Yellowstone Backcountry - Buffalo Plateau Trail - Part 5

On our way to Slough Creek and "home"....

Our last day hiking - out of the backcountry. Got up before dawn to get an early start on the hike back to the car and the long drive back into Jackson. We were now very efficient at breaking down camp and made quick work of making breakfast, preparing the fire pit for our departure, pumping water, taking down the tent, and repacking the packs (minimal yard sale). I really liked the way the Big Agnes Copper Spur UL tent is designed so that you can take down the tent and pack that dry and only have to worry about a damp fly and footprint. Saves weight!

We got going, forded Buffalo Fork creek, and found our way to the Yellowstone Border.









Our legs were good or maybe that it was that we were trending downhill! We marveled at the surrounding slopes and their mineral outcroppings - the stuff of Yellowstone that most tourist need to get in line on a boardwalk to see!



As we weave in and out of wooded sections of the trail, we find fresh bear and wolf tracks left after the previous day's rain. Cool! We continue to fly.





We come to a spot on the trail with a great view of one of the Slough Creek meadows. It was really cool to see the former oxbows that had filled in after the stream changed course. Beautiful!



Wish we had another day to fish! Family and the flight home beckoned...

The trail was well defined, and we passed interesting geology - rock walls, rock peaks, glacial erratics.









Skulls, vertebrae, and various bones scattered about remind us that we're still in the backcountry and of the life and death struggle going on just beyond the tourist campsites. One of the last skulls we saw still had blood on the bones so we didn't linger - no need to risk attack or injury so close to "home"!



Suddenly, we see tents, and we realize we're back at the Slough Creek campground. We ford the streem and we've made it! We're at trail's end. Safe and sound. I fill out the trail register and we take a moment to whoop it up!





Then, it's all business. We throw packs in the rental car, change into comfortable shoes, and make a beeline for Jackson. We make a brief stop at Yellowstone's Canyon campground backcountry office to report on our trip, reporting downed trail markers, lack of bear sightings (for future hikers), difficlty in Poacher's Trail intersection location, etc. We were surprised the park rangers didn't seem too interested in the post-hike brief/intel, especially since the many we talked to had never heard of the Buffalo Plateau Trail and it was obvious it was not often hiked. Oh well, we did our duty.

Made it to Jackson, and got a room for the night. Organized some gear and set out socks, boots, and other stuff for drying. Beat feet to a mexican restaurant in Jackson and had a nice dinner basking in the late afternoon sun. After dinner, we made our way to the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar only to fend off a cougar attack, as we drank some well-deserved celebratory beers and recounted our hike with gusto and loud storytelling - a good way to cap our spectacular trip! Can't wait to do it again!!!!!!!!!




TOM - YOU ARE THE MAN!

Yellowstone Backcountry - Buffalo Plateau Trail - Part 4

Buffalo Fork Creek campsite.





Finally a rest day! Wahoo! Time to do some trout fishing!

Got up at 7:30, got the packs down, pumped water, and backwashed the filter but it's still pumping harder than it should. Still serviceable though. In the morning light we found the campsite fire ring. As the sun rose, and I boiled water to prep for breakfast, I spotted an ermine (short-tailed weasel) as he scampered along a log by the campfire. Too quick for my camera to capture.



Made coffee, and oatmeal with papaya, cranberries, and other fruit Tom has been lugging over hill and dale as extra gorp rations. Even with all those goodies, the taste of the Ya Ya Gumbo from two nights before lingers on. That was some powerful Ya Ya!



Tom and I removed the tops to our Osprey Aether 70 packs and re-rigged them with the hip belt for an ultra convenient and functional fanny pack! This is a great feature of this pack!





Put our rods and reels together, tippits on - Blue Ribbon flies (hoppers and terrestrials, irish caddis, black caddis, Adams, damselfly nymphs, etc) out and ready!

As we walked to the stream, I told Tom to catch a few of the grasshoppers that were abundant in the meadow grass. He wondered why out loud. As we neared the stream edge, I picked out a run and tossed one of the hoppers at the head. As soon as the hopper got into the tailwater - gulp! I explained "highcountry chumming" as a means to determine where the fish were holding. Cheating? Maybe a little, but we were both novices in the ways of the highcountry so this one act of hopper chumming gave us the knowledge we needed to be effective.



With a single Blue Ribbon chaos hopper, I caught dozens of cutthroats. Beautiful fish! The largest was perhaps 9-10 inches, but it didn't matter because they were beautiful and plentiful. Although the water seemed shallower than I'm used to in eastern streams, each tailwater contained an eager fish or two or three!



We also fished some pools that had been formed by the placement of brushpiles across the stream. Beavers? Looked like human engineering to me....



A little after mid-day, Tom and I got chased off the river by a thunderstorm and we retreated back into the tent hoping that the storm would be short lived so we could resume fishing and make our way to Hidden Lake and try fishing for trout with damsel nymph flies. We spent an hour or two recounting our hiking mishaps from the day before, cursing the map makers and carin maintainers, comparing trails in WY and MT, and generally celebrating our bushwhacking prowess. Good fun!

After the thunderstorms and lightening subsided, we headed back upstream for more cuts. After dozens of trout caught, I lost my BR chaos hopper in a tree and switched to a BR Flies Royal PMX and that worked just as well.

Here's Tom with one of his many fish...





Tom and I fished along Buffalo Fork Creek among the mineral deposit outcroppings that marked its volcanic past.



We coaxed a few trout out of these pools and runs.....





Really....We didn't plan matching outfits! See our shorts are differet! Really!



