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Published: September 11th 2007
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Crawlspace
I guess this keeps cattle out of the area. Also miniature cattle. Posted by: Onaxthiel: We waited for the morning drizzle to pass before we went back to the south unit of Teddy Roosevelt national park. Instead of the cute, helpful ranger we had the first day, we had a young lady who projected an antipathy one step short of hostility towards us when we asked for a backcountry camping permit. I am not sure if this was because she didn’t think we were capable of hiking our planned route after a hard rain or if she just had a bad morning.
Once she had our paperwork, we were off on the drive out to TRNP’s petrified forest. We followed a gravel road off the highway for miles, past oil derricks and occasional ranch cattle grazing next to the road. Then the ugliness began. The last few hundred meters before the trail started wasn’t gravel, it was mud. Mostly uphill. I drove around the worst bit at the base of the hill, and didn’t find another sticky spot until half way up. I gunned the engine and barely broke the crest with enough momentum to get down the other side, fishtailing all the way. A few hikers were washing off at the
trailhead below us, and warned us against the trail that day. They were covered in mud, and their gear even more so. Obfuscator and I decided we would rather get ourselves messy and gamble that the ground would dry out more by tomorrow rather than attempt the “road” again in its current condition. To access the trail required us to fit through a tiny crawling hole in the fence, and hand our gear across the fence, since the packs wouldn’t fit through even on their sides. “Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.”
Inside the going became rough rather quickly. Mostly clay slopes at steep angles made for difficult and treacherous going, but careful choices of our paths up the buttes allowed us to get up most of them without to many slips, trips, and falls. On the flat top of the butte we had excellent views of the valleys and ranch land laid out before us, as well as rain clouds moving in the distance. A mile of walking took us down into the valley of the petrified forest. The colors of the fossilized vegetation
Some Petrified Wood
Lumber. We need lumber. were vivid and fascinating. The gullies and natural sand castles that the sandstone, wind and rain had created were even more interesting to me, though.
The next climb out was more difficult than our climb in. The route was steeper, and with less trails that could be skirted and less level spots to charge towards. I was smoked by the time we made it to the top, and demanded that the slave driving Obfuscator give me some down time to have a break and a snack. We ate a lunch of granola bars and trail mix, while he caught up on his phone calls. Up on top of the Buttes, the reception tends to be pretty good. In the valleys, the reception sucks. Not much of a surprise, I guess. A hawk buzzed us, but we weren’t able to get a shot of him in time before he soared off to a different part of the trail. On our next clamber up a hill, we spotted an odd formation that looked to both of us to resemble a natural castle, complete with battlements. Then we were onto the plains-y part of the walk. This was a four mile stretch
Bird
Some kind of bird. Not fast enough, huh? that had a nice layout of ranches on one side of us, and flat prairie on the other side. Excepting a few spots, It would be hard to tell that we were a few hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. Then we ran into the buffalo. We dropped our rucks and moved in closer for photos, but the big bovines didn’t appear to appreciate the attention, so we moved back to the gear. This is when we realized our future trail would take us through the middle of the buffalo herd. Doh! We skirted the edges, and Obfuscator shot picture after picture from different angles. Me: “hey, that’s enough shots, lets roll.” Him: “Just a couple more.” Me: “That one is looking at us.” Him: (shifting camera to new bison) “Oh good! His head is up!”
Me: “He’s snorting at us, lets go!” Him: “Point. Time to go.” Then it was down into another series of canyons and painted forest sections, We found a very nifty little petrified throne on the side of one hill, We were kings of all we surveyed for a short time, then moved on. Luckily, by this time the clay and soil had mostly dried
A Hill
It's a hill, or perhaps they have some fancy North Dakota name for it. out, so we didn’t have as hard a time climbing out. We had a brief dinner of MRE parts and granola bars, and decided to move from our original camp site, sheltered from the wind, up to the plains and hard wind It kept mosquitoes and fire ants away from us more.
The night was cold. The coldest we have had since being in hammocks the first night. The next day we found out it had dropped down to 33°. We both shivered, bundled up in our patrol bags, wishing we had brought the winter sets. I did keep my face out of the bag a bit longer than I otherwise might have. The night sky was to alive with stars, satellites, meteors and other lights in the void to ignore. We also had the many sounds of the North Dakota night to keep us alert. Coyote packs howled, rabbits hopped through the grass, an owl hooted, and in the distance the cows on the ranches lowed at each other.
Lessons learned: better route reconnaissance. If I had realized how bad the road to the parking lot was, and that it was only one hill more to the
A balanced rock
A balanced rock. In North Dakota, they probably have a fancy name for it, like . . . brock. trail, I would have parked the car out on the gravel instead of driving the cremasteric inducing route to the parking area. By driving blind I needlessly endangered the car, our timeline, and possibly the two of us if an unknown turn and cliff had been on the other side of the hill, rather than a straight shot to the parking area. Pack warmer: we survived the night, but it was frigging cold. I had most of my cold weather stuff on in the bag, and so mostly what froze were my feet. But if we had anticipated that the lows for the night would be about 8 degrees lower than projected, we would have brought the winter bags, and been toasty warm rather than shivering intermittently for nine hours. More water: We did MREs and granola due to a cold camp policy at national parks, plus not being certain on water consumption. As it was, we were fine. But our water was very close. I had figured ¼ liter per mile covered, plus an overage of 2 liters for each of us. As it was, our consumption was closer to 1/3 liter per mile, and we cut into our
Valley
Valley with a river and ranch. overages. Had we added cooking and cleaning dishes to the equation, we would have been pretty dry walking out of there. Distances: I had figured a cruise speed of two miles per hour. As it was, we covered about a mile and a half per hour due to stops for photos, catching our breath, and snacking. We could have covered more if we had to, but the 1.5 per hour is a good number for what we are trying to experience.
Other notes: the rangers were as helpful as they could be, but hadn’t done most of their own trails, (and most had done none of them) so nothing they had to say could be thought of as gospel. When I asked them if they monitored any radio freqs for emergency calls, they looked at me like I had something growing from my head. Remember that if you have trouble in the back 40, you are basically on your own. But hey, backcountry camping is free and much cooler than regular sites.
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allen
non-member comment
/me loves TRNP
i do! i love it! I want to go back, and you two are making me want to go back more!