July 4, 2021
Day 53 - Dubois, WY to Togwotee pass, WY
Abnormal 4th celebrations
Since yesterday was so tough, we took our time this morning and left last. We ate oatmeal and went to the coffee shop up the road. People were just chilling around town waiting for the parade.
We stopped at the grocery store because we realized we might have to carry two days of food into the park. Several locals were talking to us, so it was hard to get out of town. Our plan is to make it to the pass and probably camp up there. On the way up the first hill out of town a guy on a motorcycle flew past us doing a pedalling motion. It was pretty funny and then about 2 miles after saw him broken down on the road. Good news is that he passed us again about 2 miles later. The scenery keeps getting nicer and the whole way up we are looking for bears. Alot of people said there is at least one active grizzly mom between dubois and the pass. We were sticking together the whole way with Alex in the back since he had the best spray. We kept making noise periodically to make sure we didn't spook anything.
The ride up was only 30 miles and the last 9 were most of the climbing. We arrived at the top in good spirits and it was around 4 pm. We got in the lake at the top and started making dinner. We wanted to do dinner first and then change out of our cooked in clothes. While we ate, some storm clouds rolled through. We ate quickly and the storm passed with no rain. We cleaned up and started separating our food contaminated bags from the non. Alex Mary and I took our tent and sleeping materials a quarter mile across the lake to set up camp and another big storm cloud came up the mountain. It started dumping rain and we hid under a tree. Eventually we pulled out our footprint and stood under for the rest of the storm. Meanwhile the mosquitos were getting worse. I was wearing skin tight pants and they were biting right through. Once the rain let up, we set up the tent as fast as possible and walked back around the lake to hang bags and brush teeth. At this point we were all wet and were fending off so many bugs. I didn't want to use our natural bug spray since it has essential oils and we kept hearing bad stories about grizzlys from the locals. We didn't even end up bringing water with us to the tent. We hung Mary's bags in a tree. The first branch broke but the second held. I put my food stuff in the pit toilet area (gross) but I just couldn't hang it with this bugs and rain. We made it back to the tent and got right in. The weather said only 20% overnight but forecasted alot of rain for tomorrow. We all decided to make alot of noise if we heard anything suspicious that night. I got into my sleeping bag and layed awake listening to noises.
Although alot of unfortunate things happened at the end of the day, we had a stunning ride up to the pass. We are camped right below a giant spire shaped mountain on the back side of a lake.
| Heart | 6 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Mileage:30
Altitude gain:3400
Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 2,804 miles (4,513 km)
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3 years ago