Backpacking Yellowstone: Slough Creek to Beartooths Lake Plateau and Back (full version)

all right today is Monday June nineteenth twenty seventeen and I'm at the slough Creek Trailhead and Yellowstone National Park I headed out for what I hope is going to be a big trip the plan for today is just to go in to backcountry campsite to s4 alright here we go [Applause] all right first wildlife of the trip this is a bison all right well I've made it to slough Creek in the beginning of it's beautiful meadows here's Bear number one of the trip okay I've reached the spur trail down to backcountry campsite to s4 I'm staying for the night amid the camp buggy okay I found the perfect little cubbyhole to set my tent up in so the first thing that I do when I get to camp here in the Yellowstone backcountry is a hang the food in this case they have a bear box at this campsite they don't have them at all the campsites but here it's the creek they do makes life much easier just by putting my food so this is backcountry campsite 2's for the 4th one up Slough Creek it's kind of sentimental to me because it was the first ever backcountry campsite I stayed at here in Yellowstone National Park and I've stayed at this one a bunch got a lot of great stories probably my best ever bear story happened right here in this camp too tired to talk about it right now but I'll tell you in the morning you know it was about six or seven miles hiking it's pretty easy hike in great weather kind of hot buggy I did see one grizzly bear one of the guys I've talked to who's been out here for a couple days said he has seen seven or eight girls leaves over the course of the last two days all the other side of the river kind of moving through this is gonna be the end of day number one and I will see you in the morning good night good morning I've made it to day number two okay first thing let me show you on the map what I did yesterday okay this is the northeast quadrant map by trails Illustrated for Yellowstone National Park and here's the slough Creek Trailhead all right over here you can see the Roosevelt Tower Junction this is the Northeast road that goes up the Lamar Valley and up to cook city and slough Creek Trailhead and I basically hiked all the way up to campsite to s4 by the elk tongue patrol cabin and the Bliss pass trail Junction and according to this map it's about 7.1 miles up to the cabin so just a little under 7 to my campsite that I did yesterday then you can see the kind of the boundary the northern boundary of the park and today we're gonna head up this way and out of the park all right next up let me show you a different map kind of what the general idea is okay this is looking at a North absorb Beartooth wilderness map made by a bear tooth publishing North is running up that way east is running this way Beartooth plateau is up here Cooke City is over here right now I'm in the slough Creek drainage you can see that right here this is the north boundary Yellowstone National Park I don't really know how I'm gonna go up to Lake plateau but lake plateau is right here and so I'm gonna come up this way I have several options I can go up towards Horseshoe Bay's in and Lake of the Woods into the Stillwater drainage which is off the map it's actually on the other side of this map and it runs this way another option is to come up just wounded man Creek to Lake of the Woods or I could choose to just follow up solute Creek and get into Lake Plateau that way okay I packed up camp and I'm getting ready to hit the trail one thing I want to add about this campsite and the slough Creek drainage in general and really the entire northern section of Yellowstone there's a lot of ticks here and I've already had to pull too off me this week and in the at this campsite I've had a problem with getting them on me numerous times tics here kind of hang out at about 6500 feet or lower in elevation before I get going I mentioned that I had a bear story from this campsite I'm gonna tell you about it so back in 2013 over Memorial Day weekend I hiked out to this exact campsite pretty late the day I actually surprised a sound grizzly with two cubs at very close range and got lucky with that got to camp probably about seven o'clock at night got my tent set up started cooking dinner and had dinner going came out to the creek area and I noticed a bear right along the river kind of in the grass and at first I couldn't tell what kind of bear it was I went and got my binoculars came back to right here the river was a little different there was a big sandbar right on the edge here I watched this bear as it slowly maybe just grass and pretty much got to right across the river from me and actually was standing down on the bank I realized it was a grizzly bear but I had already noticed too that there was a bunch of grizzly scat and tracks in camp the bear winded me here's notice and I was here and charged now of course there's a river in between me and him but I was way too close to a grizzly bear regardless the bear charged pretty scary looked like a werewolf all the hair was back his ears are pointed back I mean it was a it's a pretty scary thing to see that and he charged right out to the water and there was a sand Bank there and he ran stopped at the water then ran up and down the sand bank