We awoke to one of nature’s own alarm clocks: the conspicous sound of cows “crowing”, sort of like a rooster’s “cock-a-doodle-do” only more grating. This was not your typical barnyard “moo”; this was the sound of free range, Alpine Bovine (latin name – “bovinus alpinus”) – it was a cock-a-doodle-moo, mmrroo…mmmrrrrooo..mroo
The winds of yesterday continued through the night and brought with them another cold front, leaving us clear and cold skies. They also brought the first real taste of fall, a hard frost.
We breakfasted on skillet fried potatoes, eggs and sausage, sorted our resupply box and packed to go. Unfortunately our map bag was missing. We will …
We waited all night and the cows never went home, so indeed how long cows are out is truly the mark of a long period of time.
The trail continued to follow the crest, often along very open broad ridges. Rugged ranges of mountains in Idaho contrasting with gentler terrain and wide open basins in Montana. We had dramatic and constantly changing light, which is the optimist’s way of saying mostly cloudy with heavy winds.
How windy was it? Well, it was so windy that cows where swirling around funnel shaped clouds, like something out of the opening scene from the Wizard of Oz. It was windy enough to have to …
We rolled out of camp under a few thin clouds, fairly early to tackle some bigger miles today. We detoured off the divide to get water from cow trampled Pattee creek. The divide is wide, flat, and tree covered, with few discernable landmarks. The challange in bushwhacking back was not the walk through thin forests, but navigating to the trail corridor through so much “sameness.”
Shortly after we were back on trail we encountered two northbound CDT hikers, Red Beard and Mike. They mentioned two other hikers just in front of them, Boston and Cub, who we must have missed while we were off getting water. We exchanged the usual …
We followed the jeep road and occassional cattle trail to the side up Darkhorse Canyon. The trail follows this jeep road as it makes a wide detour up to an abandoned mine at the head of the canyon, with needless extra miles and elevation gain and loss, before dropping back to Cowbone Lake. A suggested alternate route involves an obscure, faded trail and a bushwhack straight up to Cowbone Lake. We opted for the alternate.
It began nice enough, with a pair of diamond blazes marking on old road, which sort of led to some bits of trail tread. They ended pretty quickly, but the direction was clear enough and snippets …
We are scheduled to meet Sandy Compton at Bannock Pass late in the afternoon on Thur Aug 21. We started from Chief Joseph a day earlier than originally planned. Although it was late in the day, it gave us a “head start” on this section, allowing us to slow down through some of the rugged and beautiful lake basins. We enjoyed that, but now we need to pick up the pace and put on the miles.
We started the day with a climb of about 1,100 over 1 1/2 miles. Despite some new trail tread, and some switchbacks, there were places where the trail crews skipped the switchbacks, possibly out …
