Grizzly Lake Loop

Here is the description of this hike that I wrote for my Yellowstone Degree Hiking Learn Sheet:



"Hike is roughly midway between Norris and Mammoth. In order to do this hke as a loop, you will need either 2 cars, or, as we did, lock your bikes at one trailhead and park at the other, enjoying the approximately 3 mile easy bike ride on the road back to your car after the hike. Starting at the southern end, read the sign at the trailhead to learn about the 2 devastating fires in this area. Walk through the still small, but 20 year old, trees and past wet lands, through the rolling terrain. After about 2.5 miles, the trail seems to end at the back country campsites at the confluence of Grizzly Lake and the outflow of STraight Creek. Make your own way across Stright Creek by braving the log jam, finding a log to cross, or finding a shallow place to ford and pick up the trail on the other side of the lake, heading south a bit until the trail makes a wide turn around some wetlands to head back north. This section of the trail follows Straight Creek, then Winter Creek from a ridge above, offering views of the creekbeds and wide grasslands. There are 2 more stream fording opportunities before you get back to the road at the north trailhead."



Given the limited space on the form, there is much I left out...

This trail was another one of my stellar ideas. I didn't have a description, but I had spied it on my map. It seemed to follow the contour lines, so I thought it would be a flat 6.4 miles. This was promptly disproven as we rounded the first wetland area and approached the large hill that lay between us and Grizzly Lake. Lacking a description, we didn't know what we were open to a new adventure. Fortunately, I followed my intuition and brought the map along with me. The trail seemed straight forward, but I brought it "just in case."



I had promised Alex a flat trail, but he promptly forgave me for the ups and downs as we became preoccupied with the shapes of the grayed downed trees, remants of the past fires. Plus. the flowers are still in bloom, giving us fields of purples, reds and yellows to admire. After about 2 1/2 miles, we descended a hill to Grizzly Lake. I was hoping for a swim, which actually isn't recommended at most locations in the park due to the coldness of the waters, but the breeze was pretty strong, kicking up waves in the lake. It looked a little dangerous to me. We followed the trail around the side of the lake, ate a snack in a sheltered area, and then followed the trail until it literally disappeared at the edge of the lake. We knew it should follow the stream northward, but the way was barred with fallen trees. Aha! The map! The map pointed us across the creek where no trail was visible and provided no indication as to how to get there.



Alex and I are a bit of selfish hikers. We tend to hop in our truck and wander off by ourselves, leaving a note of where we're going written on a message board in our room (should we disappear into the wild). We know we have co-workers without cars that would hop into the back seat and join us on one of our adventures, but we still find it easier to just head out by ourselves. (An additional person definitely would have complicated the bike plan.) As we struggeled to find our way across the river, I was glad we were alone. Alex promptly found a workable log and scampered across the creek, leaving me on the east bank. "How am I going to do this," I wondered out loud. I tried finding a long stick to brace myself against the bed of the creek, but the water was moving too fast to make this feasible. Finally, I tentatively stepped up on the log, shuffling my feet slowly across, stepping gently over branch nubs, until I reached a point where the log rounded. A seemingly impassable ridge had formed along the tree during it's life span, making shuffling across an impossible balancing act. I froze. I couldn't turn around, but I couldn't step forward. Alex, with great patience, found a brance that he could extend out to me, putting himself at jeopard of slipping into the creek. Finally, I grabbed it, and, on the count of 3, he pulled me across in 3 quick steps. Phew.



But we still hadn't found the trail. After wandering around at the edge of another wetland, we finally decided to try heading back to the lake, where we promptly picked up a trail...heading in the wrong direction. "I want to follow it to see where it goes," I insisted. The trail follow the lake for a brief period, then began to curve back to the north, just where we wanted to go.

The hike out was beautiful. The trail was up above the creeks a little, giving us a view of the creek beds and surrounding areas. We were below the ridge line, so we were more protected from the wind. Throughout the hike, we admired the wildflowers and hoped to see wildlife (we saw some robins and a pretty butterfly). At the 2nd creek crossing, I got to pull Alex across as I was able to wade through the shallower depth in my waterproof boots. At the 3rd creek crossing, I watched Alex stroll across a log about 5 feet above the water (a little to high for my liking), then gave up crossing over logs and found a shallower place where I could take off my boots and wade across, Alex laughing at me the whole time. He did find a skull and bones, replete with antlers, of an elk. It was a little unnerving to see a leg that still had fur and a hoof!

