely low, the ability of your body to retain heat has been compromised. Also, if you ever had a place without AC, and managed to get an oscillating fan going, you know how effective a breeze can be in cooling your body down.

High winds are pretty easy to deal with however. Dress in windproof/waterproof clothing, top to bottom....one of the times I got hypothermic was because I had a windproof layer on my torso and shorts on my legs. By the time I got my core temperature back to normal, I felt like a gigantic idiot. I basically gambled with my life in order to save the hassle of changing clothes, in addition to playing into this straight-up-stupid theme of thruhikers hiking in shorts at all times that people get into.

In addition to the good old fashioned "shell" layer, it's worthwhile to note that puffy insulation is generally a poor choice in windy environments. To understand why, you have to understand loft and fill power. Basically, the poofier the jacket, the warmer it is.If you don't let the poof "poof", it won't be warm. So, say you squeeze the poof out of a jacket or sleeping bag by, for instance, sitting on it. It won't be warm. This is why people use quilts instead of sleeping bags, because the insulation that you crush with your body weight is completely useless to thermal efficiency.

High winds  put pressure on insulated jackets, effectively squeezing the poof out of the jacket and making it colder, even when they are layered under a shell. Fleece is less susceptible to the squishing. It still needs to be covered with a windproof layer to be effective though.

If the wind is strong enough to blow you over, I suggest unfolding your tarp or shelter and tying it around your shoulders. Then stretch both arms out, grab some material with each hand and see if you can't "sky-blaze" some of the trail away. Cuben Fiber used to be used in sailboats, so you know if can corral some wind. Walking is for suckers anyway, right?

FIRE
What are you, stupid?  You think you're fireproof? Fuck. Reroute, with as many burger stops on the way as possible.

I hit a bunch of smoke from several large forest fires in 2015. Pretty scary couple of days, I was hiking near G-Funk, a triple crowner from Austria. We split up for a day or so and neither of us had a working phone, and imagine our mutual surprise when one day we separately woke up and were faced with a thickening haze of smoke. I only had Jonathan Ley's maps, which do not show much of the surrounding area, so bailout options were a big question mark. I couldn't check where the smoke was coming from, and didn't know what direction was the best one to avoid problems. Thankfully, I'd spent the last 2 years driving and hiking around the part of Montana I was hiking through, and knew that a large interstate was some 15 XC miles west of my position, and a paved road was ~10 miles east. I caught up with Gfunk later that day. He had a GPS so we finalized bailout options, but couldn't figure out where the smoke was coming from.

Anyway, there was no immediate danger to us, but if there had been, my plan was to go East to the divide for 3 reasons,

1. The wind was blowing towards the south east, meaning that the smoke was coming from the northwest. Where there's smoke there's fire I guess.
2. There's less stuff to burn on the divide
3. It seemed less smoky up there, improving air quality and visibility
4. To signal any passing aircraft NOT including UFO's (I'd rather burn on my feet than get probed on my knees)

I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not, I was just using common sense.  Again, your MMV. I do know that having a good, "zoomed out" idea of your position at all times is a good idea.

Forest fires were a big deal in 2015, on both the CDT and the PCT. I managed to get lucky enough to have a clear path through freshly burned sections of trail (4 days of rain+snow immediately before I hit the danger areas), but if you don't get so lucky, you can either try to wait it out or just reroute. You're not fireproof.

Henry Shires Tarptent: Contrail vs Protrail

Was researching the new Protrail from Henry Shires and had a hard time finding a good solid review on it.

I've used a Contrail for the past 5 years (and 5k miles!). Love the shelter, like most other HSTT, it's light, bug-proof, easy to pitch and has ample space inside, but I've always had a few issues with it

Pooling area

1. In hard rain, the water slides down the slope of the tent and tends to pool directly above the sleeper's feet. You can avoid this problem if you use a small pole in the rear and/or really cinch the shelter down tight, but siliconized nylon stretches when it is wet and a summer thunderstorm does, oddly enough, tend to dampen the area directly beneath it. Which means that unless you want to leave the shelter of your Contrail to retighten the pitch at some point during the storm, you deal with the waterballoon syndrome. While it is easy enough to just do a leg raise to empty out your tent reservoir, I've gotten my sleeping bag wet many, many times over the course of my ownership due to this practice.

This trekking pole would work way better if it was the other way around. 

