Into the Wild Continued - Granite Creek and Gorges

At the end of the last entry, it was Tuesday afternoon, and Natalie and I had just arrived at Turquoise Lake. Natalie was amazed that even here, where the water wasn't flowing, it was perfectly clear. I think she took this picture trying to show that you could see to the bottom. The reflections make this hard to appreciate, but if you look at the foreground near the water's edge, you can easily see the rocks at the bottom.


Turquoise Lake was where we had our only encounter with other backpackers in the Gros Ventre. We saw their tent as soon as we arrived but didn't meet them until later, after we'd made our camp. John and Diane (didn't get their last name) were a couple about my age or maybe a little older. We met Diane first, as we were hanging our food. We told her about ourselves, including that this was a first real backpacking trip. She and John were from Washington State and were avid backpackers. This was their first day in the Gros Ventre and they had come straight to Turquoise Lake.

Diane shared a few backpacking tips from the "Leave No Trace" movement which, as the name implies, advocates methods that minimize impact on the land. I had read a little about this movement and thought I was generally following its methods. Later I wondered if Diane had been tactfully pointing out ways we were out of compliance, but if so she was so friendly and subtle about it I couldn't be offended. She also invited us to go see how John hung their food. He had an unusual method that he'd perfected over the years. Later, we ran into both of them as we strolled around the lake. It turned out John was a retired geologist turned professional photographer. Their visit to the Grow Ventre was apparently a mixture of business and pleasure. We went and saw his food-hanging method. It certainly looked bear-proof, but too clever for me.

In addition to the clarity of the lake, Natalie was also taken by its stillness and reflectivity, which gave it a mirror-like quality. She took this picture of a mountain reflected on the surface as the sun was setting. The mirror image of the mountain is almost as clear as the mountain itself.


We had a tiny stream not far from our tent, so instead of cooking with the drinking water we'd purified with our SteriPen, I just filled our pot directly from the stream. Our camp next to Turquoise Lake was my favorite. After watching the shadows climb up to the top of the mountain on the other side of the lake, we zipped ourselves in our tent and played a few hands of cards, and Natalie made her journal entry for the day. She didn't have any trouble reading or writing in the dim light of our little battery-operated camp lantern. I had tried writing the night before, but found it almost impossible.

The next morning, after coffee, hot chocolate, and oatmeal, we consulted our map and decided on our route for the day. This being our third day out, we didn't want to venture too much farther from Jackson, but we didn't need to start heading back either. In the end we decided to hike northeast down Granite Creek until about noon, then double back, but not all the way to Turquoise Lake. The map showed a trail that would take us back to the ridge we'd crossed on the way to Turquoise Lake by a shorter route, without going all the way back to the lake.

After a false start down a trail that just went around the lake, we found the right trail and started to climb up out of the basin the lake was in. Just like the trail we'd taken on the way in, this trail led through forests with big outcroppings of rock and was covered in places with patches of snow we either had to tramp through or skirt around. Sometimes it was hard to find the trail again on the other side of a snow patch, but luckily our new friends the rangers had recently been through and their horses' tracks usually showed us the way. After about half an hour of picking our way carefully through the trees, snow and rocks, we emerged into a more open landscape of rolling hills and meadows.


Although Natalie and I are both in pretty good shape and didn't get the kind of soreness that comes from exercising unused muscles, we were both developing some sore spots, and we took inventory as we hiked along Granite Creek. We were both getting blisters on our feet and various tender spots from our backpacks. Natalie's left hip hurt - not when she put weight on her leg, but when she lifted it. A nagging pain in the ball of my foot that I'd been nursing and thought I was almost over had flared up. But none of these things really slowed us down significantly, and on the positive side we'd had three days to acclimate to the altitude, so climbing seemed easier, if anything.

This section of the trail was well defined and easy to follow. It ran along the left or northwest side of Granite Creek and was surrounded on either side by a broad expanse of meadows full of flowers and littered with boulders.

On this section of the trail, the scenery was generally better to our left, away from Granite Creek, but our full attention was drawn to the creek on two occasions when its babble changed to a roar as it dropped into deep gorges. Natalie stood on the edge to take the pictures below while I held onto one of the straps of her backpack.

To be continued...

Into the Wild - Our Gros Ventre Adventure Continued...

I posted this picture in my last entry but I'm posting it again because I want to point out that those mountains in the far distance - the ones you can barely see - are the Tetons. At least I'm pretty sure they are. In real life they didn't seem so far away and small. That's a problem with several of our pictures. The camera didn't do justice to the scale and drama of some of the things we saw. I'm saying this now to prepare you for the anticlimax of our one and only bear picture, which is underwhelming at best.

