Well well well…where to begin...as Julie Andrews said,
“Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.” So we’ll
rewind to last weekend, July 1-2, for student backpacking weekend.
After my prior experience Tuesday with the Grebe Lake area,
I loaded up on bug spray for us and brought some mosquito nets for the
enrollees. It’s hard to fathom, but they were honestly worse than when I went.
I don’t even know how that’s possible. Matt, my youth leader, woke up looking
like he had chicken pox. We couldn’t sit down without being covered in them
like a blanket, even with a fire going, so we walked around to eat our supper
and breakfast. More on that later.
Once we got to the top of Observation Peak, we had a
snowball dodgeball fight between the six of us. One of my students, Adrian, was
from SoCal, so his snow experience was extremely limited. We made a tiny
snowman, some snow angels, and they slid down one of the hills a bunch.
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| Lukas, Adrian, Jonah, Matt, and Connor |
We stopped by the Cascade Lake group for a bit on the way
down. They weren’t doing a whole lot and Lexie was pretty bored with them. :)
They only had a two-mile hike on the way in…
We got back to camp, I started a fire, and we each ate our
allotted two hot dogs. After a full day of hiking which amounted to somewhere
in the 15-17 mile range, two hot dogs isn’t a lot of food—especially for
adolescent males. So we were a little hungry, but whatever. We had an
interesting time with our water pump, i.e. it didn’t work after the first two
people. Matt gave up after half a bottle, and I spent twenty minutes filling up
not even 8 oz. Luckily, I brought 4L with me, which is fine for me for two days
if I ration it—unfortunately one of my students drank one of the liters because
sharing is caring and he was thirsty. The rest of the students had gone through
their 2L that day while hiking, so I boiled a bunch in order to make it to the
next morning. We played cards in one of their tents until I had them go to bed
a little after 10:00. Sunday morning I had a bit of an interesting time with
breakfast because we were supposed to have breakfast burritos, but we didn’t
have any tortillas…makes life a little challenging. So instead I layered the
tater tots, beans, eggs, and cheese into the pot as a casserole. Next
problem…since we were eating burritos, I didn’t bring any bowls or utensils. So
we ate out of our lunch containers with sticks and I used a piece of bark to
serve them. Good times, good times. It worked better than one would think.
Also, I didn’t even pick out all the black beans. Be proud.
Since we didn’t want to hang around camp and get eaten
alive, I gave them some options as to what we could do on Sunday since we
didn’t have to be back to the YCC until 3:30. We ended up going to the Canyon
Visitor Center to fill up water bottles, and then heading to the Artist Point
area to hike down Uncle Tom’s trail. I was trying to get them to experience as
much of the park as possible before they leave in a week-ish, so sitting in the
burb playing cards wasn’t an option (although it was suggested by my
super-negative student).
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| Back: Bethany, Adrian, Lukas, Connor Front: Matt, Jonah |
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I can’t remember anything else pertinent from Sunday, so
we’ll move along to Monday when we sent the students off on their third and
final spike. After they left, I went down to Mammoth to talk to Joe Beuter to
have him explain some things about pages and EMS stuff. Later that afternoon,
we got called out for an MVC west of the High Bridge where a car had drifted
over the centerline, hit a motor home, and then fled the scene. None of the
four people in the motor home were seriously injured, but the driver’s side
window had been down so the mirror broke and sent glass flying throughout the
motor home. Luckily only superficial injuries so both patients were treated and
released. Hurray.
On Tuesday, after an hour of searching for the Mt. Holmes
trailhead, I gave up and decided that since the weather was absolutely perfect
I’d hike up Electric Peak. (It would’ve been the perfect day to go up Mt.
