Adventures in Onionism

Dammit Al Gore, we believe you already! Now turn off your infernal global warming machine! I'll never drive a car again, just let me hike the Bob! If you'd asked me before this trip what parts I was looking forward to, I'd've said "Glacier, the San Juans, the Winds, and the Bob." And now the entire Lewis and Clark NF sections of the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Scapegoat Wilderness are closed thanks to fires, so I won't get to see the Chinese Wall, a 1000-ft shere cliff on the Divide that goes for miles and miles. Thanks a lot global warming-warmer winters-pine beetles-wildfires vicious circle. I talked to rangers at the office in town for hours this morning, but they're still working on putting together an alternate route. I met a sobo hiker yesterday, and his route hit the road way west of Lincoln (Lincoln is already ~30 miles west of the Divide) so I dropped from an earlier pass and walked directly into town in case I'd have to take that rou...

On schedule! I did 122 miles in about 73 hours because the Darby post office isn't open on Saturdays, so all the sudden I'm on schedule, assuming I can get a ride out of town this afternoon. I got a new pair of shoes (I'd had the previous since Steamboat Springs, so they were hating it.) I got a haircut (sorry, no unabomber beard--it's freaking hot out here, and it's kinda nasty to have dead mosquitoes and flies all up in your face). Speaking of flies, I killed either 82 or 84 in a two hour period the day I left Lima, MT (it's on I-15 if you're looking at a map). Usually I'd go at that pace from around 9:30 AM to 7:30 PM, but that day it rained so they went away. They've kind of gotten less bad of late--the trail's new challenge is that it's super PUDy. It doggedly follows the Divide and is full of Pointless Ups and Downs rather than PCT-style contouring from saddle to saddle. I'm starting to run into southbounders, so that makes th...

If anyone intimately familiar with the CDT happens to read my blog, do you know the details of a route from Delmoe Junction near Butte, MT to Lewis Junction on the Dogshead trail near Lewis Lake in Yellowstone NP? It's mentioned at the southern end in the CDTS guidebooks, but I don't know if it's described in detail anywhere. Does anyone do this route? It says it's much shorter, and it seems like it would facilitate hiking north-south across all of Yellowstone, so that would be cool, and if it was much shorter and didn't skip something cool in southern Montana, then if I do it soutbound it might give me time to hike the San Juans again rather than taking the Creede cutoff. Thanks for any info.

Hello all. I'm at Sun and Steph's cabin on the Madison river in MT near West Yellowstone for the afternoon. They picked me up from the road/trail near Macks Inn, ID. I tried to convince them that we needed to spend the day watching Transformers and whatever the IMAX theatre happens to be showing, but they weren't up for it. Apparently they come up here to do outdoorsy stuff. Whatever, lame-o's :) Anywho, I finished Wyoming! I hiked through the Red Desert, then the Bridger Wilderness in the Wind River range, then Yellowstone NP. The Winds were amazing. They're too high and glaciated to stay on the crest most of the way, so the route stays pretty low and goes around a bunch of pretty ponds/lakes, but there are three alternates that hit some pretty awesome heights. I did one of the three, over Jackass and Texas passes through the Cirque of the Towers. (a la Robert Frost: Oh, I left the first for another day!) Google cirque of the towers, I'm sure the pictu...

Just crossed most of the Red Desert. Heat up to 105 and no shade w/nothing but sagebrush for miles and miles and miles. Saw one group of wild horses and a million antelope. Also found a tick on me basically every time I looked. Took slightly longer alternate along Sweetwater River. Beautiful oasis, but too bad there were a million horse flies. Looking forward to getting off jeep roads and back on real trail in the Wind rivers. Still the greatest adventure of my life thus far. :)