Triple Divide Pass: What happens when you throw bears, lightening, hail, getting lost, and big mile days together?
We woke excited to start our first 24 mile day on the trail. As we hiked for the next hour, we encountered the largest bear scat we’d seen yet. We reached the sign for Florence Falls, and I checked the map to see which way. Oh…wait…this ISN’T the CDT.
This put our big mile day into even bigger mile territory, with very limited food. We hiked furiously back to Reynolds and down to St. Mary’s falls and Virginia Falls. The trail tread and width got a lot better near these touristy spots. As we crossed the falls, we didn’t even stop and thought “People plan coming to the park for months to see these, and we just zoom past them.” We had a big day ahead of us–and had already wasted two hours lost. Though, as we crossed the Virginia Falls bridge, I did take the time to note that a week previously, a woman had fallen off the Virgina Falls bridge to her watery death.
The St. Mary’s trail tread and width immediately got vegetated with nettles stinging out legs. Bear scat was plentiful and our singing and calling out and harmonica playing corresponded to the scat levels. At one point, we noticed very fresh bits of scat that had fallen in pieces up the trail for ten feet. Looks like we must’ve stumbled across a bear and it heard our calls. I was relieved to hear the making noise method works.
We walked next through a burnt area where the sun intensely crisped my face. Looking down the small container of sunscreen I had been using thusfar, I read the handwritten label: “Hand moisturizer.” Oops! I must’ve packed out the wrong container. Time to whip out the mylar umbrella!
Dark clouds formed around the mountains as we reached a sign: “10.9 miles to Triple Divide Pass.” It rained quite hard for 10 minutes and ended as quickly as it started. We still walked through burnt areas–relishing water whenever we found it even though it looked a bit brown. Throughout the park, scientists set up barbed wires on trees and bears use the barbed wire as scratching posts. The wire collects bear hair, which the scientists use to understand how many bears are in an area and the DNA of the bears. Through the burn area, we’d see the wire, but no hair.
We reached a huge river–one we’d crossed earlier on a bridge–but this time, there was no bridge. It was deep and swiftly moving and rapids looked intense. We noticed three young women crossing a log coming towards us, scooting across it on their butt and feet. I noticed places where former branches were on the tree were now stubby 3 inch points jutting out. I hopped on the log, sitting with one leg on either side, dangling into the water. I’d carefully use my hands to lift my body forward, and sit back down. Each time, I struggled to get my crotch over the stubs. As I reached the middle of the log, the water was moving swiftly, dragging my feet down the cold river. I knew I had to scoot forward quickly or I’d be swept away by my feet. Desperately, I pushed up with my hands and sat down as quickly as possible. I had a huge scratch a little too close to my crotch for comfort. It didn’t matter. I got off that log and shook my frozen feet back to life. I’d made it.
We went upwards and it started hailing marbles. It stopped after 5 minutes, but I was happy to have the umbrella–the same umbrella I had used to block the sun an hour before. We went through burnt blowdowns and I dreaded putting a log near my crotch again. The clouds got darker and lightening started hitting the surrounding mountains. We couldn’t see the pass anymore.
It started raining hard and thundering loudly. Giving up, we sat under a tree and decided to cook our last hot meal. We were almost out of snackfood so this was pretty much the only option. I was hesitant to cook right by the trail in case a ranger saw us cooking outside of designated food prep areas, but the tree blocked a lot of rain. As I leaned back on the tree, I saw that it had barbed wire on it, and the most grizzly hair we’d seen on any tree. Great. We were cooking under the bears’ favorite scratching area.
We finished the meal still hungry and packed up after it stopped raining. We went upwards into the now not burnt trees. As we heard thunder in the mountains again, we started to look for a campsite. We couldn’t get over the pass and make the extra three miles to our official designated campsite in this weather. It started hailing marbles again, and Frogs and I huddled under the umbrella. I gave up, and looked for a flat spot, unfortunately, right by the trail. We’d be so busted if a ranger found us. We set up over the newly fallen hail and I defrosted my feet and found a tree to hang food (spruce trees are difficult to hang in). As I went to sleep, I heard a helicopter overhead and kept thinking rangers were searching for illegal stealthy tenters like ourselves. Their rules which require camping in permitted campsites don’t allow for wiggle room in weather like this. I don’t know what else we could’ve done.