Finally, we made it back to the road and our bicycles. The 3 mile bike back to the truck was very easy and leisurely - sometimes the best laid plans do work out after all.

View from our window #3

Look how big the babies are! How fast they grow up. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good shot of the bull with antlers still in velvet that's amongst the herd. He's behind some of the cows to the right of the picture.

Now, when I see elk, I think of the guests who call down to the front desk wanting to know what time the elk come out in the evening. Was I being flip when I replied, "The elk are independently minded beasts, sir"? I didn't mean to be, but that's what came out. How to convey that the elk just pass through whenever they want to? Sometimes we pretend we called them up specifically for the guests.

It's interesting to have the elk pass this close to the tourists. In the background, behind the herd, are orange cones and Park Rangers in a effort to keep the tourists from doing something stupid. Like...a couple of weeks ago our bellman ran out and yelled at a family who had walked up to an elk and starting petting it. Apparently, the elk had enough when the parents tried to put the son on its back. Not deterred, the family started chasing the elk, so finally the bellman just had to yell at them.

I've now learned what an elk sounds like. The mothers and calves call to each other to keep track of each other.

Alex got a promotion!

Is anyone surprised? He's been working for the past week as the head prep cook for the Terrace Grill. His hours have suddenly jumped from just shy of 30 hours a week to 48 hours a week. Unfortunately, this opportunity came at the loss of other employees at the grill as they moved on for various reasons, but it's a good fit for him. He works pretty much independently and this has given him the chance to meet other people in the kitchens that serve the Grill, Dining Room, and EDR. The Grill is in the process of filling their vacant manager position and, once that's accomplished, they should be filling the assistant prep cook position, so Alex's hours should come down to around 40 hours soon. The position also came with a raise, but I'm still comparing our wages to Oregon's minimum wage ($8.50) (vs Wyoming at $7.40), so we're both still in our sub-minimum wage (per Oregon's standards) jobs. :-)

Now, the question is should Alex go for the vacant Shift Leader position? It would mean another raise, but it would also mean being responsible for the shift he's on - responsibility he's taking a break from after closing down Rangel Construction for our "working vacation."

Sunset on the Mountain

We headed up the Old Gardiner Road to smoke Alex's prayer pipe this evening. We found a patch of grass to sit in surrounded by small sage plants. As Alex filled the pipe, we noticed the sounds of the songbirds filling the air. The setting sun lit the bottom of the gray clouds with a rim of pink-red. As we smoked, the chirping birds grew louder, surrounding us with their song as they grew comfortable with our quiet presence. Eventually, one bird flew in nearby, hopping on and off a glacial rock embedded in the earth. (An lbb - little brown bird - in birding terms. Discounted by bird sighting collectors, but appreciated by those of us who know that they are the ones who give us the songs.) As the sun set, we sent our prayers out to the surrounding mountains and fading blue sky and meditated on the songs of our new feathered companions.

Bunsen Peak

Now that we are finally healthy, we are starting to tackle some of the hiking trails in our area. We're both between 1/4 and 1/3 of the way to completing the 100 mile hiking club certificate, so we need to get walking! Last night, after work, I had the urge to tackle Bunsen Peak, just 5 miles up the road from here. At 4.2 miles round trip, it's definitely do-able in an evening, but with a 1300 foot climb, it was questionable if the 2 of us would be up to it after being on our feet all day at work. We decided to give it a shot.

We arrived at the parking lot in time to greet another couple returning from the Glen Creek trail across the road. "Just in time," he said, as a few splatters of rain dropped on us. "Just in time," I said a few minutes later when we noticed 3 river otters in a nearby stream had come to visit. We watched them dip in and out of the water, swimming around and over each other, for a while until they disappeared in a drainage culvert. "Time to go hiking," we agreed, and headed up the trail.