trying to I guess find a way to swim across spooked me I turned around and kind of ran back up in the campsite and saw him walking this sand bank back up the river and I kind of knew what he was gonna do as I was finishing dinner I saw him on this side where that scene is now but in the grass just kind of slowly meandering this way and that was a dark I got in my tent was back up in the trees I'd collected some rocks on four different occasions the bear was walking up towards my tent I got out and threw rocks it crashed off so at about 12:30 at night after the fourth time this bear was coming up to my tent and throwing rocks out of course I couldn't see it at that late in the night but I could hear it and I'd get out throw rocks and you'd hear him crashing off so I packed up a few things like my sleeping bag and some warm clothes and put them in my backpack actually had two cans of bear spray with me I have two cans bear spray with me right now anytime I'm doing solo trips I like to carry two cans Safety's off headlamp on I got out with my stuff I hiked back up to the trail and over to the elk tongue patrol cabin I'll continue this story when I get over there it was kind of spooky as I walk through woods like this in the dark with only my headlamp on the cans of bear spray and just like this alright so here is the slough Creek Meadows right in front of the elk tongue patrol cabin there's a few campers here hanging out so it's gonna make it kind of awkward a little bit to film myself but that's the cabin now originally my plan was to climb up on the roof of the cabin just cuz I wanted to sleep but right here is the outhouse so I came here to this outhouse like I said is probably 12:30 to 1:00 in the morning I was actually like this is perfect and didn't smell because it was early in the season and no one had been using it one thing you'll notice though it only latches from the outside and doesn't want to stay shut about that latch so I got in here sat right here I closed the door put my feet up against the door and it was pretty marshy at the time so about 20 minutes later I hear that bear splash splash splash blast coming through the marsh I tensed up now you have to imagine the doors shut and I'm sitting here in my feet here my back up against the wall both cans of bear spray what what was I really gonna do with that bear spray I was gonna hit hit just as bad but here i sat with my headlamp off and he walked right in front and there's a little sliver right here and if you sit on the inside you can see a little bit of light even though it was late at night there was still light out from the stars and a little bit of moon and as that bear walked right in front here it just changed the whole shadow you could see it come inside here it was pretty crazy and I ended up sleeping in here till about 4:30 in the morning the bear came through quite a few times and what you could just hear moving around out here 4:30 in the morning was first light I got up I saw the bear yelled at it and it crashed off away from me into the trees all the squirrels and birds were going nuts in the forest and I decided it was just good enough time to hike out and get out of the woods as fast as possible ok so the plan for today is just to hike up the slough Creek Trail take it outside of the park and then find a place to camp it's an important note that I had a backcountry permit to camp inside a lesson Asheville Park that's required by the Park Service and so I did that for last night however the rest of this trip I'm going to be outside of the National Park camping and I can camp anywhere I want to so it's going to allow a lot more flexibility in how far I hike I can kind of just go as I feel comfortable with and it's looking up Slough Creek and the direction I'm gonna be headed still some snow up high coyote so you may have noticed that the entire trail along slow Creek is kind of a old road band in a two trip that's because just outside of Yellowstone National Park since the Silvertip ranch and they have permission from the Park Service to use this road right when I got here a couple of them passed me really nice fellas stopped to talk to me for a bit and they actually warned me that there's a dead horse up by in Frenchie's Meadows here is a good look Silvertip branch I'd also notice that there's some thunderstorms developing it's been booming to the north that one passed my kid hit by this one that's the way I'm headed up that drawl right there [Applause] pretty neat assortment of equipment and old stuff lying around here as you work or as I work my way around the ranch this is pretty cool that's like an old saw and then that's an old car which blue Creek is roaring right now and to think I have to cross this and only a couple of miles there is a whole troop of horses and they came right up the trail behind me it's kind of a narrow section of trail looked back looked back it just saw a large animal and spooked me big time until I realized it was horses the rain has finally stopped it's beautiful out sun's back out now okay I made it to the slough Creek Patrol cabin I'm gonna take a break here athlete tempted just a camp on this porch pretty awesome view this is uh pretty close to the beginning of French cheese meadows although it's still kind of wooded