Hello from Flagg Ranch, between Yellowstone and the Tetons! Before Beanie Baby and I left Bozeman (probably the biggest “city” that we’ll venture into while on trail), we watched a spectacular performance by folk artist Alison Krauss and Union Station. Their music was astounding, and we were in awe of the fast-paced fiddle playing, agile guitar picking, and smooth bass notes, and of course the gorgeous vocals.
We headed out again on the CDT after leaving Bozeman to finish up our Big Sky Cutoff route in two more days! The transition from town to trail and back again is always a bit of a challenge, but it’s becoming easier and easier every time. Beanie Baby’s friend dropped us off at the Sage Creek trailhead after letting us know that a nearby square mile of land has the densest grizzly bear population in the lower 48 states. We were cautious as we entered the area, calling out “Hey bear!” a bit more often than usual.
About halfway through our traverse up Sage Creek, the trail abruptly disappeared and we began route finding to meet up with another trail. As we’ve begun to discover, disappearing trails and other similar obstacles make relatively common appearances on the CDT (especially on alternates). As Beanie Baby’s and I scrambled up though a bushy meadow, we stopped and listened to a strange noise. At first, it sounded like the low growl of a train or car somewhere far away, but as the noise audibly grew louder and closer, we realized with horror that it was the sound of some large animal nearby, growling and snorting at something we desperately hoped wasn’t us. Afraid to run into this clearly aggravated animal at close range, Beanie Baby and I began to yell “Hey bear!” and move in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. We climbed a nearby hill to reach the trail that we were originally aiming for, and the growling noise faded out of earshot. From the top of the ridge we had just reached, we could see the beautiful Madison Range stretching across the horizon in the distance!
Our final day on the Big Sky Cutoff route ended at Beaver Creek for us and involved three hitches and around 17 miles of hiking! Beanie Baby and I spent a while hitching from the road near Beaver Creek to Targhee Pass, but we finally made it. Once we were up on Targhee Pass, we realized that this was our first time in Idaho on the CDT and we celebrated by running across the border to take a photo for proof. It was so nice to be back on the red line, if only for a short time! Doing so many alternates can be logistically exhausting and make route finding complicated.
From Targhee Pass, we headed northbound for a short section in order to reach Raynolds Pass the next day, where my friend would pick us up to stay at her ranch near Cameron for a day. The section between Targhee Pass and Raynolds Pass was absolutely breathtaking, with lots of ridge walking and views of the giant Yellowstone caldera, numerous lakes in the region, and even the Tetons far in the distance! It was crazy to think that even though this mountain range looked relatively close, we would still have to walk nearly two more weeks before we reached the base of the Tetons.
The next day, we hiked up and over Targhee Pass (the one you have to walk to), and down through another beautiful section to Raynolds Pass, where my friend picked us up. We woke up at 5 am (one of our earliest wake up times so far) and hiked our second ten before ten (10 miles before 10 am)!
My friend brought us to a stunning lake that looks like the Caribbean on our way back from the trailhead, and we stopped to swim and feast on chips, popcorn, watermelon, and a type of Norwegian chocolate which was similar to a Kit Kat but tasted a hundred times better, especially after hiking several long days in a row. And even cooler, the wrapper had hiking principles printed on it in Norwegian! At the ranch, we were continuously fed delicious food, including grilled mushroom tacos and roasted corn, avacado, and pepper salad for dinner! Town food always tastes so much better when it’s fresh and homemade.
Beanie Baby and I also repaired our Big Agnes tent poles during this nearo (low milage) day, which we were able to accomplish by shipping repair pole segments to ourselves after talking with the Big Agnes customer service team. They sent us free replacement segments and even a new shock cord! It took longer than we thought it would to repair this part of our tent, but we eventually successfully fixed it and felt proud of our first large gear repair while on the CDT!
We left the next day for West Yellowstone, full of delicious tofu scramble and watermelon and homemade buns with heaps of butter on them. My friend’s dog rode in my lap the whole way! We made it to the West Yellowstone ranger station in the early afternoon, with a plan to meet up with the Sprouts and get a Yellowstone permit with them. They had just completed an FKT of the Gallatin Crest Trail and were still resting in Bozeman.
We met up with the Sprouts in the West Yellowstone ranger station and figured our backcountry camping permits out, which took longer than we anticipated. We thought we had left the chaos of national park permitting behind in Glacier, but here it was again! It turned out that we were running into the beginning of the NOBO crowd and intersecting with other SOBOs who’d taken the red line through Idaho and Montana, so lots of us were trying to get the same campsites. By the time we came up with a plan, it was already late in the afternoon and we realistically only had time to hitch up to Targhee Pass and hike two and a half miles to the first water source. The next water source was another 13 miles away, and next one 26 miles after that, so Beanie Baby and I had stocked up on some extra water bottles in town and we were prepared for some long, heavy water carries. We snacked on huckleberries all the way to the campsite and arrived at dusk, the eight of us needing to spread out in order to find reasonable tent space.
