40 — Golden Trout Wilderness & News from Home

Mile 733.0 — 744.5 (+2 miles to TH) (13.5 miles)

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Rose: Horseshoe Meadow, so pretty but obviously a dry shadow of its glory in this drought Thorn: News of the flooding back home Bud: Mt Whitney soon, and SEKI

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Two people passed by my camp as I packed up. I’ve allowed myself to sleep in a little in the Sierra: it’s cold in the morning, I’m not covering crazy mileage, and I’m trying to catch up on the weeks of sleep deprivation from my deflating pad (another reason why doing the night hiking Mojave sleep pattern would have been not good for me).

I hiked knowing I shouldn’t dilly dally: I wanted to get into Lone Pine to resupply and meet up with Beth. Beth, who I was supposed to start the trail with. She got a permit start date of two weeks before me—very ideal. She fell and tumbled downhill in her first week of trail. She was too far out of town to make the 8 hour deadline for stitches. The deep laceration got infected, and the pain drove her off trail and back to Houston where she found out she had chipped off a bit of elbow bone too. After two weeks of antibiotics, she got back on trail at Wrightwood, about one week ahead of me on trail. I was closing the gap when she had to be rescued off trail by Cindy the Trail Angel (my Cindy!) because of the triple digit heat, contaminated water, and her running out of water. What a rough go of it she’s had. Last I talked to her, she was going to hitch ahead, and hopefully we’d meet up in Lone Pine.

So I budgeted that I could be at the Horseshoe Meadow Campground by 2pm and in town early enough to resupply, meet up with Beth, and sleep at Hidden Valley Ranch. Things did not go according to plan.

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The trail wove up for a couple thousand feet then leveled out with an almost imperceptible downward progression. I was on top of a ridge with sweeping views left and right; I was sidehilling down through pine forests; I was walking at the bottom of dry shallow sandy bowls with meadows peeking between the trees off to the side.

Everything is so much drier than I had imagined. The Sierras were always lawded as wet and lush: streams trickling everywhere, snow often. Instead, I see the evidence of years and years of drought: There are dry stream beds at every bend in the trail. The meadows aren’t quite the lush green they should be this time of year. The alpine rock doesn’t support much high alpine vegetation. There is so little snow on any of the high peaks. The forest is thirsty, and that is scary.

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When I turned down Trail Pass to make for the campground, I found day hikers. I talked with an elderly couple for a while. When I told them I was from Yellowstone, they said that Yellowstone was flooding. That all guests and employees were being evacuated. This didn’t make sense to me, but it hastened my feet to the trailhead.

I went too far to the trailhead. Passed the dirt road, down another thousand feet, and I was in an abandoned campground-turned USFS staging area. I had to search for the exit to the road.

It didn’t take long to get a hitch. The first car traveling in my direction, actually. I didn’t even hear the car approaching, I was tucked under my sun umbrella eating my leftover fried rice when the car slowly crept onto the shoulder.

They were filming some bicycle movie on the road on the way down to Lone Pine.

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When I flipped my phone off airplane mode, I was bonbarded by texts from Casey and others about flooding in Yellowstone. I called Casey to get the low down. It rained for 36 hours straight. The Yellowstone River swelled to twice that of its highest ever recorded CFS. The raging river had taken out the Gardiner-Mammoth Road, chunks of 89 up to Livingston, unseated every bridge on 89, swallowed the road through Yankee Jim Canyon, and flooded the roads to the Northeast entrance, Silvergate, and Cooke City. Gardiner, Silvergate, and Cooke City were effectively islands. NPS housing in Gardiner had succumbed to the river and floated down stream. Livingston and Red Lodge had extensive flooding. Main Street in Red Lodge had turned into a river. All the houses east of Main Street—including my winter basement apartment— were flooded. Yellowstone NP closed all its entrances until further notice and evacuated all the tourists.

Wow. I was shell shocked. I texted all my friends in Red Lodge to see if they were all okay and how their property faired. Everyone lived on the west side of town so the were okay. I never got a reply from my old landlords. My friends did send me pictures of a siphoned hose coming out of my apartment window with water pouring out. I can only imagine the financial ruin.

Casey told me stories about the emergency response, planning, him being on standby for ALS and swift water rescue. I was numb.

I tried to do my resupply but my head and heart were so preoccupied and heavy. A worry, a guilt, a need to help, a feeling of helplessness. Resupplying would be futile. I stopped trying to do my chores and went to the bar (after a couple hours of phone calls, texts, and reading news sites). I did a shot, drank two 7&7s, and had a Miller Lite. I distracted myself by first chatting up the bartender about Montana and then discussing politics with the old vet in the bar (masking one heavy issue with another?).

Then I got tacos, called Reggie from Hidden Valley Ranch, set up my tent in the twilight, entertained one last phone call, and went to sleep on top of my quilt in the warm night.