2. When pitching the Contrail with a trekking pole, the "peak" does not accommodate for the support pole placed tip-to-the ground (see image). This creates two issues. Issue one is that if for some reason the tip of your trekking pole comes out of the small, reinforced grommet in the peak, it's likely to stab a hole straight through the fragile material. There are several holes in the top of my tarptent because of this, eventually I just found various items to serve as "caps" for the sharp carbide of my Leki-tips.

Issue two is that the knob of a trekking pole handle is much more likely to slip out on the ground than a tip would be. I've had to repitch my Contrail quite a few times in less than ideal conditions because the main supporting pole slid out from under the tent. 

3. The Contrail comes with two carbon-fiber rear struts. While the support is useful and the weight gain negligible, these struts do limit the packability/squish-factor of the Contrail. 

4. Finally, the rear vent is small and not very effective in helping the condensation issues that plague all single-wall shelters. 

To me, these problems were small grievances indeed to pay in order to use a shelter as light, durable and spacious as the Contrail. That is, until I found out that Henry Shires had released a new tent entirely. 

Where did my pool go?

The Tarptent Protrail offers quite a few advantages over its predecessor, most notably in its steep ridge design that actually sheds precipitation. 

Had a chance to test this out yesterday during a fairly solid rainstorm in Shenandoah National Park. Worked like a charm. 

The Protrail also addresses my other issues with the Contrail.

-There is now a silnylon "cup" in the peak of the tent, allowing for a trekking pole to serve as a support tip-down (where it belongs, dammit). 

-No more struts. The Protrail relies on the user's trekking poles (or optional additional poles) to support the shelter. The packability has increased dramatically as a result. 

-The rear vent is not only large, it also comes equipped with a storm flap and the main walls of the tent also form a small overhang, sheltering the window from vertical rain (that storm flap is for when shit gets horizontal).

In addition to this, the tent also seems to be made of a different silnylon than my vintage-2009 Contrail. The material seems nicer. 

In short, big improvement. The Protrail is a more rain-worthy update to the Contrail. As for all around stormworthiness, I cannot speak on it at this juncture. I'd imagine that the high walls of the Protrail would be a disadvantage in windy conditions, but am willing to bet that the support system of two poles make up for the difference.

The only issue I have with the Protrail at this point in time that that there's no way to stake out the center of the vestibule. On my old Contrail, there is a loop on the bottom seam of the vestibule, dead center...I usually stake it out to create a "beak" of sorts and to get more coverage and ventilation out of the deal.

Nothing that some dental floss and a needle can't fix though. 

UPDATE POST-CDT: I used this shelter for about half the Continental Divide Trail .  Loved it, it sheds precipitation much better than the Contrail, it's extremely well made and even a little roomier and lighter than its predecessor.

Downsides: The steep sides of the tent do indeed make it difficult to pitch in high wind, but Henry Shires has put two guy out points per side of the shelter instead of the one side that the Contrail provided so once you do get the thing set up it shouldn't collapse as long as you've set it up well.

Ventilation is much better with this shelter as well. Would have used it for the entire thru-hike but ended up switching to a freestanding tent for the snowy sections  and a tarp for majority of the trail.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park 2: This Time It's Personal

This trip was a spur of the moment trek out to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Started off pretty relaxed, brought my friend and co-worker Nick Solovieff (of internet fame) out for his first night of backpacking ever, and couldn’t have asked for better conditions. The grass was green, the weather was warm and the Noisy Banditos (a notorious coyote gang) were blessedly absent in the night.

Got a bit of a late start, but seeing as daylight tends to linger past 10pm in NODAK summers, it wasn’t a problem. Nick and I started hiking south on the Achenbach trail at the Oxbow Overlook. We made a few hours progress and got to work setting up our campsite. Was nice hiking with someone again, as I had spent all winter doing my trips alone….having someone to talk with always makes the miles go by faster. Anyway, we hiked down to a nice little campsite, sheltered on one side by pine trees and on the other 3 by rock formations and bluffs.

As an aside, when I pick a campsite and I still have some light left, I usually drop my pack and scout ahead a little ways down the trail, a habit I have developed after years of sleeping in the “wrong” spots. Story time: when I was thru-hiking the PCT, I spent a long day in Northern California hiking through a relatively dry section of trail. I was trying to make up some time due to a setback a few days previous, and kept skipping water sources because I didn’t want to take any sidetracks. With no on-trail sources for miles, I found myself on a high ridge fairly late at night, looking thirstily down at some beautiful alpine lakes. I eyeballed the distance, calculated an hypothetical time for a recon mission(15-20 minutes, if you must know) , and headed down some talus slopes towards some much needed H20.

