Yellowstone 2008

Each year I take a trip with my Father In Law. Normally we climb a major peak, or at least try to, but this year a friend recommended we take a Canoe trip in Yellowstone National Park. Now, we live about 3 hours from the South Entrance but in the 4 years we have been back in Wyoming this is only my 2nd trip there.

An amazing statistic is that 3,000,000 people (6 times the Wyoming Population) visit YNP each year, yet only 2% of them ever leave the pavement.

For our trip we paid Xanterra an ungodly fee to ferry us over to the SouthEast Arm of Yellowstone Lake. from there we took canoes 7 miles down to the very Southern end of the lake to camp. We were there for 4 nights, and I must say it was a trip that will be in my memories forever.

Even though we were in the middle of the busiest park in the US we went a full day without seeing anybody. The only sign we weren't totally alone was flickering campfires on the distant shores.

The picture above was taken from our 2nd campsite. The weather was unbelievable, the scenery beyond compare. I will post a few more pictures in the coming days.

My weekend

So today opened the Archey hunting season here in Wyoming. Since it happened to fall on Labor Day we thought it would be great to head yup to the lake, camp for the weekend with friends and family, then head out hutning bright and early.

The weekend started great. Saturdays weather was perfect and even though we got out of town late it still was nice. Sunday was OK, little bit of rain and wind, but nice. We took the kids out fishing for a bit (no luck, but still nice).

After dinner me and a friend decided to go up to a high meadow and cold-camp so we could hopefully be in place for the early morning elk.

We positioned ourselves in the middle of a swampy meadow, sheltered by trees and some camo blankets. There were fresh elk beds all over and it seemed to be perfect.

Everything went fine until about 2:00 AM when it strted to blow and rain. It rained on and off (more on than off) for the rest of the moring. We got up at 6:00 so we could glass the meadow for elk. It was wet, cold, and empty. We stuck it out until 7:30 but realised the only dumb animals out in the rain was us. We headed back to the campers, made coffee and called it a day.

Luckily this is the first day of 2 months of Elk Season, so we live to fight another day.

Wishing I was Hiking

I am not only about traveling to Asia. My main hobbies are fly-fishing, camping, hiking, hunting, and mountain climbing. Basically, anything outdoors.

3 years ago I decided to climb Gannet Peak, the tallest peak in Wyoming. We had studied the route, and my hiking partner had even been in to Fremont Peak (a close by neighbor) so we had a good idea of what the trip entailed. I called the Ranger station and they told us there might still be some snow up there. Since it was the 4th of July holiday we thought that it should be OK.

The first 14 miles were almost decent. We hit some deep patches of snow but were able to post-hole through. After Island Lake though, we were hosed. We post-holed for 3 more miles to Titcomb Basin, taking almost 6 hours to go that short distance.

Once we got to the Basin the winds kicked up to over 60 mph. It was literally blowing rocks. The next morning we got up early and headed for the peak, planning to bivy camp on the side of the mountain. Once we got to the top of Bonney Pass (12,000+ ft) we were confronted with more wind and a pending storm. We bailed, glissading (sliding on your butt, using an Ice Axe as a rudder/brake) back down Bonney, a 1200' run, to me this was the high point of the trip.

We did return the next year, and even though it was the exact same weekend we met no snow at all until the glaciers. That trip we were succesful in climbing this very tough peak.