there's a beaver right there all right so it's about 6:45 p.m. and it has been booming and storming to the south of here starting to hear thunder to the north and really you can just see all these storm clouds coming over so at this point what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to hang out here and if nobody shows up to this cabin by dusk or even dark I'm just gonna set my tent up here and sleep here in the case the rare case that someone actually does show up here I'll just move on either down the trail or up the trail camp a little distance away the opportunity to be under shelter on a flat surface my tent leaks the fly has quite a few rips in it makes sense to kind of camp underneath and over here I also know that there is a dead horse three-quarters of a mile up the trail from here probably can't see it in that shot it's just right up on the hillside just continues to rain here one minute it's sunny and you feel like it's gonna be done and then all of a sudden it rains again okay so it's a little after 8:30 p.m. no sign of anybody I'm gonna go ahead and cook dinner and then I actually found a food pole from an outfitters camp but it's kind of down by the river so I'm gonna go hang my food and hang out here I'm not expecting to see anyone at this point but yeah still gonna wait till just about dark to set the tent up I didn't go very far today probably less than six miles right here that's where I started and that's Silvertip branch and patrol cabin boom big day but this is it for night number two and I'll see in the morning good night good morning I have made it to day number three felt something crawling on me and that is a tick right there the plan for today is to continue up solute Creek I'm gonna go through fridge cheese meadows and then I'm gonna keep going up the creek until I hit wounded man Creek I'm gonna take that trail up through a saddle or pass and on the other side of that is a lake called Lake of the Woods first thing I'm gonna have to be really cautious about the dead horse that's along the trail three-quarters of a mile from here just because there could be a bear on it and don't want to get anywhere near that and then right after that I'm gonna have to cross Slough Creek I'll go through Frenchie's Meadows which is a beautiful spot Frenchy Meadows is named after a Frenchy Durant who was a trapper living in these Meadows about a hundred years ago and he trapped a grizzly bear one day in a snare trap went off to get it never came back when they went looking for him the grizzly bear was gone and her too was mauled and dead and so they buried him right there and there is a gravesite there last year I tried looking for that although I really didn't do much research on it and that's pretty hard to find I didn't find it there is some cool stuff there a lot of old tractor equipment and we found the old corner of the law cabin that Frenchy Durant had but did not find the gravesite and I'm not gonna even bother looking for it today it's go time it's 11:30 in the morning kind of a late start again here we go [Applause] how cool is that spider and he's got a bug in his mouth just look at all those trees piled up everywhere so the trail crosses Slough Creek right here and there's no way I'm going to be able to afford that let's look at the water right at the crossing so I'm supposed to cross the creek right down here there's no way you can see its glory I looked at the map and about another half mile or so the trail crosses back skewed Creek again what I'm going to do is I'm just going to off trail and stay on the west side and left hand side sweep Greek and off trail up to the trail crosses back go find somebody not really what I wanted to get myself into walking through willows all right I made it back to the trail thankfully okay I have reached the intersection of Slough Creek and wounded man Creek and I have to cross food Creek somewhere in here welcome to the jungle baby I love this place this is why I love Yellowstone right here it's wild and you have to do stuff like this to clean you out and it took me about 30 minutes just to find a spot to cross what you probably can't tell is I was in stepped my tripod all the way down tripods four foot tall it barely touched bottom where the log is wet at first five or six feet it's very slippery and it's very very easy that was walking that just slide on my boots and fall in okay so at this point I've decided to make a wrap change and probably effects the whole trip start with I never even saw a trail junction sign for wounded man Creek instead I'm just going to go up salute Creek and I'm going to take it all the way up over the saddle and take it that way up to the lake plateau right now I'm just going to try to go up and find a good place to camp okay I have found a place to call home for the night so here's a look on the map at what I did today with Slough Creek patrol cabin the one outside the park where I was camped on the front porch is right there and went up the trail got really difficult to follow and there's multiple trails in this whole area and it's all flooded right now I cross the creek in there Frenchy meadows and a super windy and took a break there and then I had a really difficult time finding this route it's not well marked I actually walked all