As dusk approached, around 7:30 pm, we beat it back to camp ahead of another approaching thunderstorm. We made Will's couscous with chicken and sun-dried tomatoes for dinner (still tinged with Ya Ya seasoning), hung the packs and food, and hit the hay.

Yellowstone Backcountry - Buffalo Plateau Trail - Part 2

Got up early and headed for the creek to retrieve the packs and food bags. In the light fog, I spied a lone bison on the opposite side of Hellroaring Creek making his way towards a clearing along the bank. Tom joined me to get the packs down and as we made our way back to the campsite, we found the bison had crossed the creek onto our side ans was ambling up the slope. Glad we didn't set up the tent in that clearing like we had talked about the night before!

Campsite 2H4: Big Agnes tent and Osprey Aether 70 packs


We pumped water from Hellroaring Creek with my new MSR Hyperflow (nice and fast!), made breakfast, coffee and oatmeal, and reorganized our packs for the uphill hiking we would do this day. It took us too long to clean up our respective "yard sales" of gear, food, trash, and clothes, but we finally bid our campsite and the bison farewell.

Hellroaring Creek


Starting out at around 6000 ft, we retraced our steps to the junction of the Hellroaring Creek trail and the Buffalo Plateau Trail and made the left and started the climb that would continue on for the rest of the day's hike.

Trail signs




In the morning we were fresh and the open grassy terrain did not seem like too much of an obstacle. We talked and joked jovially, and watched our footing in areas where the trial was rutted.

It was obvious that the Buffalo Plateau Trail was not heavily travelled, but it was easy enough to follow.



At first, as we passed the carins, at least I didn't recognize them for wheat they were; they were just curious features as we climbed. This easterner is used to blazes on trees. But after seeing half a dozen or so we figured their purpose out and repaired as many as we could along the way - restanding poles, renailing orange metal blazes to the posts, stacking rocks, etc.

Within the first mile or two, we came across this erratic with a circle of antlers at its base and a few more left on top of the rock.



We continued on steadily upward, taking breaks as needed and stopping for lunch along the grassy slope. As we neared the Wyoming/Montana border and started to be flanked by some wooded areas, we came across this burned trunk that reminded us of one of the Easter Island monoliths.



Tom and I were both getting tired and we stopped for a break, a snack, and a drink in the shade of a tree right next to the trail. Half an hour later, my eyes opened. My fellow TATC members would probably frown, but a trailside nap is SWEET!

At close to 8,400 feet, we made the left turn off the Buffalo Plateau Trail and headed to our campsite for the night - a stock site labelled 2B1 on the maps. We stopped at a small stream to pump water again, at this point not wanting to carry the weight, but worried about not having a source of water for cooking at the campsite.



The distance from the turn off the Buffalo Plateau Trail to campsite 2B1 was supposed to be 0.7 miles according to the Nat. Geo. Trials Illustrated map and it was supposed to be mostly ridge running. NO WAY! I wish I had GPS because we hiked for an hour or two thinking we had somehow missed the campsite, especially as we hiked up and down several steep ravines. We stuck to the trail, and finally spotted an orange blaze, and as we got closer, a nice bear pole and fire ring. We had done about 8.5 miles and 2,400 of elevation gain in about 8-9 hours on the trail (hiking, breaks, lunch, water-pumping, and nap!).

We scouted out a place to put the tent. The ground was all hummocky (animal activity) so flat ground was at a premium. We finally found a spot within a crescent of live trees that was fairly flat and level. We set up the tent and then got busy making dinner.





I had brought along a "Pack-it Gourmet" meal of Ya Ya Gumbo. There was an ingredient missing for the sauce, and the preparation was more time consuming than I would have liked, but the result was good and we ate heartily after the arduous hike.

We hung the packs and food from the bear pole and enjoyed a nice campfire until it was time for bed. The next day's hike would be more of the same - up and up.

Yellowstone Backcountry - Buffalo Plateau Trail - Part 1

After waking before dawn (4:30 am) and sneaking out out the Old Faithful Inn, We made the long trip through Yellowstone, past the Grand Tetons, and into Jackson by 8 am. We ate a quick breakfast at McDonalds while the girls watched a DVD about Yellowstone wildlife. We stopeed by the "Leslie" store to see if I could pick up the necklace that Kathi fancied, but it didn't open until 10:00 am. So I took the girls to the airport and got them checked in. Back to JAckson, bought the pendant, and bought bear spray and some caddis flies at Jack Dennis.

Headed north and drove along the Gros Ventre to see the historic structures along the Mormon Row. The buildings with the Tetons in the background were spectacular!



Continued north along the Antelope Flats Road winding in and out of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Very scenic but also very rough going along the gravel pitted road.



Made my way back onto route 191 and picked up a nail in the construciton zone near the sourht entrance of Yellowstone. Pulled over at Grant Village gas station, but no one availabel to patch the tire so I changed it but lost precious time in my Slough Creek rendezvous with Tom and Denise.

Finally made it to Slough Creek at 5:15 pm and left the rental car at the Slough Creek trailhead where we would end our hike. We got our packs together and Denise gave us a ride to the start of our hike, Hellroaring Creek trailhead.



We started out at 6:30 pm for the short couple of downhill miles to Hellroaring Creek site 2H4. We stopped at the bridge crossing the Yellowstone River and admired the view in the setting sun.





We could tell we were in the backcountry because of all the bones we saw lying around. This was not groomed touristy area!





We found the campsite (Fire ring), but there was no sign marking the spot. We hung the packs and food from a tree overhanging Hellroaring Creek, set up the tent in the dark, and went to bed.