The first thing we noticed were the mosquitoes. We were warned to bring bug spray on our trip to Yellowstone, but, thus far, haven't had any need for it. Thankfully, for me, the mosquitoes seemed to be swarming mostly around Alex, still stinky from his work around the grill and greasy french fries. I killed a few on my arms and worried about the welts that resulted, but we decided to press forward. Once out of the trees, the mosquitoes disappeared, so we were happy with our decision.

The description for Bunsen Peak reads, "Climb through forest and meadow to the summit of Bunsen Peak, which has panoramic views of the Blacktail Plateau, Swan Lake Flat, Gallatin Mountain Range, and the Yellowstone River Valley. (You'll also see communications equipment, which supplies Mammoth and nearby communities.)" It is rated as moderately strenuous. Not mentioned is that the 2.1 miles out is the 1300 foot climb - one way going up the mountain, the return trip coming back down. Alex and I were feeling particularly fine - that is until we got close to the top and I started to lag. Just about then, we had a return of mosquitoes, so I was well motivated to keep going. Plus, the description was right - we had fabulous views all the way up. From the trail, we could see the hoodoos bunched together across the Mammoth-Norris road. Further up, we admired Swan Lake Flats and the multitude of smaller lakes also in the valley. Near the top, we got into some rocks that tinked together as we walked, reminding us of marimbas. At the top, with our panoramic views, we discovered that the Gardiner River has it's own canyon (separate from the "Grand Canyon" of the Yellowstone River that is a hot tourist spot), and planned our motorcycle ride to the distant Beartooth Mountains. Unable to linger due to the lateness of the day, we left the communications equipment and headed back downhill, hoping for another glimpse of the large fox we'd seen on the way up. (BTW, we are still seeing coyotes here and there, but this was a quite different looking beast.) A light breeze had kicked up, so we were virtually mosquito free on the way down! After our hard labors, we went to the employee pub and treated ourselves to a beer and nachos.

Another mystery - Alex was swarmed with mosquitos and I had not so many. I returned with a welt on my neck, one behind my ear, two on each arm, and one on my hip (how it bit through my jeans, I don't know). Alex has not one single bite.

Day of Coyotes

Yesterday finally contrived to be the perfect day to take the motorcycle out for a ride. Tired from the hike from the day before, we were debating on what would be the perfect trail, Bunsen Peak (short, but steep), Grizzly Lake (flat, but longer and involving either some hitchhiking or bike riding). Our early start was snafued by Alex providing prolonged assistance to A, who was moving out and heading back to New Mexico. What was supposed to be a short drive into Gardiner turned into delays while waiting for A. to get his room checked (who himself had to wait), finalize departure paperwork, cash his check, and say good-bye to co-workers. Finally, it was lunch time and the sun had come out and the day had warmed up (the weather after our return from SD had turned too cool for us to venture out riding).

We hit the road, destined to traverse the upper loop. (When looking at a map of the Yellowstone roads, you'll note that they make a good impression of a figure eight, the upper loop being the upper half of the eight, the lower loop being the lower half.) While the entire drive is roughly 60 miles, we knew it could take the rest of the afternoon to make the loop. Speed limits in the park are limited to 45 mph and are often 35, and there are frequently "animal jams" and almost always slow moving tourists.

As we bundled up, I was reminded that Alex has the habit of taking up expensive and uncomfortable hobbies. As I was standing in the sun waiting for Alex to start the bike, my costume of jeans with lycra pants underneath, 2 shirts, scarf, leather jacket and gloves, and full-face helmet, starting to toast in the warm day, reminded me of the various times we've stood on sea shores in our heavy black wet suits, starting to broil, waiting to don our weights and tanks to go scuba diving.

Our drive started south, to Norris. On the way, we checked out the 2 ends of the Grizzly Lake trail head, preparing to bring our truck and bicycles south to tackle the loop, then pedal back to our truck along the road. While we had a successful hitchhiking adventure on Tuesday, we are both reluctant to finish a trail and have to rely on hitchhiking to get back to our truck 3 miles away. (Or maybe the 2 of us are too adept at self-reliance to want to be dependent upon the kindness of strangers.)

After turning left at Norris, we took the Virginia Cascade bypass, enjoying the stream and cascade, Alex slowing down so as to not drown out the families fishing the stream with the trademark rumble of his Harley. (Here's a Harley question - Many Harley owners upgrade their tailpipes in order to get the distinctive low rumble traditional to Harleys. We are then obliged to wear earplugs in order to not damage our ears while riding due to the noise. The point of the louder tailpipes therefore is?)

