We woke to cold, icy tents at 34 degrees. RockStar struggled throughout the day, partly due to the knee injury, partly due to lack of conditioning because of the knee injury and partly due to added weight on pack and body. She panted even on downhill walking.
It was a pretty day with an assortment of views and flowers, high mountains south of the Tetons, and the Tetons, too, in full view. Purple fleabane, a tall stemmed cinquefoil, the ubiquitous many shades of buckwheat, pale larkspur and yarrow lined the trail and filled the meadows.
I took over getting water as I could get there first and fill and treat containers before RockStar arrived. The trail was pretty good save for a few boggy spots, but we still fell short of our goal. Shortly before stopping, we met Jasper and Margolin from the Netherlands. A tenth of a mile short of water on top of a bunch of molehills was as far as RockStar could manage. No good trees for hanging, we needed to have only short bears in the area that night.
It was again cold in the morning, but the sun was bright in a clear sky, vastly different than the last time we had been in Wyoming. Near the middle of this four-day trip, we contemplated going back to the car because of RockStar’s knee. But RockStar didn’t want to go back and moved pretty well in the morning.
Two SOBO section hikers in their 60s passed us, and I chatted with them, immediately forgetting their names. RockStar didn’t chat. Slowly and determinedly, step by step, she continued up the hill. While I attended to nature’s needs, RockStar continued to Sheridan Creek, always slow, but always moving. A herd of cows followed her slow walk, attracted to her slow amble like a cow’s Pied Piper.
Fording the creek, water was a little too cloudy to use with our treatment systems, so we went on to the next spring and left the cows happily wallowing in the creek behind us. I went ahead to get water, RockStar barely moving. She was one tough woman to keep moving even at a crawl.
While at the spring, Oil Can and Phantom, whom I’d met at Big Hole Pass, came SOBO. We watered up, climbed to the top of the ridge near a dirt road, and found our campsites before dark. Rusty passed us and told us eight more SOBOs were coming—the large group I’d seen back at Big Hole Pass.
Over the next hour, headlamps came through the forest twice, getting directions about marshy meadows, and going on in the dark. I thought they were nuts to walk in the dark, but they were young and no doubt reached their goal.
RockStar's knee was toast. I wondered if I should hit the SOS button on the inReach, but thought I should pursue other avenues of help first. We were camped beside a road, but tracing it on our device maps through many changes of elevation and creek crossings, we concluded that my car couldn’t reach our campsite. RockStar wasn't going anywhere. Besides her knee, her breathing was terrible. Having seen the metal shine of a camper farther down the creek we had forded, I planned to check it out in the morning, setting the alarm for 5:00. Leaving my pack with RockStar, I walked .8 miles down the road assuming it went to the camper.
I’d gone only a short ways when a cute, small dog, and two riders on horses met me coming up the road. Bona fide cowpokes, they were headed to push the herd where they wanted them to graze. I told them of RockStar's plight, and they assured me they would get her to DuBois if folks in the camper by the creek could not. Much relieved at a possible solution for RockStar, I continued down the road to the creek and forded across. Addressing the camper with a loud good morning, I woke them up, and they were not terribly receptive. I heard the woman wondering why I didn’t just press my SOS button for search and rescue.
Apologizing for waking them and thanking them for listening, I said the cowboys would get her out. Returning to RockStar, I told her she had a way out if she could go .8 mile and ford a creek not even the cowboy's truck would cross. I was confident she could get that far. She was ready to go and limped slowly down the road. She told me later it took her an hour.
She actually had a good day, many thanks to Eli and Ashly, cowboy and cowgirl. After taking care of their cows, they took RockStar to town, and RockStar learned about pushing cows and cattle operations, which she enjoyed.
A solution found for RockStar, I had a lot of miles to cover and a late start. Stopping short of our planned mileage for two days, I had to make up that mileage plus hike the distance planned for the day. The first couple miles had difficulties I was glad RockStar had not faced— blowdowns and fording a wide creek. A spring spread its rivulets broadly over a whole hill I had to climb though cows had trampled it to a muddy mess.