the way out to the river and walked all the way back finally found it and got here and went up this way and this trail was had a lot of downfall and was easy to follow but definitely some sketchy moments in there and then of course when I got to that River crossing right here that wasn't gonna happen so it really took me a long time to get from there just to here and then it took me a long time to find a way to cross the creek when I crossed the creek I'd already kind of decided I didn't want to go up wounded man creek based on what it looked like and that's not really fair to judge but decided to go this way but I didn't even see this trail junction and then I'm probably well I'm somewhere probably in this area camped right now oh just a recap of today's hike a lot of work it is probably in the neighborhood of eight miles extremely windy I also really did not like the fact that I was first going by a dead horse that I didn't know exactly where it was and then I'm going through willows and it's completely flooded so you're just kind of in and out of Marchioness and water and then the wind is just blowing your bear spray is worthless and when like that plus you can't hear anything and nothing can hear you so it's kind of stressful it was just a stressful bit to get across Slough Creek that crossing today was an adventure it's it's it's almost like putting together a puzzle or you know doing a brain game well this is going to be it for night number three I'll see you in the morning good night good morning it's day four all right so the plan for today is to just hike start with I'm just going to keep going up the slough Creek Trail and then it'll kind of go over looks like a little saddle and drop down into what's labeled as the East Fork of Boulder River all right a pack of camping them back on the trail some bear scat it's not fresh but starting to see a lot of bear scat along the trail all right are starting to see bear tracks in the mud she will see one right into the picture that's uh looks like a black bear more good tracks here see pad toes tag start to think he might not be too far ahead of me all right I just love following bear tracks and then having to walk right through willows like this walked right into these black bears two of them just one to the left that's right I was walking right here I get out at hey bear and about a hundred feet in front of me this black bear pops up okay I made it up over this little saddle I'm out of the slough Creek drainage and now I'm dropping it to the right fork of the bullet River still a lot of snow up high reach the river crossing got a cross right here so too deep so sort of reached a roadblock here the trail goes across the creek and I can't cross it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go upstream and try to cross in different places the East Fork of Boulder River you you can you see me I know it's kind of smogged up well my last saw you I was on date for trying to cross the East Fork Boulder River I fell in my camera got submerged I'm now on day five I'm up at Fish Lake on the lake plateau basically my cameras got wet I didn't film anything yesterday my main lens still has moisture in the lens which is why it's all fogged up hopefully that'll change by tomorrow that is looking to the west I'm Lake pretty beautiful well good morning this is a very chilly day number six and I am back in business I have got my main lens working here's a look around Fish Lake this morning sit net just about 9,500 feet maybe a little lower so let's take a look on the map what I've done yes on day four and day 5 so on day four I started somewhere in here came up this drainage and said where I ran into the two black bears this area was burned pretty good came over this little saddle and I dropped into the East Fork and this is probably the prettiest area I've been through on this entire trip came down this very wooded very bouldery trail and lots of snow still on it and that's where I got to the river crossing and basically Dave for ins film wise I came upstream across the first channel and then fell in here and then ended up camping kind of like right in here day five which I didn't film at all really I came back cross the creek hit the trail and came up and it's all wooded reminded me more of northern Montana the river was rushing and I got to Columbine Creek couldn't cross so I came up this way and when I got up in here that's when the views started getting better than the very pretty meadows and then this trail up to Fish Lake was all snow-covered and that's right where I'm at right now so I'm not really sure what the plan is for today basically gonna head over there some pass on the trail to wounded man lake and from there I have to make the decision whether I went ahead to Jordan pass or go a different direction first that saddle okay I've made it up this little saddle and just looking on the other side you can hit it that way straight ahead all right I made it to wounded man Lake the plan now is to head towards Jordan pass and they get you to herd fast I decide if I want to camp before it for go over to Jordan late [Applause] okay that is looking up at Jordan Mountain I think right there and then Jordan Pass is just gonna be somewhere over here maybe to the right okay I made it up