Yellowstone: The Spirit of the West
By Nickolay Todorov

A moment after we startled the buffalo, he cocked his head and fifteen hundred pounds of muscle prepared to charge us at the speed of a curse. I bowed my head and lowered my eyes, as one should when a wild beast finds them disagreeable. The buffalo watched us stumble under the weight of our packs, and there must have been pity in his eyes for he let us pass up a grassy slope towards a pine tree torched by lightning. The Lamar Valley of Yellowstone spread before us, immense, green, and spotted with bison, elk, and deer the size of mules. A thick forest wrapped around the expanse of grass, and a river emerged, which would serve as our guide into the heart of the remote Absaroka mountain range, three days removed from humans, deep into wolf and grizzly country.

The Absaroka is one of the wildest areas in the U.S. south of Alaska. The only access route starts at a trailhead in the Lamar Valley, the Serengeti of the North, and cuts toward the eastern border of Yellowstone through the most isolated section of the park. Up until the late 1800s, the Absarokas provided a fertile hunting ground for the Shoshone and Lakota tribes. The hunters are gone now, but the area still teems with predators that are largely extinct and relegated to legend in the rest of the country. There is little reason for anyone to venture this way; the odd cowboy who does relies on a horse and pack-mules to negotiate the foreboding terrain. Backpacking in these parts, as we’d learn, offers many options for attracting bad fortune.

July is the safest time to explore the Yellowstone backcountry: blizzards can strike any time of the year, and the summer offers the best odds to stay dry and warm. As we followed the Lamar River upstream, the sun hit hard and the smell of sulfur was inescapable, as the river carried the deposits from hot springs. The air was dry and rough. We crossed forests of burned trees, the remnants of wildfires from twenty years ago.

Lugging eighty pounds of food, clothes, and gear across miles of ravines, river crossings, and sharp ascents is torturous, and from early on it became obvious that we over packed. We spend energy we can barely spare clapping and shouting to alert any bears in the area of our presence.  A startled grizzly charges at 30mph, tears flesh, crushes bones, and then stops to think; the ones with cubs are worse.

On the first day we manage six hours on the trail. By divine intervention our campsite materialized just as our joints started to give out. The site was little more than a sun-baked slab of earth with a 15ft-tall bear pole to hang food. There was no shade; so we swam in the river to escape the heat. At night we set up the tent upwind from the bear pole and hung up our food.

The first night in grizzly country is sleepless. The park forbids weapons: no handguns, no rifles, and not even hunting knives past a certain size.  Our only defense was an almost laughable can of ‘bear spray,’ ineffectual from distances over five feet. That night, each crackling of a branch or shuffling of dry leafs induced surges of adrenaline.

In the morning we ditched half of our food, but it was still a struggle to walk. At the confluence of the Lamar River and Miller Creek I dipped my feet in the rapids to ease the burning of the blisters that had swelled under my toes. We turned east and followed Miller Creek, further away from humanity and closer to a cluster of black peaks that loomed over the forest.

The trail veered high above the creek and was exhausting.  What should have taken us an hour, took us three, and finally in the late afternoon we arrived at the day’s campsite: a meadow carpeted with buffalo grass and wildflowers, water rushing by, and a cluster of trees casting a generous shadow.

Page 1 of 2 Next Page

All contents copyright ©2006 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.