Holmes though because there was no construction due to the 4th and
law enforcement was plenty busy with other things to not worry about where my
car was parked. Oh well.) Anyways, so I started my journey to Electric from the
Glen Creek trailhead and meandered past the trail split to go up Sepulcher,
past Cache Lake, and to the base-ish area of the journey to the summit. On the
map it shows the trail up to the summit being 2.2 miles…well, it’s actually 4.2
so that added a solid 4 unexpected miles to my day. :P Here’s what I have to
say about Electric—there’s a reason that the NPS made it off-limits to the YCC
as a group. Holy heck. I honestly was so uncomfortable for parts of the
scramble up the peak that I considered turning around. All of the dirt and rock
is super loose and extremely exposed. It’s a real challenge to route-find the
best path to the top. So I get almost to the top and I’m looking at the last
20ish yards and I know that there’s no way I can do it, specifically no way I
can do it solo. The traverse to get there looked suicidal and I happen to not
have a death wish, especially with no one there to get help for me if I did
fall. So my stubbornness gave way to level-headedness and I returned to a
little flat part where I could eat my pb&j and call my mother—because July
4th happens to be her birthday. I also sent Nicole (my
sister-in-law) a video Snap of where I was so that she could show her/my dad/my
brother. Bottom-line, Electric is cool and has great views, but uhh maybe it’s
only for the brave of heart or the really stupid folks not concerned about
their safety or for people more skilled than me. :D
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| On the way up... |
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| View west from almost-summit |
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| Just chilling eating my pb&j next to this person's memorial... |
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| South from Electric |
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| Sepulcher and Cache Lake |
When I got back to the YCC, I was positively starving and I
was sad that I was missing another 4th of July picnic at my
grandma’s house. Maggie and Pooja made homemade pizzas and I made chocolate
chip cookies. I found a recipe that looked good and didn’t know how many it
made, so I tripled it. I made 91 chocolate chip cookies haha. Thank goodness I
was in an industrial-sized kitchen with a bazillion ingredients and huge ovens
to bake a full sheet pan at once. Holy heck they were delicious. (As of right
now on Friday morning at 0900 there are less than 10 left. Caleb said, “These
are to die for.” Look, I did something right!)
After we finished cleaning the kitchen, we went to Gardiner
to watch fireworks from the hillside. I drove and of course, threw in my spare
uniform because everyone knows that EMS and fire crews hate July 4th.
People are so dumb on this holiday in particular. There was a fire at one of
the hotels in Gardiner because somebody lit a firework too close to the
building. There was a 9-year old with a broken arm at the Mammoth Amphitheater.
There was a 14-year old with a stubbed toe that started to bleed. (No, I didn’t
respond to the stubbed toe. In fact, I started laughing so I’m aware that I’m
kind of a bad person sometimes…) But then the real doozy of the night (or
week…maybe month…) came and a guy blew his hand off in Gardiner at The Cowboy.
The page was for Gardiner EMS and Mammoth ALS, but I was in Gardiner so I
stopped by to see if they needed help. That was absolutely nuts. Just nuts.
DON’T SCREW AROUND WITH FIREWORKS. I don’t know what info has been released to
the public about the incident, so that’s where I’ll stop with those two
patients. There was another call in the wee hours of the morning around 0330
for an intoxicated, unresponsive person, but that was also in Gardiner so I
didn’t respond to that either after I realized they just needed Mammoth ALS
again.
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| Hello again Electric Peak...long time, no see... |
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| Bethany, Maria, Maggie, Pooja, Emily |
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| Fireworks in Gardiner |
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| Fireworks in Gardiner |
I slept in on Wednesday until about 7:00, so I didn’t get to
Seven Mile Hole until after 9:00. Right now Inspiration Point is closed, so you
have to park in one of the pullouts on North Rim Drive and walk along the road
until you get to the trailhead. After that it’s a fun five miles down into the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. More challenging are the five miles back up
out of the canyon. ;) I thought it was a fairly enjoyable hike, even if the
thermal areas smell terrible. I’ll never get used to or appreciate that smell.
However, if you get to eat a pb&j right next to the Yellowstone River in
the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, you can suffer through some sulfur smells
en-route.
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| Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone |
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| Mt. Washburn |
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| Silver Cord Cascade |
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| Yellowstone River |
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| Lunch spot by the Yellowstone River |
Our EMS training on Wednesday night was at Gardiner Fire
Hall and it was a debrief of the night before and helicopter training. So that
was pretty cool with all the chopper staff. They had the Gardiner folks practice
hot-loading patients onto the chopper. DOI regulations prohibit hot-loading
patients inside the park, so the NPS EMS peoples couldn’t do it. :( Oh,
hot-loading means that the chopper is still up and running/blades-turning while
you load the patient. So inside the park, the chopper has to shut down and the
blades have to come to a stop. Crystal clear? Great.
