It rained again last night, which didn’t give me much hope for today. It wasn’t raining when we woke up, though, which was good. However, our entire tent and everything in it was soaked from condensation, which wasn’t so good. Still, the clouds in the sky looked friendly and I was pretty sure I’d see the sun at some point, so life seemed ok.
Putting on my still-soaking wet hiking clothes wasn’t fun, though. At least they weren’t cold AND wet because I slept with them in my quilt (I wrapped them in my buff in an attempt to keep the inside of my quilt clean). Even though they were warm-ish, it wasn’t pleasant putting on wet clothes at 5:30 in the morning. I put on the wet alpaca hoody, too, figuring maybe it could dry as we hiked (and sort of keep me warm, too).
At first the trail was just as muddy as yesterday, which made sense as it had rained overnight and the sun wasn’t up yet to dry anything out. I endured it the best I could - I mean, it wasn’t raining so I felt like we were already winning. Plus, the fog was hanging low in the valleys again, which was beautiful.
When we left the CDT to start our alternate route through Yellowstone, the trail seemed to get worse, not better as we assumed it would - the mud and horse tracks just didn’t stop. When we got to the wetland area there was so much mud that I had to laugh. (I didn’t laugh when I had to walk through large, wet willow bushes that got my finally dry alpaca hoodie wet all over again, though.)
At one time there had been a boardwalk of sorts in the wetland, but it was in such disrepair that but sections of it were completely under water. This meant that we we had to get wet (which wasn’t a big deal as our feet were already soaked from walking in wet grass anyway). It was very slow going. Since we had to hike 30 miles to our permitted campsite, going slow wasn’t ideal.
oh how nice, a boardwa… never mind
We made it through the wetland (walking through lots of water and mud) and to an almost finished bridge, where we took a quick break. While we were eating snacks, we saw the source of the churned up trails (and what caused them to turn into a sloppy mess in the rain) - a bunch of people on a horseback trip. I am so grateful we weren’t still on the trail when they came through!
After crossing the unfinished bridge, we were very shortly in Yellowstone. Because of the slow going in the mud and in the wetland, we were over hour behind schedule. Figuring the trails would be in much better shape in the park, we didn’t worry too much about it.
The trails in the park weren’t terrible, but they were still pretty beat up from horses - I wasn’t fond of all the divots, but the mud had time to dry a bit by the time we got there so it wasn’t too bad.
Speaking of time to dry, we decided to lay out our wet things in the sun to dry while we ate a quick lunch. I wasn’t sure we should take the time to do it as we were so far behind, but it was time we’ll spent - having a dry quilt and tent to crawl into at the end of the day is a wonderful feeling. While we were enjoying lunch, we could hear wolves howling in the distance - it was very cool. I attempted to capture it on a video but you can barely hear them.
drying all the things
We had to ford a lot of rivers and streams, which Nick wasn’t happy about - he thought that since we were in a National park there should be bridges. He even slipped and fell while attempting to cross one of the many rivers on a log. I looked at him, worried he had hurt himself, but he just yelled “pole!”. I jumped in the river and managed to grab the pole he dropped just in time. He wasn’t hurt, just having a bad day (like I did yesterday).
this is the first river we had to cross, not the river Nick fell into
With the sun shining, everything seems beautiful. The trail appeared to be getting better and better the closer we got to the center of the park, so we were optimistic about getting to the campsite at a decent time (ie before dark).
We stopped to eat dinner around 6 with 7 miles left to hike. No problem, we thought. We can do that.
dinner view
Fueled by dinner and a nice trail, we were hiking along at a pretty fast pace. Suddenly, Nick stopped. He had checked our position on the new app we are using for this section and saw we were off trail, although neither of us had seen a trail junction. We hiked back to where the trail was supposed to be and started down it, soon finding ourselves faced with crossing a disgusting swamp. Nick didn’t want to walk in it. I didn’t, either, but I also didn’t know if we had the time to waste finding a way around. Nick was stubborn, though, and tried to walk around it by going through the surrounding brambles. I attempted to follow him but was ridiculously slow trying to force my way through them. We did our best, searching for a way around the swamp and furiously fighting with the brambles, but in the end we had to walk through the swamp anyway. It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever done and it smelled terrible. Once through the putrid swamp, we encountered yet another river to ford. Unlike the other rivers we had to cross, I was very excited about fording this one as we were able to clean off the disgusting swamp water and who knows what else from our bodies.
Ok. Back on the trail. We lost some time in the swamp but were still optimistic about getting to the campsite before dark.
We lost most of this optimism when we hit blowdown central. It was utter insanity. At first we thought it might be just one or two, but as we went up and over them we quickly realized they were covering the entire trail, or what we thought was the trail- certainly we couldn’t have been on it any longer, there is no way the park wouldn’t have better maintained it. We tried to go up the hill, thinking maybe the trail was up there (where it was flat), but we just found ourselves in a sea of blowdowns. It was quite daunting, actually. To find the trail, we decided to work backwards, trying to find one of the campsites on the map. We found the campsite and then found the trail. I was happy for maybe 3 minutes until we turned a corner - the trail was so full of blowdowns I could have cried. But I didn’t cry- there was no time for that. The sun was getting very low in the sky and we were still almost 5 miles away from camp. It was time to focus on getting up, over, and around the fallen trees in our way.
It dawned on us that perhaps the trail we had been on before going through the swamp was a reroute and that maybe we should have stayed on it. However, we were too far into our little adventure to turn around. We spent SO MUCH TIME climbing over blowdowns and trying to find a decent trail that for a while I didn’t think we’d get out of there before dark. I briefly wondered if we might have to camp somewhere other than where we were permitted, but that thought didn’t last long - Nick is just as stubborn as I am and I knew we were going to get to the damn campsite we were permitted for even if it took us all night.
this doesn’t look as bad as it was. I was too involved in getting through this hell to stop and take more pics, though. It was this scene all around us. A video would have been better, I’ll have to remember that
After about an hour, we stumbled upon the actual trail sans blowdowns (provably the reroute we had been on before). I was exhausted from climbing over so many trees and my legs were bleeding in quite a few places from getting scraped by the branches. I let the blood flow - there was no time to waste cleaning up the cuts. The sun was already setting and we still had over 4 miles to go. We were flying down the trail - at times I was even jogging to keep up with Nick, who was a man on a mission. He was NOT pleased with the state of the trails or the fact that the trail we had been on hadn’t been marked as closed (as it obviously should have been).
I yelled “hey oh” a LOT as we flew down the trail - the darker it became, the more I yelled it to be sure we didn’t surprise a bear. Normally, hiking at night would be fun if I wasn’t somewhere with bears and wolves running around.
After 15 brutal hours of hiking, we made it to our campsite just after the sun set. From what I can see in the dark, it’s gorgeous. I’m glad we only have around 10 miles to hike tomorrow because I want to 1. Sleep in and 2. Enjoy this beautiful place.
Note: Nick thinks today was worse than yesterday. I disagree. To me, there is nothing worse than being cold and wet and unable to walk because of mud. Today was long and grueling but at least I was always warm. And also, I loved the adventure.
Along the trail:
Camp:
