flip-flopping (v): the transition between large sections during a flip-flop thru-hike.
Today we arrived in Farmington, NM. I know, weren't we just in Yellowstone or something??? Yes, but Liv, Joel, and I are now flip flopping (see definitions above) in order to go to our friends' wedding in Durango this weekend. We drove down from Togwotee Pass in Wyoming and will resume our hiking on Tuesday going NOBO (northbound) through Colorado and Wyoming back to where we just got off the trail. Then we will finish New Mexico for a three part flip flop.
I met up with Liv and Joel at Mack's Inn, ID a week ago after my other wedding trip to Oregon. On the way out, I visited my friends Bekah and Kyle in the Centennial Valley and met Bekah's siblings, who were nice enough to volunteer to drive my car around Yellowstone NP to Togwotee Pass, WY so that we could drive down to NM/CO for the upcoming wedding.
We left Mack's Inn and almost immediately were offered a ride from a nice Utahn named Mary-Beth, who took us up to see Big Spring, the source for the North Fk Snake River, which we wouldn't have seen without the ride off the trail. The rest of the afternoon was a short(ish) day of walking on old logging roads to the boundary of Yellowstone NP. We ran into SOL, Smooth, and Freebie for most of the afternoon walking and we all camped just outside of the park boundary as a permit is required to camp in the park.
It rained about 4 in the morning and my new tent kept my nice and dry on its first night in use. SOL, Smooth and Freebie got up early to walk the 20 miles to Old Faithful to meet Smooth's dad (John I think?) and our group of three started moving about an hour later. The walk across the Madison Plateau was boring, buggy, and dry. The highlight was meeting three NOBOs and having a snack at Summit Lake, which was nice, but still buggy. After a quick and fairly easy 17 miles we crossed the Little Firehole River and were immediately in tourist land. It is comical how fast we went from middle of nowhere to middle of a million chubby people with cameras, day packs, and screaming children. The last three miles of our morning were through Biscuit Basin and Old Faithful Geyser Basin. It was nice to see the thermal features again and even more fun to see Liv's reactions, since she had never been there before.
We couldn't get a campsite in the backcountry that night anywhere closer then 12 more miles, which none of us seriously wanted to do, so we stayed at Old Faithful all afternoon eating cheeseburgers and milk shakes and organizing food (and also drinking wine and watching the geyser erupt). It turned out that Hui was also in O.F. Village and he decided to camp with us and not hike on with his own backcountry permit.
In the morning we slept in until 7 (about 90 minutes longer than normal) and then got coffee at the cafe before starting to walk to Lone Star Geyser, a three mile hike to a geyser that most people don't get to see. LS geyser erupts every three hours and it turned out that it had just finished when we arrived, so we made a very early lunch (mac and cheese for me and Joel, cheese/crackers and snacks for Liv) and waited until a bit past eleven before the geyser erupted. The wait was well worth it because LS geyser erupts for about 25 minutes, starting with a 40 foot water column and finishing with a giant cloud of steam and a smaller water column. Our lazy morning finally ended about noon and we spent the rest of the day hiking around Shoshone geyser basin and Shoshone Lake, which Hui said reminded him of lakes in Minnesota. We ended the 20 mile day at a beautiful rocky beach with a nice sunset after a thigh-deep stream ford cooled us off nicely.
The backcountry campsites in Yellowstone all have numbers and you have to get to the campsite that your permit is for and no further. Each campsite includes an eating area, a food hanging area with a food pole, and a sleeping area that food is not allowed in. No food is allowed to be on the ground without supervision. The campsites are nice and there are logs in the eating areas for sitting while eating/cooking, but it is slightly annoying that someone has to stay with the food at all times or hang the food, especially if you are the first person up in the morning because you can't start your breakfast cooking and then go put away your tent because nobody is around to watch your food. Overall, we had nice campsites in the park and the availability of campsites when we obtained our permit forced us to hike slightly fewer miles a day than we otherwise would and I am happy that we therefore got to spend more time relaxing in Yellowstone Park.
Our third day in the park we got an early start from Shoshone Lake and crossed the south entrance road and arrived at the Heart Lake Geyser Basin, just before Heart Lake. The geyser basin is mostly hot springs and pools of various colors, which all flow down into Witch's Creek before flowing into Heart Lake. Witch's Creek is therefore quite warm (about 75-80 degrees) and the four of us found a nice deep spot with a bit of shade to hang out in for a few hours in the mid-afternoon. It was like a nicely temperate bath and felt very relaxing on a fairly warm day and we had the benefit of a small bottle of whisky we had picked up at Old Faithful. This afternoon was definitely a highlight of the trip for me so far. The rest of the afternoon was pleasant, easy walking (though very muddy) through the southern park and culminated at a campsite on the Snake River, which, due to a nice fire ring and a gorgeous full moon over the river, resulted in my slow dinner eating and subsequent late bedtime (after 10, gasp!).
We left the park on Sunday and climbed over Big Game Ridge on the S. Boundary Trail before ascending the very headwaters of the Snake River, climbing up Two Ocean Plateau, and camping at the "parting of the waters". Near the Snake R. we ran into Chance, who we hadn't seen since E. Glacier at the beginning of July, and he hiked with us the rest of the day and Monday. Our campsite at the parting of the waters was really interesting (to me at least), as Two Ocean Creek actually splits in half to become Atlantic Creek and Pacific Creek, which, as the names imply, flow to opposite oceans. The continental divide is therefore right in the middle of the creek above the parting of the waters. I felt very lucky to see this spot (and camp there) as I suspect that this is a rarity on drainage divides everywhere, especially continental scale drainage divides, and it is probably a geologically shortly lived phenomenon, as one stream will most certainly erode faster than the other and pirate all the flow (quickly as in on a few thousand to ten thousand year scale). But enough with the geomorphology speak...The next morning was certainly more interesting for the shearly enormous volume of grizzly bear tracks we saw right on the trail within the first few miles.
Monday we reached Togwotee Lodge on a slight alternate to the "official" CDT, which we took because we had heard there was an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at the lodge; something no thru-hiker can resist. The final day of hiking down the Buffalo Fork was mostly on horsey superhighway and we saw a lot of pack trains and outfitters taking groups out for the weekend (including a bachelorette party which I would have liked to join). The last few miles were in a tremendous downpour, made more miserable by the mud on a steep uphill to the lodge, but we made it and the lodge-owners only banished us to the laundry cabin until our clothes were cleaned and dried, at which time we were allowed burgers and beers at the Red Dog (or something) Saloon. My friends Brenden and Kelsey brought my car up from Jackson and had some beers with us as well.
So here we are, in NM, another few days off, which for me feels both good and full of some anxiousness, as I was only bad for six days of hiking. It was very nice to go to Doug's dental office this morning meet so many avid blog followers on his staff, it is nice to know that my fun can also be enjoyable for others.
As a further aside, I will try to work out some pictures for the blog this afternoon and Doug got us a SPOT locator beacon that I am going to try to figure out and attach our whereabouts to the blog so you can all see how far we get every few days instead of waiting for a post only from towns.
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