Yesterday (Thursday), I went to Pelican Cone. The Pelican
Valley Bear Management Area just opened on July 4th so I was pretty
excited. It’s only open from 0900 to 1900 for safety purposes. The Pelican
Valley BMA has the highest grizzly population/concentration in the lower 48
states. So naturally, I went hiking by myself. ;) Actually, at the trailhead I
met this couple, Rick and Mary Lou, from Massachusetts-ish. I spent the first
3.5 miles with them until we got to the place where they turned around and I
had a stream to ford. They were
super fantastic and I really enjoyed talking to them! They sold their house
about four years ago and have been traveling the U.S. ever since. They’ve been
in Yellowstone for the past fourteen days. They told me all about the master
cleanse they went on, how they became vegan, the day that Rick got tired of
being vegan so he ate 15 slices of pizza and was sick for many days afterwards,
and just all about some of their adventures. Great people. See crappy picture
below.
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| Rick and Mary Lou |
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| Pelican Valley |
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| Pelican Valley |
So the next few miles of the trail weren’t bad. The area is
absolutely gorgeous! There were bison everywhere and no grizzlies. I got to
this funky looking old sign that for a second looked exactly like the MASH
sign, until I got closer. Then it was just a disappointing old sign that you
couldn’t read anymore. This trail had four bridges, the first of which was still
in the water—the rest were just piles of old wood next to the streams. Cool.
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| The not-MASH sign |
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| Mountains east of Pelican Valley |
The ratio of blazes to wildlife trails was the inverse of what it should have
been. So awful to the point that the trail completely vanished when I was about
1.5-2 miles from the top. Being the stubborn human that I am, I didn’t come all
that way to not get to the top. The ranger cabin/lookout was visible from my
location, so I bushwhacked to the top. Instead of 20-30 minutes, it took me two
hours. Imagine that you’re playing a classic game of Pick-Up Sticks and
somebody dumps them out all over a mountain area. Now you’re a tiny little ant
that is trying to get to the top of the pile by walking up all the sticks.
That’s an analogy of what I did, except with lodgepole pines that were dead
from the 1988 fire, but there were also new trees that were trying to make your
life more difficult by blocking the path to the top. Jeez Louise it felt like
it took forever. And yet somehow the view from the top was worth it all.
Naturally by the time I made it up there, it had started storming. Who wants to
guess how much good a raincoat does when you accidentally leave it in your car?
(Rhetorical question folks.)
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| Storm over Pelican Valley and Yellowstone Lake |
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| Yellowstone Lake from Pelican Cone |
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| West from Pelican Cone |
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| North from Pelican Cone |
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| Pelican Cone |
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| Hadn't been written in since last September |
Previously I had followed the trail until I was north of the
summit and then come up that side. Well on the way down, I lost the trail
immediately after it left the top, so I came down the west side in order to cut
down on some time. Keep in mind that I was supposed to be out of the area and
back at the trailhead by 1900. By the time I reached the top, it was 1500. You
do the math; I wasn’t doing so great on time.
I got back to the trail, unfortunately still north of the
area where earlier I had seen a bison carcass. Carcasses = bears. Flee area as
quickly as possible. Yikes. Terrifying. I wound up running parts of the way
back when I could. The terrain wasn’t exactly suited for trail running. The
ruts were deep and muddy and my legs kept hitting each other trying to get
through. Ironically enough, “I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls came on my iPod…as I
was running in Pelican Valley.
I finally made it back to
the trailhead at 2020…yep, late. Oops. Thankfully I keep a spare water bottle
in my car. Whenever I go off trail or get lost, I always put myself on a pretty
strict water ration, and given that it was so hot, I was extremely thirsty. Per
tradition, I stopped at Fishing Bridge and got a milkshake. I also got a
breakfast burrito for supper. I honestly considered getting two milkshakes I
was so dang hungry. …but I didn’t. Finally made it back to the YCC facility a
little before 10:30. Long day.
Mileage count: 266.7 (over halfway there!)
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