At Canyon, we stopped at the Canyon Visitor Center, taking in the display about the Yellowstone caldera. For those of you who aren't aware yet, much of Yellowstone is the caldera of a giant volcano. Should Yellowstone erupt again, it would devastate the earth, covering most of North America in ash and plunging the world into another ice age. 2012 anyone? The visitor center also touched on earthquakes, of which Yellowstone is second only to California in quantity. There's a really cool map display that lights up various parts of the park as a voice recording and written text are talking about them. We also learned about monitoring of the changing elevations of the caldera (for all you surveyors out there, imagine setting a benchmark, then discovering it has changed up to 3 feet in elevation due to the caldera pushing up the earth's crust). We also discovered that the upward pressure of the caldera caused an increased elevation, making the Yellowstone area more susceptible to past glaciers. We were tempted once again by the Yellowstone Association bookstore (Alex really wants to read the book "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the Nation's First Park"), but decided to postpone any purchases as we are in the midst of reading Dan Brown's latest book and I have yet to finish "Sometimes a Great Notion." We debated waiting for the Canyon EDR to open, but decided to eat our apples and push on without having dinner at Canyon.

The road between Canyon and Tower-Roosevelt passes over the highest pass in the park, Dunraven Pass. I think we have only driven from north to south in the past because I don't remember any of the amazing views that we enjoyed throughout this stretch of road. Perhaps I was tired and grumpy from being hungry and stuck in the truck all day, so maybe I missed the views. Spots of the pass give the "top of the world" feeling as we were looking over the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone all the way to the Beartooth Mountain range. In the future, we can garner an even more expansive view by hiking up to the top of Mt. Washburn. Perhaps we'll save this hike for a little later in the season as both trails to the top were swarmed with tourists hiking up and down the mountain when we passed by. While enjoying the grandious views, Alex and I don't forget to look for the minutia - the reds, purples, oranges, whites in the fields of wildflowers that we drifted by all the way down the mountain.

We finally arrived at the Roosevelt Lodge for dinner, by-passing the extremely crowded hiking trail to Tower Falls (this also looks like a hike we will want to do in September). We splurged on bison steak and elk burger for dinner, taking advantage of our 20% employee discount to enjoy a unique and fabulous meal.

Not having brought our binoculars and the discomfort of standing for long periods in our motorcycle gear, we bypassed the chance to stop in a couple of "bear jams", satisfied with our glimpses of them and having already had much better bear watching opportunities during our stay here. On our way back to Mammoth, we did get the chance to spot four coyotes along the side of the road. Traffic, along with us, stopped at all but the first (which only I saw), giving us the chance to watch the healthy dogs watch us, then wander off up the hill and out of sight. Wily coyote, trickster coyote, coyote, the harbinger of what??

Return from Sun Dance

We are back from a very successful Sun Dance, very glad we went.

It all started with a 4 day, Thursday through Sunday, vacation request. The traditional Sun Dance is 12 days long - 4 days of preparation (including Tree Day on the 4th day), 4 days of ceremony, and 4 days of rest after the ceremony. It was very important for us to get to this Sun Dance for a number of reasons - we knew this had been a hard year for most of the dancers; our friend L, whom we had just visited in Italy, was bringing his family over for his 4th and final dance; and we were hoping to visit a friend of ours who was having a particularly difficult year. We thought it was most important for us to get there for the 4 days of ceremony, which we could do by working an early shift on Wednesday (ending at 2:30) and a late shift on Monday (starting at 2:30). The work schedules run Thursday through Wednesday, so I was surprised to get see on my work schedule preceding our vacation that I had my regular days off - Tuesday and Wednesday. I talked with my managers who had no problem with me taking a total of 6 days. Once Alex reviewed the arrangements with his managers, we were ready to take off 2 days earlier that we'd thought we'd get to leave!

