Week 1 with Enrollees (Part 1)

On Monday I decided that since I didn’t work until 1500, I had plenty of time to hike up Sepulcher in the morning after breakfast. My plan was to do the Sepulcher loop starting from Snow Pass in the clockwise direction—about 11.5 miles. It was pretty rainy in the morning, so I took all my rain gear with me, which I later ditched to my backpack after about the first half hour of rain—then sunshine (and wind) the rest of the day.

So first of all, the Snow Pass trailhead isn’t even labeled; it’s just a pull-off on the side of the road. After that, it was pretty much smooth sailing until I hit all the snow. I was in a “stop and smell the roses” kind of mood today, so I didn’t actually get up there that quickly—it took me about 3 hours to get to the top. Honestly, if Julie Andrews had been there, I could’ve filmed “The Hills are Alive”. The scenery was perfect. I compared the long switchbacks with the wooden poles at the edges to a giant slalom, which is exactly what it felt like I was doing, except slower.

View South on the way up to Sepulcher

From the top of Sepulcher, you look down on Bunsen Peak to the southeast and you have a fantastic view of Electric Peak to the west. It’s super pretty. You can also see Gardiner, MT to the north. Unfortunately from the top I couldn’t seem to find the trail down to continue my loop, and not wanting to get lost and be late for work, I decided to cut my losses and go down the same way I came—the south route. That means I slid down all the snow I had just walked up and then meandered down the giant slalom switchbacks and passed the Julie Andrews meadow…etc.

Electric Peak from Sepulcher

View west from Sepulcher

Gardiner and a couple of the rock formations that Sepulcher was named for

The good news was that it only took me two hours to get down, even with my lunch stop, so I still had two hours to kill before work. I went into Mammoth and signed up for the 100-Mile Club (which I added another 10.6 mi to today). She said that once you fill that up, they give you a 500-Mile Club thing that you can work on forever; the 100-Mile one has to be done by the end of the season. Don’t worry guys, I’m already at 81.4. :D

Whoops, forgot to mention that I took the Youth Leaders hiking at Beaver Ponds near Mammoth on Sunday before all the rest of the enrollees got here. The area had a ton of flowers…but other than that…it was ponds. Yay. It was cool though because the Youth Leaders are pretty awesome.

Unknown Flower #1

Unknown Flower #2

Unknown Flower #3

The past couple days have been a little crazy. Tuesday sucked because it was snowing and raining all dang day, so I couldn’t go hiking before work at 1500. On Wednesday I hiked the Agate Creek trail over in the Tower area. I saw a ton of wildlife! There was this one bison that was being a royal pain in the butt and just kept moseying along the trail in front of me, going unreasonably slow. Then he headed up the hill to the side, only to get in front of me later. Brat. I am quite confident the one lady that I saw on the trail who was also avoiding said stubborn bison thought I was way too close, even though the rule for bison is 25 yards. I’m 99% confident that I was >25 yards away, so she was probably one of those confused tourons who thinks all animals are 100 yards away. Silly. Although I do prefer that to the stupidheads that think it’s okay to go try to touch all the bison and elk they see. NO!

I also saw a gazillion pronghorn antelope. They run really fast. And really far. And they’re just way cooler than me haha

The problem with all this wildlife was that they also make trails, and their trails happen to look practically identical to the human trail. And when you’re hiking on rolling plains with little to no trail markers and there are intersections of trails everywhere, it makes life pretty tricky. There are supposed to be these poles in the ground with a rock pile at the base of them, but it’s so windy out there and there are so many bison that almost every single one that I found was just lying on the ground—not visible until you get right next to it, which completely defeats the purpose. I really just went with my gut the whole time on the way there, and doing so I was heaving grounding my feet (aka stomping sometimes) in the dirt so that I’d be able to identify my bootprint on the way back. Analogous to a trail of breadcrumbs. (Spoiler alert: it worked great—I made it back.)

Tourons being tourons...stacking bones.

Anyways, after all that meandering across the plains and seeing all the wildlife, the trail enters the treeline and you trek down many, many feet into the canyon and arrive at the campsite at the end of the trail next to the Yellowstone River. Bam. Lunch spot. Great view.

I left the campsite at noon to turn around and head back to the trailhead because I had to be back in Mammoth for bear safety training by 1600 and traffic is crazy. I didn’t have near as many problems on the way back; the bison had mostly dispersed, except when I got closer to the Specimen Ridge trailhead—they were out in full force and there were two rangers there, essentially making sure none of the tourons did anything stupid. Because there were lots of tourons crowding the area!

Bear safety training again confirmed that over 50% of bear attacks happen to solo hikers…blah blah blah “Do as I say, not as I do.” I’m fine. Thanks. Also, I’m now at 94.2 miles. On Wednesday nights, they have EMS review down at the Mammoth Community Center, so my coworker Bobby and I went to that, along with two other people from the YCC that were just interested in learning things. It’s only an hour and a half, and it’s a great refresher of skills that you might not do all the time, or just things that are common in the park. I spent all dang day on Thursday in Lake at the clinic in a Yellowstone EMT Endorsement class. It’s the class you have to take before you’re allowed to practice in the park. I also have to fill out some kind of “white card” application that acts as my state license while I’m in Yellowstone (because it’s not a state…). Honestly, the class wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t been told the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong amount of time it took to get there. I left the YCC facility around 5:30 to get to Lake by 8:00—because I was told it would take almost 2.5 hours to get there because of the road closure between Mammoth and Norris. I got to the Lake Employee Mess Hall by 7:00. I took a short nap in my car while I waited. Then I found out that they moved it to the Lake Ranger Station because the mess hall got double-booked with trainings today. So at the Ranger Station I found out that it was actually at 9:00 and they moved it to the Lake Clinic because the Lake Ranger Station wasn’t heated and didn’t have quite enough space. So then I went to Lake Clinic and didn’t leave there until about 1745, arriving back at the YCC facility at about 1930. Ugh, what a way to spend a day off. Oh well, hurray for continuing ed credits…

Also, I know you guys probably don’t get to hear about this kind of stuff outside the park, but EMS in Yellowstone is stretched super thin right now, and often times all of the ambulances are being utilized. There have been five deaths in the park in the past week—and one of those was the giant SAR that used up a ton of resources. Yesterday in Lake alone, they had two. Also, Boy Scout troops are wreaking havoc on Yellowstone Lake—“group one” had a capsized kayak and a rescue necessary last night (Wed.), “group two” had capsizes and rescues needed last night, and then “group one” had another rescue this morning. The rangers brought the boys all back in a boat because they didn’t want to go get them anymore because they clearly sucked at kayaking. Moral of the story is, if you’re coming from SoCal with a group of Boy Scouts—maybe practice kayaking before you decide to come to Yellowstone Lake…it’s pretty dang big. Merit badge fail.

We did, however, just get funding for 14 Lucas automated CPR machines, which are super cool! Once you get the hang of learning how to use them (aka what we did for 2+ hours today), they work really slick. And they don’t stop when you have to move a patient, so they could come in really handy in a lot of situations in Yellowstone. The park is also getting two new ambulances—one to replace the ‘95 Chevy in Lake, and the other as an addition to the fleet in the park.

Well, that’s my life-in-Yellowstone life update right now. For the record, I only fell asleep in class three times today. Not bad at all. And the one time we were in small groups and our paramedic guy jokingly called me out on it, I was able to recap everything discussed to him satisfactorily enough that he didn’t even think I was sleeping. Winner winner chicken dinner. :)