After keeping my feet dry by taking the time to switch to crocs, the next several meadows were boggy with unavoidable large stretches of wet marsh. Wet feet became inevitable; it had been pointless to have bothered with crocs earlier. I met Happy in the meadow, a 60-something NOBO. He warned me about two tricky left turns in a burn area, but I missed them both anyway, though because I checked Guthook on my phone frequently, I didn't get too far off trail either time.
The burn was very fresh-looking, with lots of black char, last year’s fire. This year's flowers were loving the openness of the forest to the sun, bright yellow daisies and fireweed happy in black char. Four miles of my day were on fairly good dirt road on which I made excellent time.
I heard from RockStar by inReach satellite text. She was OK and had made it to the motel. RockStar didn’t quite finish Wyoming, but if there was ever an ”A for effort,” she earned that and then some.
The next day was the eclipse. We drove out to Union Pass to get RockStar’s car and find a place to view the eclipse. On a five mile stretch of road on a high open plateau, a zoo of people were camping or had driven out to see the eclipse like us, a camping show, passing tent and camper rigs of all kinds. We chose our ridge for watching the eclipse, an event RockStar and millions of people across the USA had been anticipating. RockStar had eclipse glasses, and we had chairs she’d brought for car camping.
I made myself a bagel with cream cheese, and we sat in style viewing the eclipse and taking pictures with four different cameras with mixed results. RockStar got a gorgeous picture of Totality. Someone in a group near us called Totality a wedding ring in the sky. The drastic drop in temperature was a stark reminder of how much we need that sun to have life on earth. After the eclipse, we joined the cavalcade of cars down the dirt road to the highway to DuBois.
Bedbugs and Deadman
The next day we went back to Lima, and RockStar was still limping badly. In the morning, I discovered bedbugs don’t only live in France and Spain. Though we had stayed in that motel many times over three years, this was the first time there were bedbugs. Travelers bring them. Travelers suffer from them. I was sorry for the owners as they were nice people who helped hikers. I was sorry for me because I had lots of bites. Seeing one crawl on my white nightshirt, we knocked it into the sink and sent it down the drain with lots of hot water. It was about three times bigger than the variety I’d seen in France, but it was a bedbug, and I had the bites to prove it.
Bedbugs or not, I was hiking. I didn’t want to place my car by the creek where RockStar had dropped me off several days ago as the forecast was for rain, and I didn't want to risk trouble driving up a muddy hill. Parking at the top of the hill added another .5 mile.
RockStar then drove me to Nicholia Creek. I didn't go very fast on my steady uphill climb, but I made reasonable time over sagebrush hills, walking by flowers past their prime, red spots added by the leaves of spent buckwheat. Flying grasshoppers whirred and popped around me. It had become late summer in Montana, while we were in Wyoming.
Completing the climb, I headed down to Deadman Creek for water and Deadman Lake for camping. I wondered who the Deadman was? Who’d found him? Did he have a name? Whose son was he? Who grieved for him? Did they ever know he’d died?
A few flowers bloomed on the lake-side of the ridge, larkspur, rabbit brush, a greenish yellow paintbrush, a few blossoms of shrubby cinquefoil, yellow monkey flower. A cloudy day, the views disappeared in the haze.
In the morning the
still lake perfectly reflected the few pines on the sagebrush hills. Starting up a 900-foot climb out of the canyon, I saw a pretty whitetail deer. Even though the hills were dry, the views were interesting. According to posted signs, there were two Bannack Passes about three miles apart—odd. I reached the second one about 12:30. Time for lunch? Nope. Clouds were building, the sky was turning black, and thunder was booming. There were no sheltering trees, and my car was 3.3 miles off trail in open country. Halfway there I had to hoist the umbrella and put on the pack cover. Walking through the creek, I continued up the hill to the car. Nice car, sitting there waiting for me. As I drove back, I began getting messages from RockStar on the inReach.
They’d changed her room. In the new room she been eaten alive by more bedbugs. Refunded for the next two nights, we drove to Dillon for bedbug-free lodging. I gobbled cashews, jerky, and dried pears in lieu of lunch and drove to Dillon and met RockStar at the laundromat.
