It sounds repetitious, but, once again we woke to frost on tent and frozen water bottles. Ughh. In fact, the drinking tube on the platypus took over 2 hours of hiking to thaw out. A low.
But the day was all clear, brilliant blue skies, and stayed that way. A high. With 20 miles to go to the highway we needed a nice day for hiking to get there in time to get a ride to Dubois.
We came within 50 to 60 yards of a herd of elk, including a bull with a large rack, several young bulls and 15 to 20 cows. A real High.
As the sun melted the mud …
A cloudless night meant a very cold night. The moisture laden night air we felt around the campfire turned to heavy, hard and huge ice crystals on the ground, plants and shrubs.
The day started with a climb to Two Ocean Plateau, a white, otherworldly place. Wide open space, distant views and ground with frost shimmering and reflecting the early morning light.
To the west the Grand Tetons rise above the clouded valley. To the east lie the rugged tops of the Absarokas.
We drop into Two Ocean Pass, also known as the Parting of the Waters. Much of the plateau drains into two ocean creek which drops into the pass. OK, …
With thick cloud cover, we slept warm night last nigtht – a nice change of pace. At first daylight we heard loud hooves outside the tent, probably moose or elk. Not wanting to “spook” them, we stayed inside and let them fade into the nearby willows.
The trail followed a different route than described in the guidebook, not too unusual. This time it was a nice walk up the upper Snake River valley, full of fall colors: red fireweed, yellow, orange and red of the various understory shrubs. It’s an interesting irony that the ’88 fires have left more color to landscape. With less evergreen canopy there are more broadleaf …
Somewhere today, between the park’s south entrance road and Heart lake, we crossed over the 900 mile threshold for the trip.
The morning was cold, maybe the coldest one so far. We had difficulty getting out of the tent. The Carrot poured water into her mug to wash out the breakfast drink and the water turned instantly to an icy slush. COLD. We took the frozen socks and bent them until the were soft enough to put on, played with the frozen shoe laces and tongues, until we could slide into to bitterley cold shoes. All this made the fingers numb. A harsh morning to get up and hike, but with …
We were late in leaving Old Faithful, trying to send pocketmail but with some real challenges. Finally I found a house phone with outside access to an 800 number.
We had clear skies, and finally a bit warmer but still cool enough to make for some nice walking.
Three miles away from the nearest road, Lone Star guyser was active and still drew a small crowd for it’s dependable, every 3 hour, eruption. We had lunch nearby for the “2pm show.”
Continuing on we passed a number of backpackers at the several designated sites between Old Faithful and Shoshone lake.
The Shoshone lake geyser basin was eerie – full of steam and bubbling …