to Jordan Pass it's pretty wooded and not much to see it and hopefully I can find my way through all this I'm not gonna stop to do much shooting because my feet are frozen solid and I want to kind of get moving but that's the direction I'm headed okay I've made it down to Jordan Lake and they call this camp for the night it's pretty wooded around the lake but much warmer then up higher right so here is look around Jordan Lake it was gonna be home for tonight basically it's pretty cold up here above 9,000 feet the ground still has snow on it in a lot of places it's like an icebox and even where the snow is melted out the ground is still wet and it's cold so in my air pad leaks out air and now it leaks out air within the hour you know my body lays hits the ground and the cold ground basically sucks the heat out of my body and it chills me to death to compound the problem my sleeping bag the zipper has completely gone out and so I can't zip it up because I can't zip up my bag I can't trap my body heat in there so combining that with the fact that my air pad is going flat in the middle of the night it's been last night was very uncomfortable and very cold I did not sleep very well when I ended up actually doing I was taking my backpack which I usually use as sort of a pillow around my head I actually laid my backpack underneath my pad long ways so where it was kind of from my butt up like it would be on my back but it was underneath my air pad and underneath my steam bag and it kind of was an extra layer to help with the cold ground so today's hike definitely the highlight of the trip so far far away the most scenic on day three four and five I didn't see a single person but today day six guy and a girl came hiking up to the lake they waved and then they hiked on and actually really helped me out because I followed their footsteps all the way to wounded man lake and it would have taken me a lot longer to figure it out have their footsteps not been there from fish lake up to that past it's over that pass when you look out into the bear tunes that it was just really beautiful and then I had to climb up to the jordan pass that was a straight up mountain climb cuz I mean the trail is there I know it's just a bunch of switchbacks but it's really steep it goes straight up about five or six and her feet it was all snow-covered my toes got frozen and I couldn't feel my feet the entire climb up I had to stop and I'd literally was doing jumping jacks and just jumping with my shoes and socks off and just jumping on a row of course everything around me is flooded Meadows and it's cold it's just been really cold and I even had to get my fuel canister out and get it going to kind of have some heat just to kind of thaw out my feet well I'm gonna call this the end of day number six here Jordan Lake I'll see you in the morning good night good morning it is day seven all right so let me show you on the map what I did yesterday here's Fish Lake let's camp there and I basically went up over this saddle when I dropped down this Bazin was beautiful pretty much all snow-covered took this route but I ended up losing the trail and coming to right to about here and hit wounded man lake and then I took the trail down to these beautiful Meadows in here really a pretty area climbed up dropped down into here this was really wooded this was the steep climb up Jordan pass and then over and down to Jordan Lake where I'm at now so it's in about the six mile range okay a packed up camp it's time to hit the trail the plan for today is to basically go down to the Stillwater River and then go up that I have no idea how far I'm gonna get I possibly have a big hurdle in my way I'm gonna have to cross wounded man Creek when I get down to the Stillwater River I don't know if that's gonna be possible especially in the afternoon so it could be a challenge you've gotten a first view Stillwater River and drainage it's a pretty big river down there good thing I don't have to cross that one and reach the Stillwater River Trail I almost didn't even see the sign there now I'm gonna head up Stillwater River boy did I get lucky beer has no idea another joke no way now that's a pretty fresh bear track headed the same way I'm headed right in front of me okay I have found a place to make camp the Stillwater River drainage there actually is not a whole lot of places and climbed it up on a rocky mound alright so this is looking down the still water drainage kind of towards the north-northeast I would say and I believe if you see this Ridge kind of comes down and then you see that mountain in the background and there's obviously a canyon down there that's what I came down and got down to here and worked my way up but where I'm at right now so this is like the first time the mosquitos have been really a nuisance honestly I don't know what is worse mosquitoes the ticks or the spiders as I've been walking the spider webs all day finding spiders in my hair crawling all over me and I've had two monster size ticks crawling on me as well it's still water drainage was nothing like I was expecting it was going to be I kind of had a vision it was to be more like smooth creeks coming up this drainage a lot of bear sign a lot of bear scat most bear sign and bear scat I've seen on this entire trip and even