A detail of our first day's hike that I forgot to mention is that Natalie almost literally stumbled upon a porcupine. This was in the afternoon, on the trail along Flat Creek. We were both looking at our feet, Natalie in front, when it waddled across the trail just a step or two ahead of us. It's funny that although neither of us had ever seen a porcupine (even in a zoo, as far as I can recall), we instantly knew what it was. I say it waddled, but it was alarmed and moving as fast as it could. Its quills were on end, and we were lucky we didn't end up with any of them imbedded in our legs.

At the end of my last entry, Natalie and I had just ascended a ridge on our way to Turquoise Lake and had taken a lot of pictures of the surrounding mountains. As we descended, we found ourselves surrounded by small rivulets of snowmelt threading their way down the ridge with us. In several places, the trail doubled as a channel for one of these tiny streams and we had to choose between walking in water or picking our way over the rough ground next to the trail.

Approaching Turqoise Lake, we crossed a series of three fairly wide streams. While we were stopped at one of them collecting water, a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service came along from the direction we were headed, riding one horse and leading another. She was a young lady, friendly and interested to hear what had brought us to the Gros Ventre and how our trip was going. She was especially interested in our bear sighting. We told her all about it and she seemed to think we had handled it about right. She gave us some tips on trail conditions and bear safety and suggested some routes we might want to try.

After we'd been talking to her for a few minutes, another ranger who was apparently her partner caught up with her. He too was riding a horse and had another in tow. He smiled and greeted us but was not talkative. We would see them again next day, and often saw evidence of them in the form of horse tracks or branches recently cleared from the trail. Knowing they were out there somewhere was reassuring, even if we didn't know exactly where they were at any given time. I regret not getting their names or pictures of them.

The last mile or so to Turquoise Lake was wooded and there were big snowdrifts covering the trail in places. Sometimes we went around, sometimes through. Sometimes it was hard to pick up the trail on the other side. We didn't see Turquoise Lake until we were practically there, so the sight burst upon us all at once. It would be hard to imagine a more picturesque scene. I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

To be continued...

Goldilocks and the Six Bears

Last Monday through Thursday, July 13 through 16, Natalie and I backpacked in the Gros Ventre Wilderness in northwestern Wyoming. The Gros Ventre is east of Jackson, a little south of the Tetons and Yellowstone, and north of the Wind River Range. It’s less well known and has far fewer visitors than those areas. You can go days without seeing other hikers. The trails are narrow, hard to follow in places, and as we discovered, sometimes disappear completely. The terrain is rugged and diverse, with mountains, gorges, rock slides, wetlands, and lots of swift streams from snowmelt.

I don’t remember exactly when or how the idea for this trip came about, but I think Natalie suggested it first, inspired by the movie and book Into the Wild. I started researching locations and buying the gear months ago. Neither of us had any prior experience with backpacking and our only preparation was “reading up” and one overnight trip to Indian Cave State Park a couple hours away in southeastern Nebraska.

We arrived in Jackson last Sunday afternoon, did a little sightseeing around town, had dinner at a nice restaurant (The Bunnery), and spent Sunday night in a motel just north of town across from the National Elk Refuge. Early the next morning, our bulging backpacks behind us in the cab of the pickup and listening to Eddie Vedder's Into the Wild soundtrack, we headed toward the Gros Ventre. On our way, we stopped in at the ranger station in Jackson, as I’d read you should, to “check in,” tell them our plans and ask about current conditions – whether particular trails had been cleared, whether certain streams were too high to cross, etc.

The lady we talked to didn’t seem used to being asked such questions and didn’t have many answers. She told us generally that streams might be high and unsafe to cross, and pointed out the southern approach we were planning to take was all uphill. (“I know that,” I wanted to say. As a mountain man wannabe, I was probably too sensitive to perceived criticism, but her tone seemed to ask, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”) And no, they didn’t have the bear-resistant tubes I had heard they rented; we could get those next door at the visitor’s center. I gathered there was not really a procedure for “checking in” since she hadn’t asked our names or anything else about us.

“Does that help?” she asked, bringing the interview to an end.

“Yes," I lied. "Thanks."

We went next door to the visitor’s center where a man in a ranger uniform confirmed they did indeed have bear-resistant food containers. While he went to get one, another guy in civilian clothes gave us a sales pitch for bear spray. I told him we already had a can of pepper spray – the kind made for fending off muggers. He patiently explained that my little can of pepper spray would only make bears madder; I needed genuine bear spray – basically the same stuff but in a bigger can under higher pressure that projects a 30-foot fog. He was very convincing, and with my daughter standing there, depending on her city-slicker dad to protect her from bears and other dangers, how could I say no? I bought the bear spray, thinking of it as insurance against a highly unlikely event. I would soon know better.

