SUMMARY:  The trail today was a good variety! First we were walking along grassy ridges, following posts. Great views, but a little bit smoky. We were looking a lot at the serious mountains right ahead of us and wondering “How do we ever get through?” Our maps showed very rugged terrain, and the trail was convoluted, trying to wiggle through.

Well, the mountains turned out to be beautiful—rocky cliffs & valleys, lakes, wildflowers, rivers…and we enjoyed the trail. Tonight we are camped in a grove of trees in a little mountain valley, with cows mooing and a creek running. Very peaceful!

DETAILS:  The sky was covered with a thin film of clouds in the morning, and (sigh) the air itself was a bit smoky.  There must be a forest fire somewhere (Yellowstone, maybe?  While we were in Lima, we heard that lightning had started a fire there)  While we were eating breakfast–in the shadow of Mt. Garfield, brrrr– along came a 73-year-old NOBO section hiker.  He told us he had completed the PCT (it took him 7 years) and now he is working on the CDT.  “The CDT is way harder” was his comment.  He was headed for Buffalo Spring, and soon hurried away.

We had plenty of water, so were not concerned about Buffalo Spring, which was a good thing–it turned out to be basically mud & crud.  Yuck.  But for the rest of the morning, off and on, we were leapfrogging with the section hiker guy.  At one point he showed us the very cool Bear map waypoints he has on his phone.  Not only does the app show you which way to go to get to the next waypoint, but it has a picture of what it LOOKS like AT the waypoint, and then it tells you which way to go after that and what to look for.  Pretty amazing!

In the morning, we were up high on grassy ridges with great (though smoky/hazy) views in all directions.  At Bannack Pass, we met two 4-wheeler vehicles who gave us COLD water (nice!) and also showed the section hiker a quicker way to get to Morrison Lake, where he had a resupply waiting for him.  One of the 4-wheeler guys is a local, who grew up around here, fishing, hunting, riding and camping.  He described to me the amazing wildflowers in the spring and the wonderful smell of sagebrush right after a rain.  Wow, nice!

But up ahead of us, there were no more grassy ridges.  Instead, there was a high wall of very impressive-looking mountains.  As we walked towards them, I was thinking, “How will we ever get through there?”  The map said that yes, we would get through–on a very convoluted, twisting trail.  I just hoped we’d be able to follow it OK.

Well, it turned out that the trail was actually pretty good.  There were some uphills, but reasonably graded.  And we used the Ley map to take a shortcut down a canyon, that saved us 3 1/2 miles of official trail.  At the end of the shortcut, to get back to the CDT we had to crawl under a barbed wire fence and ford a creek, but it was worth it, to save over 3 miles!  All through the afternoon, we were hearing rumbles of thunder, and had occasional sprinkles of rain, but nothing more.

After the shortcut, we were walking along a green, rocky river valley, then over a ridge and down into another valley.  And that’s where we are camped now, in a grove of trees, near a creek.  We can hear cows mooing.  The sun has been trying to come out, but not quite making it, so it’s a sort of cloudy sunset tonight.  We feel like it has been a very nice day of hiking!