This simple little cross-country jaunt turned out to be slightly more time consuming and difficult than I had anticipated, and by the time I got back on track an hour and a half later, the sun had been done set and I was pretty dogged. So I kept hiking. And hiking. and hiking, all the while looking for a suitable place to go to sleep. I was on a section of dynamited trail that was immediately walled to the west by a sharp granite ridge and immediately walled to the east by a 75 foot drop, so basically the options I had for campsites where the trail itself and nothing. I really dislike camping on trail for a few reasons.

1. It inconveniences other hikers who want to hike later or earlier than you want to sleep. Having been on the receiving end of a trail-pitched tent in both the PM and the AM, I usually do my best to avoid it.

2. Animals often use trails as their “highways”, and even though I wasn’t particularly worried about a bear or cougar attack, I have lost my fair share of sleep due to various animals stumbling (sometime literally) across my campsites in the middle of the goddamn night.

So, I decided to hike on until I found a spot. A few miles later it was getting dark and I was falling asleep at the wheel, so to speak, so I chose the lesser of two evils, took a sharp right turn and started scrambling/climbing up the ridge. Once I got on top, I found an acceptable sleeping situation underneath a bristlecone pine that had forced its way into the rocky top of the ridge. The spot beneath the tree was probably about 7 feet long by 4 feet wide and surrounded by sharp edged rocks and/or empty space. Needless to say it was a tight squeeze for my tarp tent, but I managed to get in there just the same. Unfortunately, the spot that had looked fairly level to my tired eyes was far from it and I spent an interesting night tossing and turning. Still, managed to get some sleep and headed out the next morning, walked less than a mile down trail and ran into 2 things. Trail magic, in the form of soda cans and water jugs and a beautiful little campsite right on the side of the trail.

So to bring the story full circle, I always scout ahead a little ways just in case there’s a better situation just around the bend. In the case of The Teddy Roosevelt National Park Trip, there was no such situation, and so I got back to our campsite, started a fire and introduced yet another young backpacker to the art of burning dried buffalo poop instead of wood.

Weird Huh?

Morning came and went, and Nick and I went our separate ways….I onto a very interesting little backpacking trip, and he back to his battle-wagon.

Kept going on the Achenbach Trail, passing through some really nice prairie and heading up a few decent climbs. Came down through some more weird little formations and crossed a super muddy creekbed that was only dry enough to not have running water, but still damp enough to suck your shoes off. Kept going past a flotsom-riddled floodplain and the first crossing of the Missouri River.

Here it comes

Got across, and kept on walking. By the time I crossed the river a second time, the sun had been cooking me for some time and I was running low on water, so I hung out at a car-camping site on the opposite bank for an hour or so before I kept pushing through the day.  Took the Buckhorn Trail to the return section of the Achenbach and climbed up a steep ridge before once again descending into the dramatic river valley the Missouri has carved out for itself. While I was up on that ridge, I couldn’t help but notice an approaching weather pattern from the north, and rightfully concluded that it was my destiny to be “shit on” in the colloquial sense.

As it turns out, those clouds were part of a tornado that was beginning to brew itself up. While the actual event touched down a few miles north of me in Watford City, I got hit with the outer limits of the storm, a fact I am grateful for.

I’m used to hiking in rain. I’m from the East Coast and have spent a significant amount of my life in the southern Appalachian mountains where when it rains, and i mean it pours.

Tatanka

So it’s really no surprise that I just ignored the premature sputterings of the approaching NODAK gale, at least until I stopped to film a tribe of local buffalo, who were unconcernedly chewing some grass on the opposite bank of the river. 10 minutes or so later, I had made a ziplock umbrella for my camera. A few minutes after that, I was getting dumped on so I packed up my stuff and headed down the trail in search of a small group of trees and/or high ground to make camp and wait out this storm that I had so clearly underestimated.  Then it started really coming down and I was getting hailed on pretty good, my field of vision was reduced to a few feet in front of me and the ground beneath my feet was quickly flooding, which told me 3 things.

1. The ground was not sucking the water up very quickly, which meant that prarie grassland environments were apparently susceptible to flash floods

2. I couldn’t just camp anywhere, I had to find high ground and some sort of windbreak for my tarp tent to keep me semi dry and

Bird before the Storm

3. My normal technique for dealing with heavy rain, which consists of assuming the fetal position and sobbing uncontrollably until the storm ceases or passers-by stop to console me, wouldn’t work so great because I was in danger of inhaling some rainwater into my nasal cavities during my strategic hysterics. I really hate inhaling water into my nasal cavities, so I hiked on and spent my energy loudly apologizing to every single god I could name in the hopes that I would be spared for whatever insult I had unwittingly committed.

