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.

Beartooth/Abskora

This was a quick two nighter to the Beartooth/Abskora wilderness in Montana. Went in on 298 to Falls Creek Campground, hit snow as soon as I got into the dirt portion of the road.

When I got to the trailhead, I wasn't feeling the trip at all. Really thought hard about just turning around and leaving, but eventually mustered up the discipline to pack up and go. In my experience with most things, there's always a million reasons to nix challenging plans, but there are very few valid reasons to actually do so. So i put aside my fears of hungry, freshly un-hibernated grizzly bears and stepped onto the snowy trail ahead of me.

View from a snowfield

And it was snowy.  I wouldn't call it impassable, but I did call it a pain in my neck. Hiked up about 4 miles on the Falls Creek trail before I camped out the first night, grabbed a inclined spot on the side of the trail, made a fire and fell asleep.

Woke up and kept on trucking, unfortunately the snow was ~ 6 feet deep and really powdery with a thin crust on top. I have a technique for dealing with this kind of snow where I imagine myself as a ballerina and very gently tiptoe across the top of the snow, sometimes flapping my arms gently in order to lessen the pressure of my boots on the precarious situation underneath me. I find that this is only nominally effective and have plans in the near future to stop being such a cheap son of a bitch and buy or at least make some snowshoes. In any case, I kept breaking through up to my waist and thigh every few steps on the climb up to a backcountry creek, where S really HTF.

Garbage, just garbage.

Something I've noticed about trails that follow creek banks and gulleys is that the snow on them typically is "loose" and less likely to crust for whatever reason. It may be that trees shade the snow from the sun, which means that the upper levels of snow never melt and then freeze, which means you get no upper crust to walk on. It may be that the relatively low elevations keep the snow cold enough to stay powdery. In any case,  it essentially means that you end up being a snowplow. I spent about two miles chugging through waist deep powder before deciding that I didn't feel like wading through that kind of garbage if I didn't have to. As the trail I was following ascended up to peaks that were permanently snow-covered, I knew that things could only get worse for me. Add to this the fact that I was towards the end of my days off and couldn't go galavanting around a wilderness willy nilly just in case I got lost or hit a delay (the oilfields of North Dakota are not tolerant of truancy), and the decision to bounce was an easy one to make. So I took a left turn and did some cross-country travel down to the creek.

River Island

Even though the move made sense, I hate giving up in all aspects of life, and so I was in a pretty pissy little mood by the time I hit the creek. Got over it, and focused on whether or not I should camp out on an ice island. I had decided to go ahead with the plan when I scoped out a really nice site on the opposite bank.

SO, because it was stupid and because maybe I was clearly getting soft in my old age (as evidenced by the decision to forgo my planned route), I decided to do a quick river crossing and build some character and soon found myself at one of the more pleasant campsites I've stayed at in a long time, albeit with numb feet.

My style of hiking and backpacking generally focuses on getting high, by which I mean that I love altitude. Dunno why, I just do. So I generally have the most fun on a hike climbing up to a pristine campsite on the edge of a cliff or peak and getting to go to sleep and wake up to amazing views.

All this focus on getting up  means that I forget sometimes how nice river valleys can be. The trees that grow on banks block the wind and provide firewood, there's a ton of wildlife around the river and you go to sleep to the sound of running water. It's fucking delightful.

So I made a fire, tried to shoot a few educational backpacking videos and went to bed. Hiked out the next morning to my truck and bounced. Good  trip, even though it wasn't particularly clean, well executed or even well planned.

Pictures are below.

I stopped doing videos of every trip because I found myself following too rigid a format. I'm gonna start making medleys and seeing how that goes.