right here there's probably five piles of bear scat and there's even a pile of bear scat right up here where I have my 10 yeah I ended up dropping down a ton of elevation there's something over there that on the hillside that standing out but it's a different color anyways I dropped you know from probably eighty nine hundred feet to 6500 feet yeah there's a there is an animal right there anyways let me show you what that looks like so you're not gonna believe this but there was a grizzly bear right up here in these that little patch of meadows while I was talking and now I can't find him alright well this is going to be the end of date number seven somewhere and these trees is acroos the bear I can't see him but I've heard about at least four times it's not quiet at all just cracking branches right over there you can hear all the birds chirping so I'm gonna have to go in the dark and put my sack somewhere so got my hands full I'll see you in the morning good night good morning I made it to day eight so last night definitely wasn't the best night's sleep of the trip it doesn't really bother me too much that they're yours is out here because they're I know they're out here I'm used to that and seeing him from camp it's not the biggest deal they usually don't mess with you what bothered me last night it was a couple things one he was coming down right towards my camp right towards my area but more importantly this was an area that had a lot of bear sign in it there's scat right by my tent up here on this knob and there's a ton of scat right along the trail and in the meadows there's digging right by the trail there's tracks right by the trail so I don't like camping in an area where there's an active bear and I did that last night to make it even more exciting my headlamp is doesn't really work I can hardly read a book in my tent middle the night with it on full blast and so I couldn't see anything and I had to go hang my food in the pitch-black dark with the bear in the area and I could hear all the birds down below end up going off these cliffs right here down to hang it it's also in the earth sack back so it's nothing was going to get my food I don't really even have to hang it I just wanted to get it away from camping more spooky was I was doing that in the dark and my heavenly f didn't work I get in a tent and then my whole paranoia changes from fairest ticks I do a complete body check don't find any ticks as I'm like putting clothes back on I feel something crawling literally towards my butt lo and behold there is a massive tick and then as I'm trying to kill him here comes another tick on my sleeping bag across so it really just I just don't like ticks it freaked me out and then this morning while I was eating breakfast my bear walked right across those same meadows that I saw him in last night and of course I ran I didn't have my camera or my lens I ran to get him but by the time I came back bear is gone so here's a look at what I did yesterday on the map and it's actually I'm two different sides of the map but here's Jordan Lake started there this is this whole area is beautiful but you can't see it this is all wooded and drop down here and come down here and then it turns into regrowth and burn and so I just hiked all the way down here that's where I come off the map I'll flip it over and show you that side so I came down wounded band Creek hit Stillwater River Trail that's where the bridge is and then I came all the way up to this little knob I think right here that's where I'm at today and I'm gonna come up to this trail Junction and then hike up towards the Lake of the Woods so the plan for today is to hike up the Stillwater trail just a little bit until I intersect the horseshoe Creek trail that goes up to Lake of the Woods and that's the way I'm headed that's gonna be like at least a 2,000 foot climb in a relatively short distance so to start with today the trails down here it's going to come up this way I'm gonna leave the trail and take another trail up to Lake of the Woods it goes up that way between this and that Ridge I'm not sure what kind of animal this is but he's not doing so well ever he is he's got some teeth on him okay I'm at my trail Junction the Horseshoe Lake trail ended up this way it's really pretty up here we're gonna cross at the Beartooth ladies and gentlemen I present to you Lake of the Woods I had envisioned possibly camping here anymore looks more like Lake of the Dead honestly feel bad for it but it was beautiful in its prime all right that's one last look Lake of the Woods I have no idea where the trail of that but I'm essentially to the saddle I don't know lemon dude I've got weather coming in hey this is looking down the other side into a wounded man Creek originally I was going to head up and over to Horseshoe Bazin and go down that way but with this weather not anymore I've heard thunder the north a few times so it's gonna do my best to find a trail and head down what a bit creepy this kind of spooky stuff no sign of the trail I'm just headed downriver headed into the wind in an area that doesn't get traveled very much so I want to put the camera away and feel a little more heads up and try to work my way down I do know that the trail comes on this side of the river eventually so it turns