Day 68 – A choice of nonexistent trails

We didn’t end up taking the Wyoming Range route. Instead we are going to brave the yellowstone crowds and ride through the park. Turns out Eszter has never been, so why not? She rightly pointed out that the Wyoming Range trail sounds like something I should enlist Lee Blackwell on, for a different trip. Multiple people have tried and failed to ride it. It barely exists. Plus the guy at the outdoor shop in Pinedale did his the best to scare us about no trail, bears and steep terrain. That’s when Eszter came up with the idea of riding the park, being a tourist and connecting nicely with the cdt where it exits the park.

I was game. This trip already has the high adventure meter pegged, so there is no need to take the most adventurous option every single time.

View from camp meadow

So instead, we find ourselves camped in a meadow above Leeds creek, and there is no trail. It looks like we’ll be following game trails or no trail for some time tomorrow.

So much for taking the less adventurous route!  The CDT has plenty of adventure…. big surprise!

I didn’t study this section of the trail since it wasn’t ‘in play’ until yesterday afternoon.  Had I studied it I would  have learned that there are several options hikers take from Union Pass to Brooks Lake, and none of them are that existent, or that great.

But here we are!

Ice cream and working next to Pine Creek

The morning was spent slowly packing up, taking care of last minute town chores, and eating another big breakfast courtesy of Emi, the owner of the Rivera Lodge in Pinedale.  It was a lovely zero day, and one with a nice plot twist of switching our route by hundreds of miles.

We left late, sometime after 10am, pedaling pavement and dirt rural roads out of town.  60 or so miles of the divide route would take us back to the CDT.

We enjoyed a tail breeze, cool temps, and seeing other divide riders heading south.  “Ah, riding singletrack, no wonder you have those bikes and so little luggage!”

We took a small detour to investigate Kendall Warm Springs.  It was a neat and beautiful spot, but it was only 85* and soaking is not allowed due to a very unique fish that lives only in that small piece of stream — nowhere else in the world.  We also rolled by Stinky Springs, aptly named!

Some rain showers got us.  I never pulled my rain jacket on — it was refeshing after a warm climb to 9000′. But I was glad it didn’t shower any longer.

It was a relief to turn towards the CDT and get on a smaller road, and one not covered in gravel.  Right at the trail we ran into two thru hikers!  Southern and Notsobad weren’t too clued into all the route choices ahead, and they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go explore it.

We rolled on, taking Ley’s recommendation, which gifted us 360 degrees of mind blowing views.  The Tetons to the west, Winds behind us, Brooks to the north and other craggy looking stuff above Dubois to the east.  In the evening light it was nothing short of spectacular.  We wanted to linger, wanted to camp, but were running out of water.

So we rolled on to where we found a spring flowing out of the mountain.  We figured it was a good opportunity to cook dinner, then we could roll on a little further and avoid the cook/camp distance recommended in bear country.  We sure haven’t seen any sign of them, other than actual forest service signs telling people they are in bear country.  We picked up pepper spray and put our food and bikes elsewhere.

I think it’ll be a good, if cold night.  Then on with the adventure and vague trails we thought we were skipping tomorrow!