Following this alternate isn’t always easy.  I was happily hiking along a nice trail this morning when I checked the app and saw I was no longer on the trail I needed to be on.  Worse, the trail I WAS on wasn’t on the map.  I kept going for a bit, thinking that maybe the current trail would take me to where I needed to be.  However, when it started to turn in the wrong direction, I admitted defeat and turned around.  On the way back I bumped into Nick, who had been happily walking down the wrong trail, too.  

Together, we made our way back to where our trail was supposed to be.  It wasn’t much of a trail, and very soon, even though the app said we were on the trail, we definitely weren’t.  We bushwhacked our way in the direction we needed to go and eventually found our way back to a well-defined trail that matched the trail outlined in the app.  What an annoying ordeal.

With that silly experience behind us, you’d think we’d stay on the well-defined trail we had just found.  We almost did.  However, there were notes in the app detailing a “super easy” cutoff not too far ahead that would save a few miles.  All we had to do was walk on cow trails and such.  We decided to go for it.  How bad could it be?

At first, it wasn’t bad at all.  After just a little bit of bushwhacking, there were indeed paths that were easy to follow.  Until those paths ran out, that is.  Then we were back to doing what we had done earlier - try to stay on the line as it was marked in the app and just walk in the general direction we needed to go.  It was full of all my favorite things - blowdowns, marshes, brambles, and even a little mud. 

Nick and I had just made it over some blowdowns when we saw a little brown thing running about 20 yards ahead of us.  The brown thing was a bear.  A baby bear.  All I could think was, “oh shit, where’s the mom?”

The baby bear did what it was probably taught to do - it ran right up a tree.  Momma bear stood at the base of said tree, stared at us, postured for a bit, and then seemed to run away.  We knew she wasn’t far.

Unfortunately for us, the tree the baby bear was in was exactly where we needed to go.  Well, we weren’t going that way anymore.  We continued to be vocal, saying things like “hey bear, it’s ok, we’re going over here”.  

‘Over here’ was the in the opposite direction of the bears, through a marsh with ridiculously thick brambles.  I’m essentially a professional with getting through brambles at this point so it wasn’t too big of a deal.  We continued to yell out so everyone would know where we were.  The poor baby bear was probably traumatized - we could hear its heavy breathing/huffing while it was up in the tree and then, after we watched it come down out of the tree, we could hear it calling out for momma in an eerily human sounding voice.  Poor thing.  

With a marsh and a ton of brambles between us and the bears, we continued to walk in the general direction of where we thought we should be.  At one point we found ourselves surrounded by blowdowns (again) and then we had to navigate through another marshy area.  But hey, we weren’t attacked by a momma bear so no complaints here.  

We eventually found a trail on the ‘shortcut-that-turned-out-not-to-be-a-shortcut’ that led us back to the trail we should have stayed on all along.  All was well?

All was not well, for Patrick Duffy at least.  We went downhill for hours.  HOURS.  I hit my breaking point when we had been walking steadily downhill for over 2 hours and I saw the lake we needed to get to.  It was still SO FAR DOWN.  After another hour I yelled out “F#*%!” and, rather than cry, I put my frustration to good use - I made up a rage-filled song titled “F’ing Downhill” that I sang out loud for quite a while.  Yes, I sounded and felt as if I was becoming unhinged, but it did help me ignore Patrick Duffy as I walked for another hour or more downhill.  As a bonus to singing my song, there was no way I’d be surprising another bear, that’s for sure.  

Of course, we DID make it down to the lake and my leg is still mostly functional.  At the bottom we bumped into two SOBOs who are also doing this cutoff.  We shared some intel with each other about what to expect.  They then told us we only had to go 2 miles to the road.  I, having looked at the map, knew we had at least 4, maybe 5 miles until we got to there, so I asked, “Are you sure?”.  They said yes, it wasn’t far at all and that it was 2 miles tops.  I wanted to ask them how long they had been walking but decided against it because it didn’t matter - I knew they were wildly incorrect.  Instead, I smiled and said thanks.  The road definitely wasn’t 2 miles away - it took us over 2 hours to get there - but part of me still held out some sort of weird hope that they were right and the map was wrong.  Now I can’t trust anything they told us.  Lol

The walk along Ennis Lake and to the road was beautiful.  Montana is beautiful.  

The last task of the day was getting a hitch into Ennis (we did a short resupply in Big Sky because why carry more food than you need to?).  We weren’t having much luck, which made me second-guess our decision to have a resupply sent to Ennis.  A well-loved and frequently used car came towards us and Nick, trying to be optimistic , said, “that’s our ride”.  The car drove past without stopping, but we waved anyway.

Many vehicles passed us and, as it was getting late, I worried about getting into town (who wants to pick up hitchhiked in the dark?).  But then the guy driving the well-loved car came back!  He asked if we were going to Ennis and said he’d be happy to take us there.  His name is Danny.  Danny is a contractor and had tons of tools in his car (and also a carpenters pencil behind his ear).  He told us all about seeing two dead bodies when he visited St. Louis, which, having lived near there for 15 years, we weren’t shocked about. 

We are staying at the Sportsman’s Lodge tonight, which is a nice treat.  Originally we were just going to get our package and then leave, but because the miles aren’t quite right in the CalTopo app, it ended up taking a lot longer to get here than we anticipated and the post office is now closed.  It’s not the end of the world - it was nice to shower and eat at the attached restaurant for dinner.  I had a bison burger this time, it was time to change things up.  :)

Since we won’t be able to leave Ennis until 10 at the earliest, it’s going to be a tough hike to get to our next resupply stop in Whitehall before their post office closes on Friday.  We’ll see what we can do.  All I care about at the moment is sleeping, my new favorite thing.  

Along the trail: