Feeling Uneasy After So Many Wildlife Encounters

This morning I didn’t wind up packing up until it was light out. After last night, I did not have it in me to night hike this morning. At least I got to watch a really beautiful sunrise right for my camp spot. Then I backtracked to the trail and continued along. And honestly, this morning was one of the hardest I’ve had in a long time.

I spent the entire first few hours of the day in a very repetitive thought pattern. I just could not stop thinking about all of the bears that I saw last night. I also just kept thinking about all of these different encounters I’ve had. It feels like each one has just been such a close call. It’s one thing to see an animal from a distance. But walking up on so many animals and not realizing until you’re 10–20 feet away is pretty scary. It just leads to a very intense reaction and response.

I started walking this morning just as the sun came up. I didn’t have it in me to start any earlier.

Because of how high stress all the encounters I’ve had have been, I just have a lot of anxiety as I recall the scenarios. Which is to be expected after you experience something that frightened you. This morning, though, I felt uneasy and jumpy. Which really isn’t how I feel out here normally. Even after so many animal encounters, it wasn’t until this last one that I really felt scared. The other encounters had me feeling uneasy immediately afterward. But I don’t remember feeling stressed out or scared in the days that followed. It just feels like everything has culminated up until now.

For a mile or so the trail walked right along this river. That might’ve been my favorite part of the whole day.

I tried everything that I could to get my mind off of the animals. And it ended up being a really nice and beautiful morning. The trail followed along a river for a while, which was stunning. The foliage was also just really nice. Some of the leaf color has changed out here and it made for spectacular visuals.

These last 10 or so miles in Yellowstone were some of my favorite.

Sometime in the late morning, I actually ran into some hikers going northbound. It seemed like they were section hiking, and it was four people altogether. That honestly felt like a bit of a relief. Knowing that someone had just walked through the trail up ahead of me made me a bit less nervous about animals. Though from my experience, it really doesn’t make a big difference.

Leaving Yellowstone and entering into Teton.

I chatted with those hikers for a couple minutes before continuing on. Usually, I don’t find it super pertinent to tell people about animal encounters. But because I had read a far out comments about the mom and three cubs, and experienced them in the same area, I felt it was important to mention today. And it turns out that these hikers were planning on camping at Heart Lake. Which is apparently the area that the mama bear and cubs have been seen most frequently. So I was glad to have let them know just so they could keep it in mind.

Walking through a wide open pasture.

For most of the morning, I was going generally uphill. Then I got toward the top of a mountain pass and cruised along the top of that for a while. When I was getting closer, the weather was definitely changing. I was just hoping to get up and over the high point before things got started. I didn’t realize but I actually went all the way up to 10,000 feet today. Up top the clouds were just starting to roll in so I continued along fairly quickly.

A brand new wooden CDT marker.

A bit of rain wound up rolling in, but nothing too crazy. It rained on and off for a little bit and then stopped. And from then on, I was continuing downhill for most of the remainder of the day. Then the trail would level out and I really didn’t have much more climbing to do until tomorrow. That was pretty nice!

I saw on my map that there was a alternate route coming up later this evening. It didn’t shave off any mileage actually. If anything, it added a tiny bit of mileage. But it went around a section of the trail that has not been maintained. Apparently the blow downs are so bad that it’s worth doing this cross country alternate, fording river, and getting back on trail. This was going to be about 33 miles into my day. And honestly, I wound up really focusing on that for the whole day.

I might not have been doing the best mentally today, but at least the views were beautiful.

Even though it was a super short section of cross country hiking, I was really eager to get it done well before dark. Just with everything that’s gone on the idea of doing an off trail route in the evening made me nervous. I knew it would probably be the shortest off trail segment ever. It was also probably going to be super easy and obvious. But I had a major pep in my step today as I tried to get to that section of the trail well before dark.

This was a pretty cool sign to pass! I didn’t take this route previously, so this was brand new to me.

As the day continued on, it did rain a bit more. Honestly, the worst part about rain in Wyoming is the state of the trail. Something about the clay and dirt in this area causes insane mud. And with all of the traffic from horses, it can get insanely messy. I have memories from last year of mud caking up,  literally inches thick on my feet. To a point where my ankles were so sore from bearing all of the extra weight.

The trail went right past this big waterfall!

Today the mud started getting crazy after only maybe 20 or 30 minutes of rain. I did my best to hop around it and avoid it when I could. Luckily, a lot of the trail was flat or downhill, which made the mud travel a bit easier. I was doing my best to just slip and slide without falling. Because it had rained the trail actually got wiped completely clear of tracks. There were some sections with tons of horse prints, just because of how deep those prints go. But other than that, the trail was now completely clean and free of marks of animals or feet.

That was until some new tracks appeared. All of a sudden, I was looking at massive bear tracks coming up the trail toward me. At some point in the last hour, a huge bear had walked exactly where I was. And you knew it had to have been recent, because I only just recently started leaving my own tracks behind. Until the mud had formed, I wasn’t leaving distinctive prints on the dirt. At least not significant ones. I guess I was slightly relieved that the bears footprints were coming toward me. That meant I wasn’t going to catch up to it anytime soon. But also met that we probably walked very close to each other in the last 20 or 30 minutes and I didn’t even notice. That’s the funniest thing about most wildlife experiences. You probably encounter animals constantly when you’re out in the woods, you just don’t know it.

Watching a beautiful sunset this evening.

I continued slipping and sliding as quickly as I could to get to this junction. I arrived just after 7 PM which was absolutely perfect. Then for less than a half mile I continued down an alternate trail. Then the woods opened up and there was a meadow to my left. I had to basically just walk freely through this meadow, doing a “cross country” route, as someone might call it. I continued on until I hit a river, which I had to cross. Of course I had to get my feet wet at the end of the day! And then almost immediately after that I was back on the CDT. Which saved me some annoying time navigating around down trees.

At this point I had gone about 34 miles for the day. I grabbed water and basically just planned to walk until right before dark. I didn’t see another marked campsite for a while. There was one right when I got back onto the junction, but it seemed too soon. And after that, there really wasn’t anything. But lately, my standards have been so low. I can basically camp anywhere if it’s even remotely flat.

As I continued on, I got to watch a really beautiful sunset. That’s the one nice thing about storms here in Wyoming. It seems to just make the sky so spectacular. I wonder if it has something to do with the barometric pressure or who knows what. But sunsets always seem even more incredible around the time of the storm.

It started to get late and I knew it would be dark any minute. But I hadn’t gone by anything in terms of camping. I almost stopped a couple different times at really bad spots to get set up. But just kept hoping if I went further and further, I would find some thing. But I pretty much never did! So I just made do with a super mediocre spot eventually. It was flat enough and I just hoped it didn’t rain too much more. I got set up and tried to get us comfortable inside as I could.

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