Total Weekly Mileage: 272.2
“Three Sheets to The Winds”
I’ve read comments from hikers complaining about too many people in Yellowstone. Yes, tourists in the most popular national park in the country will happen in the middle of summer. I myself enjoy people-watching—the melting pot of all walks of life while we’re all literally standing on a melting pot. Old Faithful, a pressure cooker overdue to blow, and when it does—sayonara. Let’s just hope before the entire country melts down into a lava pool, I get to pull the record off.
Anyway: lots of people, a couple bison, flat trail, slight rain—park done. Where the CDT trail brings you in Yellowstone is anticlimactic. It’s the boring side, the west side. The eastern side has all the good stuff. It’s the last park and permitting I have to deal with: choosing campsites, making calls, yada yada yada. All I wanted was to get to Dubois and into the Winds!
Once I stuffed my face with pulled pork and mac ’n’ cheese, I left Old Faithful a few minutes before the thing shot off. Seen it before, needed to get miles. I finished around 10 and just cowboy camped in the woods off the trail. One of my power bank lights had accidentally been pushed on and had almost completely drained. I had 120 miles and one and a half charges to get me to Dubois. This meant radio silence until town.
The next morning, as I was eating breakfast on the side of the trail, another southbound thru-hiker came around the corner. His name was Taxi. After a brief conversation about the trail, I packed up and we hiked together. I told him about my power issue, and he said he had a 26,000 mAh power bank fully charged and that I could charge my phone as we hiked. How lucky was that!? So I did, and we talked and hiked for the next two hours.
He’d been living in Guatemala before trail, day trading. He filled me in on how he makes enough money working a few hours a day doing this, and $45 covers his Airbnb and food for the day. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve found success living in other countries, not falling for the struggles of the American cost of living, and I was very intrigued. After a while, he headed to Grant Village in Yellowstone, and I continued on. Thanks, Taxi—you bailed me out big time!
I pushed hard from there, clocking a 43-mile day. The next day: 41. Other than getting stuck behind two huge bison hogging the trail for 10 minutes, everything went relatively smooth for the next 48 hours. The final 10 miles to the highway for my Dubois resupply stop was a mud pit. I was lucky to avoid the torrential downpour the night before, stopping north of the storm, but the next morning I could tell the trail had been saturated significantly. Dried-up rivers had been flowing down the trail, and I was slipping and sliding all over the place. The bottoms of my shoes got so caked with mud they felt like they weighed an extra five pounds each. I constantly had to stop, take them off, and bang off the mud or scrape them against rocks.
By 10:30 I was at the road, and only 10 minutes later I was picked up by two women from Colorado—Isabelle and another girl whose name I can’t remember. It was a 28-mile ride, so we chatted about my hike mostly. They had just hiked in the Tetons and were taking the scenic route home, which worked out perfectly for me.
By 11:15 I was dropped off in town, headed straight for the laundromat (which also had pay showers), and 45 minutes later I was clean and cleaning my clothes. Headed to the store and bought food for a resupply box at my next stop, which was South Pass City. It’s a small museum mining town and is literally on the trail. Dubois is a long hitch but necessary. Staying as close to the trail moving forward would be the key to big-mile days, even on resupply days. So taking an extra hour in town here to build a box was worth it.
The post office went off without a hitch—except I spilled my root beer during my box-building and yelled a profanity right as a woman came around the corner. It wasn’t directed at her, but she gave me an offended look. I’m too used to being alone on the trail—gotta watch my mouth when in towns in the future.
I had a cheeseburger at the local dive, unable to get a temperature on the meat, which I forgot I can’t get in Wyoming. This is funny and annoying to me because I’m in cattle country U.S.A., and they won’t cook my burger to temp. Hockey puck style is all they’ll do. It was still decent. Beats the hell out of cold ramen and oatmeal.
After a 15-minute resupply for the next 167 miles to South Pass City, I was again quickly picked up by old-timer Mike, and he whisked me back up to the trail. Road-walking the old CDT trail for the next 15 miles, I cowboy camped under the stars and woke at 5 a.m., moving by 5:30. I needed big miles through this section because I wanted to get to SPC before they closed at 5 p.m. on Friday. It was Tuesday, and I had 152 miles to do in under four days. Hard but not impossible.
Met a few SOBOS that day—Steam Engine and Mama Cita. We hiked and talked most of the day, and when they stopped for lunch, like I always have to do, I continued on.
The Bridger Wilderness, known as the Winds (short for the Wind River Range), is beautiful. Like a mini Sierra. Many alternates and high routes along ridgelines. But I was following the line of the dude I was trying to beat, which meant the low red-line route. It still has incredible views, just not as rugged hiking as the other stuff.
It was the following day I realized my food situation was going to be an issue. I didn’t buy enough in town, so I started to ration with 110 miles to go. My only saving grace was the Big Sandy Lodge a few miles off-trail the following afternoon. I could skip it and be starving until my next box, or go in, raid the hiker box, and get a meal there. It would take an extra 90 minutes to do this, which might mean I could be late to SPC for my box, but I felt I had no choice and would just have to do big miles. So I did what I had to do and pulled a 45-mile day.
In the Winds, that’s not normal—but I’m not, and neither is my hike. A lot of weekend warriors through this section—some happy, some miserable. Light sprinkles kept the heat at bay, and I arrived at Big Sandy at 3 p.m. I ate two overpriced burgers (no temp), talked with more hikers (all of whom were from New England—French Fry and Achilles), and was off and hiking by 4.
Besides a quick detour to dig a cat hole after the burgers in a wide-open field, I made great time and still was able to get a 41. Saw a lot of deer and elk that day also. This left me 29 miles the next day to do by 5—totally doable. On trail early, a couple big climbs and then a long downhill cruiser, I clocked one of my biggest weeks so far. Feeling good and ready to crush into the Basin.