I was in the middle of professing my loyalty to Jupiter when I came across the first “improvised creek” which is a nice way of saying that the many small rivulets of TRNP were “fucking flash flooding”. This was a problematic situation. The water was silty and I couldn’t see how deep the channel of water I was trying to cross was. There are quite a few small, canyonlike 5 foot deep creek beds in the park that I knew of, and the prospect of taking a step into fast moving water that may or may not be over my head was an unhappy one. Being that the creek was also too wide to simply hop across, and I was left with few options with how to proceed. In addition to this, it’s common knowledge in the hiking community that trying to cross extremely silty water is very dangerous even without force of current or depth taken into consideration. The reason why is that the silt will accumulate in the pockets and folds of your clothing and weigh you down and drown your poor ass like an evil little swarm of nanobots.

So being me, I stood on the bank of this swollen creek and watched the rain recede, appreciated the subsequent rainbow and decided to cross the stupid thing.

Faced upstream, felt the bottom of the channel out with my Lekis and got after it. Got about halfway across before the bottom fell out and I was up to my chest in strong, silty current so I pretty much jumped out of the danger zone and hauled myself up on the opposite bank. in a few seconds, my shoes had completely filled up with silt along with the pockets in my sweet zip-off cargo pants.

The last picture

Unfortunately the silty  water also found it’s way into my camera, which began malfunctioning almost immediately. I shut it off and waited until I got back to civilization before immersing it in rice for a few days. Unfortunately, the silt got into the tiny little gears of the superzoom lens rendered the device effectively broken. The last image it took was of me rambling on and on about backpacking techniques that nobody cares about, may the god of electronics have mercy on it’s soul; it had suffered enough in life.

Anyway kept on trucking.  By this time I was soaked, getting cold and tired of backpacking. Figured that I might be able to make it to my truck and that if i did, I would certainly drive to a burger joint in Williston and spend the night in a warm bed.

Such an ending was not to be, as I came across a giant creek with 15 foot high banks. After my previous little adventure with crossing swollen creeks I decided not about to attempt the swim across. It is not in my life plans to die in North Dakota.

MUD

I camped out on the creek bank until morning, hoping vehemently that the water would die down by then and I’d be able to exit the park without having to create a cross country shortcut.

The next morning came, I got back into my soaked XApro’s, crossed the previously raging creek (now a tiny brown rivulet) and headed up to the Oxbow Overlook.

Easier said than done, as every single surface in the national park was mud. Just plain old mud. All of those cool little hillocks? Mud. The entire trail was mud.

My shoes weighed 10 pounds apiece in about 5 seconds. I was herringboning uphill. I’ve climbed up cornices that were easier than that. Took me about 3 hours to hike a mile.

Finally clawed my way up to the grassy crest of the climb and my truck. Passed by some buffalo that I tried to start a fight with but I guess they knew I was just upset about all the tough going and didn’t want to get involved.

Great trip, got some decent mileage in (all said and done, something like 25 miles RT) and had a great time. Too bad about the camera, but you can’t win em all i suppose. Definitely what I would call an experience building trip. Gotta learn the lessons somehow, but I dunno what I would have done if the funnel cloud had touched down on me. Probably would have sacrificed something to Helen Hunt, as I believe she is the most contemporary Cyclone goddess.


Pictures here and below

Some Video here

Stay Warm, Stay Dry,

Deer Stare

NODAK

Geology

Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness

Now that I've been there, I will give it up to all my Idahoans in the house. These people know how to do wilderness areas right.

THE

View from Site 1

Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness felt like the Northern Cascades, in equal parts due to the alpine slopes, whimsical wildflowers and abundance of greenery. I started out going South on the Idaho Centennial Trail where it intersects with Forest Road 1614. North on the trail takes you, surprise, west along the riverbank and, from what I could see, up the the steep banks of the canyon. It's supposed to be a really nice hike, but I hoofed it the opposite way. Followed a creek uphill to a sweet open area with tons of grass and flowers. Ended up camping on a cool little meadowy ridge with a great view after I ran into a murder (or pride) of deer.