We washed all our clothes in hot water and dried them on hot, the only thing that kills bedbugs for sure. We probably shrunk some things. We sprayed permethrin on duffle bags, my sleeping bag, and my down jacket, all before we checked into the motel. It was more difficult to get bedbug-free than it had been in France because we had more stuff and we had cars. Our stuff had been sitting in our cars. How could I guarantee the critters had not crawled somewhere, now hidden in the car? Bedbugs can live a whole year without feeding, and very little kills the nasty critters. We did everything we could think of as a precaution against being carriers. Unsuspecting travelers carrying bedbugs from place to place is how they spread. I knew more about bedbugs from my trip to France than I’d ever wanted to know, and I hoped I’d never need that knowledge again.
Between hiking and extensive laundry and bedbug precautions, I felt like I’d done two days’ work in one day. Finally checked into the motel, I had my shower and sealed my hiking clothes in a plastic bag until I could wash them. We had dinner at a little Mexican place with excellent food, came back to the motel, and crashed.
Nicholia Creek North
The next day I was back out on the trail in another set of hiking clothes. Originally planning to hike the section in four days, I’d looked at the elevation changes and added another day. My first day was short, but it had 1,700-feet elevation gain as I ambled along the trail.
At Bear Creek, the stepping stones didn't work for me, so I changed to crocs and went wading, rearranging rocks, thinking RockStar, even with a bad knee, could have crossed on my improvements, my small bit for trail maintenance.
Harkness Lakes had at least 20 ducks on pretty ponds tucked in folds of sagebrush hills surrounded by shrubby cinquefoil. I walked under my umbrella for shade, and a big Spruce provided better shade at Cottonwood Creek.
The next morning didn’t start well. RockStar had told me an update on Guthook said it was easy to lose the trail at a creek crossing. No lie. I couldn't find the trail for half a mile, though I was crisscrossing Guthook's red line many times while climbing a steep hill in the woods. Numerous cows on multiple cow paths wondered what I was doing there.
After frustrating, hard, slow work, I finally found a CDT post 45 minutes later. There was little tread for much of the first 6 miles. Climbing 2,300 feet to the Divide, I walked cross-country looking for posts or cairns. Sometimes trail was discernible in bent grass. Sometimes not.
Checking Guthook frequently and walking cross-country takes longer than walking on even poor trail. While carving my own way on open uphill steepness, a NOBO passed me. But he was closer to the next cairn than I, and we never talked. Watching him speed ahead uphill, I felt my age in comparison.
It took until nearly 4:00 to cover only six miles. Mercifully, after the Coyote Creek junction the trail had tread again. I saw a deer with a mangy coat and one of the giant gray bugs called Mormon Grasshoppers, inspiration for nightmares or sci-fi horror shows.
There were few flowers. What gentians still bloomed were quite small though still their familiar bright blue. Passing the top of Tex Creek, a NOBO from Germany named Horst caught up with me. I’d climbed to the Divide in the morning and then almost back down to the flat valley we’d driven in on. Arriving at lower Tex Creek, I found Horst ready to cook his dinner. After my tent was up and the food-bag rope hung, I ate my dinner with him as he had his coffee, and we chatted.
In the morning I arranged stepping stones again at the second Tex Creek crossing, then meandered through sagebrush foothills on a jeep road, under sun hot enough to need the umbrella. Tired by the time I reached Morrison Lake nestled below Baldy Mountain, I sat in the shade by the lake eating lunch and looking at lady’s thumb, water smartweed. I had no problem getting water. My problem was carrying a full load up 800 feet on steep jeep road. Lugging that load to 9,000-feet was almost more than I could do.
Well, I did do it, but I chose to stop early for the night, my age showing again. Putting up the tent, I crawled inside and didn’t move for an hour. Gradually I came to and entertained myself by flicking ants off my mosquito netting. Must have set the tent near an anthill. I cleaned up with the sloppy wet bandana I’d carried from the lake, all the water I could spare in a dry country. I was glad my pack would be lighter in the morning.
