Thorofare: Day Three - Stick or Staff

People sometimes ask me why I carry a staff when I hike around. If you saw Laura's comment from yesterday then you might be asking why I have a staff and she has a 'stick' and what's the difference? Well it's quite simple to see the difference between the two if you know what to look for. As you can see from the photo of my hiking staff, it is about as tall as I am, making it a staff. Laura uses a hiking stick because it ends around her waist or lower torso. It's that simple to determine what the difference between a stick and staff is. There is no definate type of stick, staff, treking pole that is universally used, but most people these days tend to have something like ski poles (trek poles) and they use them for any hike. I like having the longer staff when I am going on big hikes because it allows me to hike in rough terrain easier and takes some of the weight on my back, if only for a moment. It also helps me keep my footing and balance. For example, when crossing logs across creeks I am able to hold onto the top of my staff while I use it to brace myself when I walk across the log. With the shorter stick I would be forced to keep my balance, and with a heavy pack on my back that can be a real challenge - especially when you DO NOT want to be wet for another 10 miles of hiking.

With that explaination I bring to you day three of hiking in the Thorofare...

August 1, 2006 - Tuesday - I was the first one up in the cabin. I heard the wolves howling around 5:00 a.m. and I wanted to venture outside to listen, but I refrained from getting out of bed for another hour and a half. Around 6:30 I decided I was going to go exploring - no one else was up and I was ready to go see what the area had to offer. The morning was cool and the sun was fighting to break through the thick low clouds. As always I had the camera along with me just incase I might happen to catch a glimpse of an animal or good photo. I took a few pictures of myself pretending to be a rugged cowboy - I don't exactly have the correct clothing on for the cowboy picture, but being 30 miles from anywhere I didn't really care to pack in my boots, spurs, chaps & hat. HA HA!

After about an hour of hiking around the cabin I returned to find breakfast cooking and movement around the cabin. Laura was still in bed, but she was awake and chatting with everyone. The picture shows a good view as you walk in the front door. You can see the wood burning stove against the back wall - that was packed in on the back of a mule! You can also see the cramped quarters we managed to fit the beds into - and look at Laura's face as she is laying in the bed - yes, that's a fish face she is making at me! The next picture is looking left as you walk in the front door. The white wood-heated stove is at the left side and the cabinets begin on the right side. That's J.R. there getting some syrup on his pancakes while Theresa cooks up some more for me!

And what would I do without a first aid kit? How about a first aid kit from, well several years back... There was a lot of cool old stuff in the cabins which is still used. J.R. was amazed by the 1903 rifle that was hanging on the wall and likely is still used when needed.

After breakfast John, J.R. and I headed out to the Thorofare River so J.R. could do some fishing. It was raining by this point so we put on our coats - in my case I put on a $1.00 poncho I picked up at Target, it was hardly worth the $1. We had to do some wading across the Thorofare River to get to some fishing spots and to continue on our hike for the day. That wasn't exactly a comfortable thing to do in the rain and the river water wasn't much warmer than 45-50 degrees. There's a picture of J.R. wading in the river while fishing.

The fishing wasn't too good, most of the fish had moved out of the river so we headed over to the Hawk's Rest patrol cabin which is ran by the National Forest Service. The cabin is about 2-3 miles away from the Game & Fish cabin. When we got there we were surprised to see horses tied in front of the cabin and a crew working on the shingles. It was nice to see some other humans and have a brief chit chat before hiking to the Yellowstone River to check out the fishing situation.

The Forest Service built a bridge over the river many years ago and it is still in good shape. The picture was taken from the South side of the bridge looking back towards the Trident Mountain - the one behind the Game & Fish cabin. You can see the rain clouds that were threatening us most of the morning as well.

After J.R. threw a few casts into the Yellowstone River he decided the fishing wasn't any good in the Yellowstone either so we started doing some exploring. Here's a picture of John and J.R. that I took from the bridge. I really like the area - the wide valley and the meadows were open to see the geese that were flying around and feeding in the meadows. I think if I were a duck or a goose I would look for a place like this too. The great views and the nice cool temperatures would be a nice relief from summer heat. However, the predators around might cause me to think twice.

As we were doing some exploring around the Yellowstone River we discovered some tracks in the mud. Another set of wolf tracks following the river and they were in very good condition for a picture. The tracks were quite large - like I said yesterday, they were no dog! Looking at the stride and the size of the tracks we estimated the wolf to stand a little over waist high on us - all three of us are 6' tall or better. Wolves don't really frighten me, but I think if I happened to meet such a large wolf along the trail I would be looking for some protection just in case!

I had my old pair of running shoes on and they are a size 12.5 - look at the size of that track compared to the size of my shoe! You can see the claws as well. WHOA BUDDY! After we finished looking at things around the river we headed back towards the cabin and decided to climb up on Hawks Rest mountain. We climbed up to 9,560 feet and had an amazing view of the surrounding valleys and mountains. The hard part about getting to the top of Hawks Rest Mountain was getting up the cliffs. The cliffs pretty much composed the entire side of the mountain. At times there were a few small flat spots, but cliffs are cliffs, and climbing them is tough to do, and it's VERY dangerous - the cliffs were around 100-200 feet high, sometimes much higher. We managed to find a drainage up to the top, which turned out to be quite a climb reguardless of the fact it looked easy from the bottom. At some points we were literally climbing straight up the mountain. Getting to the top was well worth the climb though. The first picture is looking to the South - the Yellowstone River (where J.R. was fishing) is down below and comes from the left side. Two Ocean Plateau is on the far right side - a river literally splits in two different directions on top of the plateau and one flows to the Pacific Ocean and one flows to the Gulf of Mexico!

Looking back up the Yellowstone Valley I took a panoramic picture. Actually I took 10 pictures and put them together in Photoshop. The panoramic isn't exactly a professional grade picture, but for the short amount of time I spent on the picture I think it looks good enough. The mountain range of the right side of the picture is the Trident Mountains and the cabin is down below those. You can find the cabin if you know EXACTLY where to look, but it's pretty hard to find even when you know. This is about a 100 degree field-of-vie, you can see the trees on the edge of the pictures, those were basically lined up with my shoulders when I looked straight out into the valley. The lake on the left side of the picture is Bridger Lake - we stopped by there for J.R. to do some fishing as well, but all we saw were ducks and a few other birds flying around. The picture doesn't appear very large on the blog, but clicking on it should give you a better image. We started back down the mountain a different direction than we came up in hopes of finding a better way down because there was no way we could get down the same way we came up - at least not very easily... We went over the ridge to the right in the panoramic and went down the drainage where we discovered a 35 foot cliff which I determined was impossible to get down from. There were no game trails - trails that the animals use - so we kept looking for another way down. We finally found a game trail and followed it down the cliffs to find our way back to safety after nearly 2 hours of trying to get down. As we were walking back to the cabin a storm rolled into the valley and rained on us again. This time it brought strong winds and a few trees were heard falling over as we walked back through the old burnt trees. It got rather cold with the rain and wind and it took awhile to get back to the cabin since we tried to find the most direct route back and not return the same way we came. At the end of the day the GPS said we had hiked 7.19 miles, but seemed farther with the climbing involved.

Before sunset we took some pictures outside the cabin and prepared for our big day of hiking coming up. We decided after such a slow trek into the cabin we would need an extra day of hiking to get back to the beach we were dropped off at and catch our boat across the lake. We boarded up the windows and prepared to make a quick exit early in the morning. Our stay at the cabin had come to an end....

Until again

-=Nolan=-