Gang of thugs (note resident bird on central deer)

 It rained that night, and I stayed in late to let my tent dry before I packed up and left. Ran into that same group of deer and then started up a pretty hard climb up to the mountains. The trail was easy to find even when I ran into snowpack, mostly because it was a jeep/atv track. Normally I prefer classic, single-file-style trail, but when the views are good and the snow is bad, I definitely don't mind walking on something that's easier to follow. Anyway, I climbed up out of the river canyon and onto a ridge at about 6 or 7k feet, where I took a wrong turn and got off the Centennial Trail. I discovered the mistake about 10 minutes after I made it, but I consulted my map and realized that the rest of my planned route was going to be snowy, so I let the accident be. That was a smart move as it turns out, because the incorrect trail took a steep dive down and the snowline stopped about halfway down my descent. There were a few abandoned mines on this route as well, and I got to check them out while heading towards a small backcountry puddle named Bear Lake.

Exterior (Signage Ignored)

On the way, I found two abandoned mines, but only really poked around in one of them. It was pretty cool though it was boarded up and/or caved in. I tried to break and enter but the door wouldn't budge and I thought I heard a hissing sound and I started thinking about The Descent and left in a hurry.  Walked by an abandoned camper and little cabin that I guess used to be miners' homes, but there wasn't anything spectacular in there. Just a bunch of old jars and what I'm assuming to either be hundreds of small or possibly one single enormous mouse, judging by the smell of the place.

There's a snowstorm in there that I wouldn't fuck with for the world.

Anyway, on the long descent, I also found and packed out some notable rocks, even though I'm not a big geology guy.

As a side note I always find it interesting how many amateur and/or professional geologists I encounter while hiking. The sheer number of these like-minded scientists is somewhat alarming and I often wonder if the general public is at any sort of risk from any well-organized geological cells that may or may not operate interdependently of each other in our national parks and recreation areas. I've interrogated quite a few of these so called "graduate students" but have learned nothing except that they all seem to have been brainwashed thoroughly. Try maintaining a constant theme of questioning with someone that keeps on wandering off to excitably identify granitic schist or something and see how far you get.

Bear Lake Site

I reached Bear Lake a few hours before sunset, and checked out some of the buildings that stand there. It seems that Bear Lake Mining (LLC? Company?) is an active mining situation located a few miles South of the Salmon River. Wasn't trying to poke around too much in case Yosemite Sam rolled up on me, so I left and set up camp a few hundred yards away from the buildings.

Afterwards, I found an old, red Mad River canoe on the marshy shore of the lake and took her for a joyride. Anyway, Bear Lake is tiny and my float was short-lived. I beached the canoe, stored it properly and left. As a PSA to whichever dingus left the canoe belly  down (floating) in the water, it had filled up with rainwater and half of it was sunk into the lake. Flip it upside down next time you leave, you dingus.

Now, before I had reached the Lake, I had considered the possibility of, once arriving at the site, attempting to bushwhack the 2 miles north back to the river and either cross it to get on the fireroad on the far bank or to float down the river back to my truck. I had laughed at the thought of trying to wade/swim across the Salmon River, and decided that a discarded packraft or inner tube would be necessary to even attempt a crossing or float. I figured the odds of finding such a device would be higher at a backcountry lake than, say at a backcountry trailhead, but still wasn't thinking that I'd stumble across any watercraft at Bear Lake.

It wasn't the first time I've thought of using a river as a transportation device during a hiking trip, and I can promise you it also won't be the last. I've attempted a pack n' float before, but the Greenbriar River didn't want to co-operate and I was left with deflated hopes, dreams and inner tubes.

What I'm trying to say is that I considered stealing the canoe, since it was weathered and had obviously been misused during it's tenure at Bear Lake, but ultimately my conscience won out. My decision had nothing to do with the fact that bushwhacking with a 15 foot boat on one's back falls far short of being "fun", nor did it have anything to do with Idaho's harsh canoe-larceny laws.

Up Top

Had a fire and woke up to rain again, but got going in spite of it.  The long climb up to the junction I had taken the day before was definitely tough, my pack was overloaded and some of the more important support straps had ripped a few trips ago. I also haven't been able to hike any appreciable distance for some time, due to snow, and my legs were definitely paying the consequences of such a long hibernation.

 Anyway the way up was cold as hell, and the rain that was pouring down soon turned to slush that soon turned to snow. Got up top, found myself in a cloud and started kindly hammering up and then down the trail to keep my body temperature up.

