Day37 Cascade Canyon Trail – Jun 16
Tracey and I get a late start out the door this morning for our overnight backpacking adventure. Slow starts are never good when backpacking and this will manifest itself later this evening. We have to move the camper over to a neighboring (dry) campground to save a few dollars on the overnight expense, $20 as opposed to $50. Then on the way to the trailhead, I miss my turn and that cost us a good 20 minutes or more. Once we are on site we spend more time making final preparations at the car. Then we have to take a boat ride across the lake to the trailhead. By the time we step off and move up the trail it is noon. One more wrong turn on the trail, but that only hurts us by a minute or two, then it is a steady uphill climb for the balance of the day. The initial mile or so are brutal as we climb 420 feet to Inspiration Point.
One we reach the top, admire the view and take dozens of pictures, we head up into the canyon in earnest. With this we also leave the vast majority of tourists behind as few of them will venture out much past the overlooks and waterfall. The terrain begins to change almost immediately, and we find a nice shady spot for a quick lunch and recharge after the long pull up hill. The balance of the afternoon is spent climbing the canyon which for the most part, is just an uphill walk with the occasional steep incline. We run into some snow-covered trail within just a few hundred yards of leaving the overlook, and these will become more frequent, and much larger as we move further up the canyon.
This entire hike is very scenic as the Cascade Creek winds its way down the canyon. There are numerous photo opportunities as we move along, and we take advantage of these as much as possible. Tracey sees her first Marmot along the way. There are also a number of places where the mountain run off trickles idly down the range and we have water crossings that would normally be a just bit of a stretch but are a tad more challenging with full packs on our backs.
We continue to climb through early evening, and I began to be a little concerned about time. Progress was quite slow, and the trail was getting increasingly difficult to walk. I was also beginning to have equipment issues as my pack was not fitting quite the way it should have been and it was placing extra workload on the upper thigh muscles, so I had to stop frequently for muscle recharge. The snow was coming more challenging as well as we would often times break through the surface crust and fall up to our calves in snow. Sunset was less than an hour away before we crossed the big bridge and hit the trail intersection where the north and south canyon trails split. We headed north now, and the trail was covered completely in snow. There were also just a couple of footprints guiding our route down the trail. The sun was already dropping below the peaks of the mountains and we were beginning to get lest light and warmth.
We went just a couple of hundred yards up the canyon, and I determined it was time to make camp. The problem, the snow was now knee deep. I found a couple of flat spots where we tried to mash down the snow, and of course the snowbank was flat, but the ground underneath was not. We moved downhill towards the raging river just a bit and found a clearing where the snow had already melted. The sun was dropping almost as fast as the temps, and the wind was starting to pick up. Luckily, I came across a sheltered space to pitch the tent and I quickly made camp. Tracey put dinner on to cook and we both worked on the tent together. Within 20 minutes or so, we were hunkered down out of the wind, eating warm soup and drinking hot tea.
Bedtime came shortly after dark and we were both fast asleep in minutes. It was a cold night, but sleep was easy to come by as it had been a long hard climb into the canyon. Total mileage for the climb into the canyon was a little over 5 miles and a total elevation gain of about 1000 feet.
Day38 Cascade Canyon Trail – Jun 17
We were up well after daylight for a hot cup of coffee and some breakfast. I had broken Tracey’s eggs when I planted the bear canister in the snow last night, so she had to go with back up plans for breakfast. Therein lies a good argument for my emergency meal pack that I typically carry. Adds a half a pound but can literally be a life saver. Once we were good and fueled up, we quickly changed, broke camp and stepped onto the trail around 10a. Finding the trail was a bit of a challenge in all of the snow, but we finally got going in the right direction, only to hit some very deep snow pockets. At one point, Tracey was up to her thighs in snow.
The hump out was especially challenging for me, as I had some fit issues with my pack and I had some major muscle strength failures as a result, as well as some nice blisters on my heels from the guvmit issued boots I was wearing. Trekking through snowbanks was quite an ordeal and it took some time for me to warm up and fix all of the sore spots to make any real progress.
The day was quite warm, and it became quickly apparent that water supply was going to be an issue. We pushed through as quickly as possible, while still stopping to smell the roses along the way. Tracey got numerous beautiful photos including several shots of a bull moose lounging in the grass next to the river. Hopefully one of us will get these posted soon.
Our biggest concern of the day was to catch the ferry back to the parking area before it shutdown at 6p. Failure to do so would mean a little over 2 additional miles hiking back to the parking lot, as well as less than three hours of daylight to do it in. We had run out of water at lunch and had to stop just before arriving at Inspiration Point for me to refuel and treat some river water we had scooped. Fortunately, Tracey remembered that I had water treatment chemicals in my pack and within 30 minutes we had enough to get us down to the lake. We made the ferry with about an hour to spare.
The neat part of this hike is that it was Tracey’s very first backpacking overnight. In addition, she had never made camp in the snow before. I was glad to help her accomplish those goals. She also got to try out her little stove, and it outperformed my alcy stove until I figured out that I just needed to let it heat up before trying to cook on it.
We ate a celebratory dinner at Colbert Bay, and it was very good. We also spent some time trying to plan the next week or so of our adventure into Yellowstone.