out there is no trail down Annamayya Creek I mean I found remnants of a trail in a few places a few cut logs but it has not been maintained since this place birth maybe 20 years ago it has just been a lot of downfall like you see but a lot of regrowth this is actually the first place I got to coming down that is open and I can actually go find a place to set my tent up and not have to worry about a dead tree falling on top of me I'm gonna camp here for the night I can see the slough Creek drainage is down there it's probably less than two miles away but what lies in between me and there is a lot of moose whacking and stepping over logs and downfall just a lot of work all right I found a place to set the chin up a little bit farther away from where my neat dinner tonight then I found the mosquitoes here that is looking back up the direction I came from wounded man Creek there's one of two which has no trail on this one you know the maps show trail look at all that downfall that is what I've had to negotiate doing this while trying to fight the mosquitoes that are biting me I have ended up with one very spectacular uh view from camp now that's pretty awesome looking down into the slough Creek drainage this drainage sucks to be honest with you beautiful Peaks snow-covered and a beautiful view from here but there's this it's all burnt up and there's a ton of downfall no trail and you're getting the regrowth in places and I'm exhausted from stepping over it and just in and out of marshes trying to find the easiest way down you can't just walk the river one because it's too loud but - there's so much downfall it's the downfall is you know chest-high it just eats up a lot of time so just kind of an eerie place but this is going to be it for night number eight and I'll see you in the morning good night good morning day number nine so it rained on me at all last night and this morning in fact I thought was gonna be a dreary rainy day all day but it cleared up it's moved on and I have sunny skies well here's a look at what I did yesterday which wasn't very much and I'm back on the trails Illustrated Yellowstone Maps a little dot right there at little bubble that's the hill I can't on I hiked up here all the way up and this is where you have the beautiful views looking back towards the Beartooth and then this is where it kind of all is burnt up Lake of the Woods and this is where I lost the trail climbing over this past and this trail does not exist and so I bushwhacked all the way down to somewhere right in here actually now for a broader perspective of things I'm right up here I'm going at the bushwhack down to hit Slough Creek and then from there I'll pick up the trail and repeat what I did the first couple days all the way down to the trailhead so it's a little more than 20 miles from where I'm at right now back to the slough Creek Trailhead in Yellowstone where I'm parked if it was all maintained trail from here there I would be able to make it out easily in a day however it's not the hardest parts gonna be the first couple mire miles from where I'm at now to get back to the swoop Creek Trail and that's going to be all down fall regrowth fire burn bushwhacking and just route-finding trying to figure out the best way to get down there if I can make it through that quickly I have a good chance of getting out today I'm gonna have to deal with the same river crossings that I dealt with Mondays 2 & 3 I also I do not have a backcountry permit to camp inside Yellowstone National Park and that's gonna be the last 11 or 12 miles of this hike out so when I get to that point I'm gonna have to evaluate what time it is and I'm either gonna camp somewhere near Frenchy Meadows or if I think I have time then I'm gonna have to make one final push for the last 11 miles to get back to the car so that's looking the way I'm gonna take off today and the tough parts gonna be to get through all this stuff and if you see this you see that peak and then you see this Ridge coming down in between their Slough Creek right in there so I got to get from there to there so all of this I got to navigate without a trail I'm on the trail by the way see the cut log it's quite a cute cut logs down this you can actually kind of see pathway but has been maintained at all okay I made it back to the slough Creek Trail but take this all the way to the car remember on day three I couldn't find a trail marker junction sign for the wounded man free trail now I know why all right time to cross snoot Creek one more time [Applause] okay I've made it back to Silvertip ranch and I'll be back inside Yellowstone National Park real soon okay I've got more weather coming my way and Baird number five black bear okay I have got less than two miles to go to get back to the car and I'm gonna put the cameras away get to the car and it's true we'll be over

Channel: MyOwnFrontier

Views: 100,352

Keywords: Backpacking, Backcountry, Hiking, Camping, Yellowstone National Park, Slough Creek, Beartooths, Absaroka Wilderness, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Bears, Boulder River, Stillwater River, Lake Plateau, Wounded Man Creek, Jordan Lake, Lake of the Woods, My Own Frontier

Id: 2weVp3V83p0

Length: 78min 21sec (4701 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 05 2018