Finally got down to snowline again and the sun popped out for a while, took a game trail shortcut down past my first campsite to a more exposed precipice where I set up camp for the night just as stormclouds rolled in. Turns out they looked meaner than they were and I woke up the next morning drier than I had on any of the others.  Packed up, ran into my deer family one more time and left town with really sore legs for the first time in months.

Site # 3

Was a beautiful trip, best one in recent memory for a few reasons:

Mainly I've gotten sick of snow and anything other than snow looks amazing to me, but also my pack, while still way above summerweight, was way below winterweight. The deer were cool, the views spectacular, but most importantly.....

MILEAGE happened. Hasn't gone this smoothly for a long time, and it was nice to make some distance disappear, even if it wasn't too much (about 25 round trip).



Video is comin and pictures will be on the flickr soon.

PS one of the major hassles about this trip was the difficulty I had in getting a map of the wilderness area. Had to end up buying an Idaho Atlas and photocopying the pages. Still wasn't useful, as my I had trouble finding where I was, which means I gave up after a while because I knew I could back to my truck one way or another ("Go to the river and take a left, how hard can it be?"). I imagine someone out there has a better map of the Frank Church wilderness, and I'll do my best to track it down and post it here soon.

Stay warm, stay dry.

I got hungry and the latch was stuck.

Rainbow

Clouds rollin in

Loud

Rocky Mountain National Park or I Finally Found Out What The ISO and Apeture Settings Do On My Camera.

A Good Start

It was 70 degrees when I left Loveland to start this trip, and because I'm me and have incited the gods' wrath for 24 years now, when I got to the scenic and well-populated Rocky Mountain National Park, it was pouring down snow.

Rolled out anyway and got after it, hiked a ways into the backcountry and camped out near some lakes after the trail I had planned to follow petered out without any sign. Again, I was thrwarted by snow, and because, AGAIN, my plans were to ascend up and the snowpack could only get worse, I changed my route. The snow wasn't as deep as Beartooth but I was still breaking through to my thigh by the time I started to really climb. In addition to this, my GPS unit, which has been pretty damn useful this winter, caught some sort of 24 hour flu and wasn't displaying the map properly and all my trail sign was buried underneath the previous snowpack and 1-2 feet of new snow.

So I switched it up to a trail that had a pretty decent blazing system, walked all day in the first time I've really made anywhere close to a respectable distance since Zion NP. Still snowy, but the trail wasn't hard to follow and I popped out to a campground and these mountains:

These ones

I mentioned that I spent the first day and night in the park during a snowstorm, and so everything on either side of me up to this point was grey and silvan, so the scenic aspect of the park came as a pleasant surprise.  Kept on hiking till I came out onto Sprague Lake (located conveniently right off the road. The paths around the lake are wheelchair accessible in the warmer months. Sometimes life just straight up gives you lemonade). I camped out at a discreet but still illicit distance from the lake because I didn't like the backcountry campsite provided.

Hung out, made a fire, fended off a dayhiker who came into my territory armed with only a camera because he heard me breaking firewood and "thought I was a wild animal". He figured out pretty quickly that this line of thinking was correct after I exhibited my dominance through a ritualized series of vocalizations and strength displays. After the intruder beat a hasty retreat, I picked through the belongings he had dropped in his blind terror, and finding nothing of value, buried the entirety of his worthless possessions under some sticks, leaves and snow. Fucking tourists.

HA-HA! COUNT IT!

Afterwards I took some videos of geese, figured out what aperture and ISO settings do and went to bed. Had a pretty bad night, guess I caught my GPS's cold, because I woke up the next morning pretty sick.  It's worth noting that much of RMNP, but especially the section by Sprague Lake was very windy. Reminded me forcibly of Medicine Bow, where I got a little hypothermic from windchill alone. I was cold, but not dangerously so taking these night pictures. Hiked out to my truck, and left just as the temperature began to pick up into the 40's or 50's. I'm sure by the time I hit the park border, all of the snow on the trails melted, it was 80 degrees and the backcountry filled itself up with single, attractive, scantily clad and wealthy young women who are exponentially impressed with just how many toenails you have donated to the trail gods in your lifetime.

Overall really good trip. I'll have to go back when it's warmer or when I break down and buy snowshoes to check out more of the park, but overall I was impressed with the scenery. I was also impressed with the people who live here. All winter I've been totally alone in almost every trip I've been on, but I saw several XC ski tracks during this trip in the further reaches of trail. Good for you, Colorado.

Video is forthcoming, pictures are here and maybe the flickr in the future.