The day after hiking in from Targhee Pass, Beanie Baby and I woke up at 5 am, another early day. Our reason for waking up so early was different, however. This was going to be our longest day yet—our first 30 miler day, and even that was too easy. We woke up that morning knowing that we were about to hike approximately 32 miles with a 4.5 liter water carry each for the last 18 miles of the day. Our packs were already heavy with five days of food, and Beanie Baby and I knew that such a large and long water carry would put more strain on our bodies than we’d had on the CDT up until that point. At least the next section of trail was extremely flat, rising only 3,500 feet in 32 miles!
We cruised through the first 13 miles of the day, slipping out of the campsite before the sun had fully risen and hiking 5 miles before 8 am. We arrived at our first and only water source of the day around 11am, where we stocked up on water, started cold soaking our lunch, and dunked our shirts in the cool spring water to lower our core temperatures. Then we began moving again, knowing that we still had 18 miles to go and hours left to hike to the park border, where we planned to camp that night. We plodded through blazing heat on dusty dirt roads, listening rapturously to Becoming on audiobook. We seldom saw our friends while hiking that day, except for frequently leapfrogging Losty, as everyone was trudging along at their own pace. The group said goodbye to Dad and Dixie at the water source, since Dad couldn’t bring his sweet pup into the park. We found some yummy gooseberries at lunch that raised our spirits a little bit, and we kept on hiking. Our bodies were beginning to hurt, especially feet and ankles and hips. A brief thunderstorm rolled over us, cooling the air down to a more pleasant temperature. We wolfed down extra snacks that afternoon, trying to replenish the thousands of calories we were losing.
As dusk neared, we finally turned onto a trail after endless dirt roads. A couple of miles from the campsite, we ran into some NOBOs; we had seen a few others recently, and we were told that the main NOBO bubble was only about a week down the trail from us. The last few miles seemed to be the longest, as we grew more and more tired, hungry, and in pain with each step. We finally hobbled into camp around 8pm, grateful to see the smiling face of Woods. We camped 20 feet from the Yellowstone National Park border, and were excited to enter the park the next day. But all we could focus on that evening was devouring our recovery shake, pasta, cookies, and chocolate, before stretching and falling fast asleep. We were lucky to catch some spectacular stars that night—we could see the Milky Way sparkling across the night sky!
The next day, we woke up very tired and sore, but we pushed on into Wyoming! It was exciting to be in this new state after a month and a half in (mostly) Montana. The beginning of Wyoming, however, was a bit boring, with flat trail and tunnels of trees. Perhaps it was the length of this day (23 miles, directly after our record 32-mile day) that made it feel like so much of a slog.
But by the mid-afternoon, we had reached an exciting milestone: Old Faithful village! We were so excited to see the many geysers (and eat salty, greasy town food). We loved seeing all of the gorgeous geothermal colors and exciting eruptions! We caught Old Faithful erupt three times and Beehive Geyser once, as well as a couple smaller ones. In between eruptions, we also wolfed down black bean burgers, fries, pizza, baked pasta, Mac and cheese, an orange, chips, and washed it down with root beer before devouring some ice cream. Hiker hunger in full swing!
We indulged in more frontcountry delights such as flushing toilets and the visitor center documentaries about Yellowstone’s geology and the relationship between Clark’s Nutcracker and the Whitebark Pine (Beanie Baby loved that one!). Unfortunately, the time spent at Old Faithful village meant we had to night hike the remaining 5 miles to our campsite. We heard the gurgling of geysers mere inches from the trail in the dark, which was a bit eerie but cool. We sang loudly the whole way to ward off the bears, and luckily it worked!
Our remaining time in Yellowstone was funky and beautiful, with more geysers in the backcountry. These were, dare I say, even cooler than some of the ones near Old Faithful! It was refreshing to see geysers without all of the hullabaloo of big crowds.
More obstacles awaited us, however: an unexpected swamp with water snakes! We prayed they weren’t venomous as we trudged through the squishy, wet mess. Luckily, we got to rest afterwards at a beautiful beach on Shoshone Lake, where Beanie Baby took a 2 hour nap!
This really proved to be a magical section in many ways, as we received two instances of trail magic in a single day. First, a group of canoeists on Shoshone Lake saw that we were thru hikers and kindly offered to take our trash and gave us some extra food! A few hours later, we saw this handwritten note. Shortly, Dad, his dog Dixie, and his friend Raisin appeared in Raisin’s van and bestowed upon us all kinds of yummy food, cold drinks, music, and great vibes!
We ended up hanging out there for several hours before continuing on to the hot springs at Witch Creek, which was a perfect hot tub temperature to soak in.
On our last day in the park, we crushed miles in the morning to make it to Flagg Ranch for a resupply. On the way, we had our first real bear sighting of the CDT (finally!). We heard a loud thumping behind us and promptly swiveled around to see two adolescent grizzlies bounding down the hill, crossing the trail about 20 feet behind us. We didn’t linger because we didn’t want to anger a mama nearby, but we were overjoyed to have a safe and close encounter with these incredible animals.
On our way out, we got to see even more beautiful hot springs in a turquoise tributary of the Snake River. We walked through gorgeous meadows in the river’s headwaters. We also forded the Snake a few times, which was a neat challenge.
After charging up, showering, and loading up on food at Flagg Ranch, we are off to the Teton Crest alternate! We can’t wait for what this section will hold.