We wisely decided to leave early Tuesday morning, leaving time for us to wrap up packing up the truck Monday evening and giving us a chance to make stops in Livingston and Billings, MT on Tuesday during the day. (Sorry, D, we never did make it to your softball game.) We have happily discovered a couple of natural foods stores in Montana - the Bozeman Food Co-op and Montana Harvest, so we wanted to check out the latter in Bozeman for beet pills for Alex's gall bladder. While they were out of stock of the beet pills, we walked away with a bottle of green food, high fructose corn syrup free yogurt, orange and crunchy carrots, and super yummy frozen coconut bars. We had to eat all 4 of them right away as they wouldn't have stayed frozen in our little red cooler - darn. :-)

When we were planning our 11 hour drive from Mammoth Hot Springs to Cherry Creek, SD, we agreed that we would pull over and camp when we started to get tired rather than arrive at the Sun Dance site after dark. Looking at our map, we planned to pull over at the Indian holy site of Bear Butte State Park, just outside of the motorcycle town of Sturgis, SD. Sturgis was still in the guise as a sleepy little town as the rally doesn't start until August 9th, so the campground below Bear Butte was deserted when we pulled in. A clean pit toilet, pristine lake complete with swans, and a flat site to park the truck made for camping paradise. A thunderstorm rolled in while we were dining on sausage and fruit and continued through the evening, but we made ourselves cozy in the back of the truck and fell asleep to the sound of the pouring rain and the bright flashes of lightening. Alas, another car had pulled in, interrupting our solitude, but the downpour constructed a privacy curtain between us. We awoke to a glorious morning of sunshine and breakfast by the lake and met our temporary neighbors. They were a retired couple from Canada travelling around on holiday who often chose camp sites over the added expense of staying in hotels that lacked the benefit of waking up to a beautiful sunny, outdoor morning. Ironically, I had just wondered the evening before when we would be too old to continue our travel method of camping out of the back of the pickup and would conform to the societal norm of staying in hotel rooms. This lovely couple, who had fashioned a sleeping area on the floor of their mini-van with a storage area above (vs our truck where we have the storage below and the sleeping platform above), confirmed with me that we would be too old to camp out of the truck when we are no longer able to climb in back to go to bed! Fortunately, our new friends left just as we were finishing breakfast as I was keen on taking a quick bath (sans soap) in the lake. Refreshed and in clean clothes (we now have a clothes rod across the rear passenger seat of the truck left from our move to Yellowstone, making travelling with clothes infinitely easier), we took off for our drive into the heart of South Dakota, knowing that we would still arrive early enough to participate in the tree ceremony.

Driving down the dirt roads that serve as the country highways on the reservation and over the rolling hills of the grasslands of the South Dakota prairie, I am fixated on my newly acquired knowledge that there were once 40 to 60 million bison roaming the prairies. Decimated by the hunt for buffalo robes and the effort to exterminate the Indian tribes, the bison are now limited to a handful of free roaming herds in the US and Canada and roughly 500,000 (per Wikipedia) being raised for meat production. Despite the fenced in prairie land throughout our drive, indicating the presence of cattle industry ranches, I am still hopeful that one of the ancient bison herds will rise out of the prairie and rumble past us on their summer trek across the grasslands.

On our way to the Sun Dance grounds, we switch to "Indian time" - a place where time by a clock has no meaning, cell phones don't work, where time is measured by fits of activity, periods of resting, and meaning is given only by the passage of the sun overhead and the fullness of the evening moon. Looking at the grounds, I am reminded of why the traditional Sun Dance starts 4 days before the ceremony - the circle isn't set up, the food shack has been devastated by horses trying to gain shelter from winter and spring storms and won't be rebuilt this year, and the fire pit is full of water from last night's thunderstorm. We speculate that "someday" we will be able to arrive 4 days before ceremony and do something extraordinary on the Sun Dance grounds - build a pit toilet or rebuild the food shack, perhaps. But, we are, gratefully, on Indian time, so we are all able to take our time as we prepare the Sun Dance circle and arbors, empty the fire pit, and welcome other participants as they arrive. It's a time to greet our friends from last year and begin conversations with people we are meeting for the first time. Towards evening, it's time to go get the tree.

On that note, I'm going to suspend my discourse about Sun Dance as it is time for me to get ready to go to work. The weather has been an adventure here, with rain in the morning, thunderstorms in the evening, and sun and warmth through the middle of the day.