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.