I talked to a thru hiker passing my tent in the morning and set out for a high country day walking over hill after rounded hill of high Divide above the tree line. I looked at Idaho on one side or Montana on the other. I followed an old jeep track and watched clouds and storms around me but avoided rain. Sun directly overhead, I was hot under my umbrella.
A young hunter at the end of a jeep road was surprised to see an old lady on the trail. The last chunk of trail real trail, not road, I toiled upwards in the sun, while the young hunter breezing by me headed to his camp on the other side of the Divide. Near the top, just short of a low spot on the Divide, a beautiful spring flowed into a metal tank. Watering up, I promptly lost the trail. After stumbling around a little, I was found again and pitched my tent by some trees providing shelter from the wind.
That night as darkness fell, I crawled out of my tent to pee and saw the young hunter, who had come back for water. He pointed out the coyotes I could just barely make out as moving shapes in the almost dark as they ran over the meadow, both of us smiling to see them. Saying goodnight, he trudged on with his water, and I tucked in for the night listening to coyotes.
In the morning, coyotes still noisy, I woke early, a little short of breath. Since I was awake, I had an early start and was on top of Elk Mountain at 8:15. The trail didn't quite go to the summit, but I scrambled to the top over talus, to superb views in all directions. From the summit I could see the Bannock Pass Road and parts of my trail reaching it 11 miles away. Carefully picking my way over the talus back down to the trail, I resumed my job for the day: reaching Bannock Pass.
The long downhill trail was evenly graded until the jeep road began. Even this late in the season there were flowers: lupine, yarrow, rabbit brush and sorrel. Buckwheat had dried up, leaving leaf mats turning red. The sky was cloudy much of the day, for which I was thankful, amazed how hot the sun was when it cleared the clouds, like a switch flipped to preheat an oven.
Jeep tracks went straight up and straight down hills. Deadman Pass was the worst— another dead man, whose unknown history rattled in my mind.
Clouds turned menacingly dark and threatened rain. There were no trees for cover, and the wind blew fiercely, but I needed lunch. The sharp notch that was the pass had a two-to-three-foot drop on the east side by the border fence, and it was all the shelter I could find. My break was short. I gobbled cheese and crackers and fixed the rest to stuff in pack pouches to eat along the way. Raindrops told me I might as well walk and eat under my umbrella, its handle jammed in my bra to keep the wind from ripping it away. I had my Dri Ducks on to ward off icy cold wind on the jeep road going straight up from Deadman Pass.
Shortly after that bit of drama, the squall went elsewhere, whipped away by the wind. I took my jacket of
f but kept the umbrella up to keep from frying in the sun. I went from icy cold to blazing heat in a few minutes. The rest of the day was up and down interminable hills until finally I came over the last rise to see RockStar’s car.
Canada
It took us three days to drive to Waterton, Canada. We toured Butte while waiting to get my air conditioning fixed. After a night in Lolo for inexpensive lodging, I got out of bed and my knee hurt—my good knee—for no reason whatsoever.
It wasn’t too unusual for me to have something stiffen for a little while. After all, I was 76. I thought a shower and moving around a bit would help. Nope. I’d been moving just fine before I went to bed. I’d been very happy that both knees had felt so good in 2017, better than I had any right to expect. I’d done nothing the day before but sit and drive my car. I’d done nothing to hurt that knee, even a little bit. But I got out of bed that morning, and the knee hurt all day.
Driving up the east side of Flathead Lake and into Glacier National Park, we heard the Sperry Chalet had been lost to fire the night before. Driving by Lake McDonald, we could see smoke billowing up the mountainside from the fire. The west side of Going to the Sun Road was only mildly smoky. But as soon as we reached Logan Pass we saw where all the smoke had been blown by the strong-and-gusty wind. The east side all the way to Saint Mary was very, very smoky, fresh smelling smoke.
We drove on to Babb, a town, as the saying goes, so small, if you blinked you would miss it. But we considered it a real find. The motel was newly remodeled and quite nice. The swelling in my knee went away overnight, though it still hurt. We left my car at Swift Current, where I hoped to see it in a few days if my knee would cooperate. Then we drove to Canada.
Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76 Page 49