With our bear spray and bear-resistant food tube, and wearing backpacks weighing 30-plus pounds each, Natalie and I headed “into the wild.” Our point of departure was a trailhead just southeast of Jackson on the Cache Creek Trail. For the first three or four miles, the trail was wide enough to accommodate tour groups in covered wagons. Gradually it narrowed to a ribbon of bare dirt and rock shared by hikers and mountain bikers, and then to an even narrower path kept barely intact by infrequent footsteps of humans and animals.

The first several hours were indeed all uphill. We reached the top of a ridge between Cache Peak to our right and another unnamed peak to our left by early afternoon. As we climbed, the landscape gradually changed from forest to meadows full of tall flowers to snow drifts, huge rock slides, and rocky soil sparsely dotted with small, delicate-looking but hardy mountain flowers.

We had gone from an elevation of about 6,000 feet in Jackson to about 10,000 feet at the top of the ridge. The view was spectacular and we took several pictures. My heart was pounding from the climb and the altitude to which our bodies hadn’t acclimated yet. Natalie’s endurance was about the same as mine so we made good hiking partners.

As we descended the ridge, enjoying the equally magnificent view from the other side, we started thinking about where to camp. We hadn’t tried to decide on campsites in advance because we had no idea how much ground we’d be able to cover per day. Besides, there are no designated campsites in the Gros Ventre; you just find a good place and pitch your tent.

We decided to go north along a trail that follows Flat Creek. With hindsight, this was not a great choice. The area around Flat Creek was heavily wooded and mosquito-infested. At least we were walking downhill now, going the same direction as the loud, swiftly flowing creek off to our right. Eventually we found a good-sized clearing between the creek on one side and a steep hill on the other and pitched our tent.

While looking for a good tree from which to hang our food for the night (a standard precaution in bear country), I noticed a smallish furry creature rolling around, apparently playing, a couple hundred yards up the hillside. I called Natalie over to look. As my eyes adjusted, the furry creature turned into two furry creatures, and two facts dawned on me: the two fur balls were bear cubs, and their mother could not be far away. By then Natalie had joined me and her eyes instantly found the mama bear a little to the left of the cubs. Mama bear looked right at us, and Natalie would later tell me she heard her make a bellowing noise just before the three of them scurried away.

Suddenly our clearing on Flat Creek didn’t seem like such a great campsite, but it was late and there was no guarantee we could find a better place before dark. I had learned the basics of bear safety, but couldn’t answer all of Natalie’s questions. Would the bears probably keep moving now that they’d seen us? Or did the fact that we’d spotted them here probably mean they lived here? And if one family of bears lived here, were there probably others? Once we’d disappeared into our tent, would they come snooping around looking for food? I don’t remember exactly how I answered these questions, but I couldn’t have sounded very reassuring since I had the same questions myself.

In the end, we decided to stay put. After dinner, with Natalie assisting, I did the best job I could of hanging our food, but I’d never done it for real, only practiced on a tree in our backyard. It turned out to be harder under game conditions than in practice. We also changed out of the clothes we’d cooked and eaten in and hung those too. This is a standard recommendation that I gather most campers don’t actually follow because of the inconvenience of it, but having seen bears 200 yards from out campsite, we were going by the book. After settling into our tent, playing a few hands of cards, and scanning the clearing and hillside several times without seeing the bears again, our nerves were a little calmer, and we turned in for the night.

Nights in the Gros Ventre were cold and that first one was the coldest and most restless. When I got up at first light there was frost covering our tent. I went straight to the tree we'd hung our food from, lowered the bags and bear-resistant tube and was relieved to find them untouched. While Natalie slept, I lit our small camp stove and made coffee and oatmeal. The warm food and drink was great in the cold mountain air. After breakfast, I did a few chores, woke Natalie, lit the stove again and made hot chocolate and oatmeal for her.

With breakfast done and our things packed, we went down to the Flat Creek to replenish our water supply. We purified our water with a battery-operated ultraviolet light. The first couple of times we collected water, we also ran it through a filter to remove any particles, but eventually dropped this step because the water was crystal-clear to begin with and the filter never trapped anything.

On Tuesday, we headed back up Flat Creek the way we'd come the day before. We had decided to hike to Turquoise Lake, a relatively short trek compared to what we'd done on Monday, and make our next camp there. Once again we were climbing, but our legs weren't as fresh and our bodies were still adjusting to the altitude. Around noon, we got back to the place where we'd started our side-trip down Flat Creek and this time headed east toward Turquoise Lake. We soon found ourselves climbing another ridge between two peaks, much as we'd done Monday. But this time we were starting from a higher altitude. This climb was shorter and the slope not as steep. When we reached the top of the ridge we were rewarded with the best, most panoramic views of the trip.

To be continued….